Personal Growth

What to Do (and What Not to Do) When a Friend, Co-Worker, or Relative Suffers a Loss

With 101 quick and concrete suggestions you can use immediately, 101 Ways You Can Help offers practical information on the dos and don'ts of handling grief and loss. You'll find the universal basics of helping, as well as specific tools for how to offer support based on your relationship to the person who is grieving, from a boss to a backyard neighbor:

• Accept that you can't fix it. Stop trying.
• Tuck a book of stamps in that sympathy card.
• Donate a vacation day.
• Don't say: "She's in a better place."
• Be a little pushy.
• Help with the pets.
• Listen.

There are an estimated eight million newly bereaved people in the United States each year. Through this book, Liz Aleshire, who experienced personally and professionally what helps and what hurts, encourages you to reach out and gives you suggestions on how to ease the delicate situations surrounding bereavement.

"Anderson's warm, inviting tone will appeal to women who feel, as she did, that they need time and space to reinvent themselves."
--Publishers Weekly

"Encourages us all to take the breaks that we need to regain our emotional balance . . . a fulfilling chronicle."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

From the bestselling author of A Year by the Sea, this memoir is a coming-of-age story for every woman who has asked herself: "Now what?"

The Second Journey chronicles Anderson's quest to restore equilibrium to her life after the responsibilities of being a mother, wife, grandmother, caretaker, and bestselling author distract her--almost dangerously--from taking care of herself. Suffused with Anderson's characteristic humor and warmth, this book is a permission slip for any woman who seeks to step out of line and create her own destiny. As Joan shares her stories of balancing love, marriage, family, parents, and spirituality, she inspires and instructs readers to find peace and a unique purpose within their own lives. She offers reassurance that the best is yet to come, and empowers other women to come of age in the middle of life.

Rooted in traditional Toltec wisdom beliefs, four agreements in life are essential steps on the path to personal freedom. As beliefs are transformed through maintaining these agreements, shamanic teacher and healer don Miguel Ruiz asserts lives will "become filled with grace, peace, and unconditional love." Author workshops.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

Learn the secrets to taking any change in stride.

“Change is hard,” we say, and it is even harder when change is thrust upon us. In today’s tough times, we may be forced to reinvent our career or downsize our lives; at any point in life, we may lose a love or a dream. Our first reaction to change we didn’t ask for may be to rail against fate. But what if we could see past today’s turmoil and spot the opportunities that lie within unasked-for change? That is the promise of AdaptAbility, bestselling author and executive coach M. J. Ryan’s paradigm-shifting new book on not merely surviving but thriving when change is required.

Why is it so hard to accept change? Paradoxically, it is for the very reason that our brains usually work so well; we are designed to learn something and make it automatic. The problem is that when circumstances change, our “efficient” brains keep trying to do things the same old way. In AdaptAbility, Ryan provides strategies to retrain your brain and optimize your response to change, step by step: by first accepting the new reality, then expanding your options, and finally, taking effective action. She offers cutting-edge tools for becoming calmer, less fearful, and more flexible, creative, and resourceful in your thinking. Best of all, as your “adapt-ability” increases, so does your confidence that you will be able to face whatever life sends your way and find new ways to flourish.

M. J. Ryan, internationally recognized as a leading change expert, is one of the creators of the New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series and the author of This Year I Will . . . , The Happiness Makeover, The Power of Patience, Trusting Yourself, and Attitudes of Gratitude, among other books. A member of Professional Thinking Partners, she specializes in coaching individuals and teams around the world. She has appeared on the Today show and CNN, and is a contributing editor to Good Housekeeping and Health. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter. Visit her website at www.mj-ryan.com.

Of all the gifts that Jesus left us, his peace is most elusive. We long for it in our homes, in our relationships, in our life situations. One place we can look and see "living peace" is in the lives of the Amish. But you don't have to become Amish to bring these simple, practical ways of living into your own life--and make personal peace a reality. Organized around five central themes in Amish life, each section will include real-life stories, callouts of Amish proverbs, and interesting facts about Amish communities. Each section will also contain questions for reflection and action--things you can do in your own life that "make for peace."