Self Study

Teaching has never been easy, but these days, it seems to keep getting harder. As the pressure builds, many educators are calling it quits on a profession that once felt like a calling. Planning to Stay offers a hopeful alternative.

With her holistic approach to filling your life with comfort, balance, and peace, Debrena Jackson Gandy debunks society's myth that doing something for yourself is decadent and selfish. In fact, she says, the joy we gain from treating ourselves--whether to a luxuriant bath or to a meditative hour alone--is transferred to the people in our lives. When we emerge rejuvenated, others benefit from a patient mother, a fulfilled wife, an effective coworker, a solidly grounded friend.

Please note: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. Feeling burnt out after devoting excessive effort to her job - with none left for her family - writer Shauna Niequist committed to making a life change. From then on, she was going to slow down, accept imperfection, and prioritize peace over productivity, a journey she documents in her self-help memoir, Present Over Perfect.

Design thinking has helped hundreds of their students resolve some of their most pressing problems and dilemmas, and it can do the same for you, too. The duo reminds you - with the clarity and assurance that's only the reserve of seasoned instructors - that it's okay if you are 60 and haven't figured out your life yet, because everyone has multiple life versions to figure out.

Viktor Frankl's memoir, Man's Search for Meaning is about so much more than one man's experiences in a concentration camp. As a book about the Holocaust, it helps to shed light on the day-to-day struggles that inmates faced physically, psychologically, and socially. But it also reaches far beyond camp life and into the meaning of life itself.

In his acclaimed memoir, 10% Happier, Dan Harris recounts the events leading to his televised panic attack and the series of events that followed — involving evangelicals, self-help gurus, Buddhists and neuroscientists — on his accidental quest to find himself.

This FastReads Summary & Analysis offers supplementary material to 10% Happier to help you distill the key takeaways, review the book's content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes from an editorial perspective. Whether you'd like to deepen your understanding, refresh your memory, or simply decide whether or not this book is for you, FastReads Summary & Analysis is here to help. Absorb everything you need to know in under 20 minutes!

Trailblazing transgender actress, activist, and style icon Candis Cayne has spent a lifetime learning how to see herself for who she really is, and along the way has taught herself and others how to celebrate inner beauty as the perfect starting point for outer radiance. Drawing from her personal journey to self-acceptance and comprised of a unique combination of cross-barrier, body-positive wellness and style advice, Hi Gorgeous! is a one-of-a-kind beauty guide that will speak to all women.

With The Glass Ledge, Oubou offers a disruptive guide that explores the 10 most common themes around which women tend to derail themselves, including issues around power, likability, authenticity, conflict, and more. They are organized according to when we are most likely to face them head-on, as some issues present earlier in our careers while others tend to appear later. Each chapter focuses on one of these nuanced themes, incorporating counterintuitive and eye-opening information, including:

Everything is F**ked by Mark Manson sheds light on the question of why so many people in our contemporary society feel so hopeless when we are wealthier, healthier, and freer than ever before. Manson presents comprehensive arguments drawn from sociology, psychology, history, and philosophy. The audiobook highlights the notion that pain is necessary and why hope can be dangerous. A well-rounded guide to carving out a more meaningful existence.

Best-selling Bulletproof Diet author Dave Asprey puts together life-improving tips from some of the most successful people on the planet. Game Changers will certainly encourage you to re-examine some of your life choices and habits, even if it doesn’t turn you into a full-blown biohacker!

This is an unofficial companion guide to Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It is meant to enhance your reading/listening experience and is not the original book.

Disclaimer: This is a summary, review of the book Girl, Wash Your Face and not the original book. The book Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis carries one main theme throughout its chapters: that what becomes of your life, ultimately, is up to you. You have so much power to dictate the outcome of your life, but without trashing all the untruths you’ve been fed so far (and even the ones you fed yourself), there’s no harnessing the potential of that truth.

Everything you need to know about love, life, relationships, sex, men, and being a badass. Advice from girl bosses of all kinds: Women are, far and away, the oral sex. Women’s studies scholar Becca Anderson has gathered the wisdom from a chorus of fabulous femmes for this one-of-a-kind advice audiobook.

This FastReads Summary & Analysis offers supplementary material to help you distill the key takeaways, review the books' content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes from an editorial perspective. This six-book bundle covers everything from dealing with adversity and finding happiness to creating healthier habits and cultivating a better life. Improve your life from the inside out!

Annie Brock and Heather Hundley take the core concept of employing the growth mindset (first popularized by Carol Dweck) and apply it to teaching in a practical, methodical, and easy to access manner in their audiobook, The Growth Mindset Coach. This FastReads summary and analysis offers supplementary material to The Growth Mindset Coach to help you distill the key takeaways, review the book's content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes.

The beautiful diary of Enrico Bottini, an Italian boy who writes a school-year journal with all the good and bad events with his classmates, his teachers, and his family. It teaches the most important human values for good living. A worldwide best seller recommended for kids and adults.

After months of following one-size-fits-all advice for a 57-year-old widow, Linda Crill is still miserable, until she makes a rebellious spur-of-the-moment decision: she trades her corporate suits for motorcycle leathers and commits herself to a 2,500-mile road trip down America’s Pacific Northwest coast on a Harley. The problem: she doesn’t know how to ride and has only 30 days to learn. Four short weeks later, Linda joins two men and a woman for a white-knuckled, exhilarating road trip along the west coast from Vancouver, Canada, to the wine country of Mendocino, California....

Mothers are the breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, yet the American workplace is uniquely hostile to the needs of parents. Weaving in surprising research about the dysfunction between the careers and home lives of working mothers, as well as the consequences to women's health, Alcorn tells a deeply personal story about "having it all,” failing miserably, and what comes after. Ultimately, she offers readers a vision for a healthier, happier, and more productive way to live and work.

The fact is that millions of women in this country - no matter how varied their wants and needs - are itching to get their sexy back. Not a month goes by when there isn't some magazine, Internet article, or television segment focused on the topic of how to be more sexy and alluring. But where do you go to learn the lessons of how to be a lovely and lusty lady? Welcome to The Power of WOW: A 9-Week Course to Unleash the Confident, Sensual You, a virtual university dedicated to the higher learning of the sensual arts.

Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn’t any room for imperfection. "Good" Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn’t have a missing father or a mother with a mental disability. They didn’t have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn’t have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn’t have secret abortions.