5 comments about Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life.

1. What a wonderful book. A short read - one sitting should do it, but a must read for parents and managers alike. I've bought over a dozen copies for friends and employees. A great story to express the change in attitudes of parents towards self esteem and how it is affecting our youth.



2. This is a book that I will have parents read.



3. This short read on the high school athletic student is a must for all parents of athletes. You'll find out how the attitudes of student athletes are changing the face of high school sports.



4. I bought this book for my husband. It was so very impressed with the story he finished it in a day. He really enjoys Michael Lewis' style of writing and has read several of his books. I would recommend it as a Christmas stuffer for any coaches, parents or baseball fans.



5. For everyone who has ever had a coach, a good one, in athletics, in a career field, or in any area of life...
   
   For everyone who has ever been a coach, in athletics, in a career fielld, in any area of life. For coaches who cared, genuinely cared...
   
   Those who know will understand and this book will bring a tear to their eye and warmth to their heart and soul...
   
   Those who don't understand should be so blessed....

4 comments about Your Ultimate Calling: 365 Ways to Bring Inspiration into Your Life.

1. Your Ultimate Calling: 365 Ways to Bring Inspiration into Your Life by Wayne W. Dyer could be a deck of cards or a one-day calendar as easily as a book. The book is in full color with photographs of nature and drawings of flowers and butterflies.
   
   Dyer believes that inspiration can be cultivated and that it is an achievable state of being.
   
   This book is essentially a distillation of Dyer's other works. He presents 365 basic spiritual principles in one or two sentences. This is not a book you sit down to read; rather it is a daily inspirational guide, best suited for meditative/contemplative purposes.
   
   Here are three samples from the book:
   
   "Thoughts themselves are an energy and it's vital to realize that you need to work on not holding on to the ones that will weaken you."
   
   "When you're at peace with your life and in a state of tranquility, you actually send out a vibration of energy that impacts all living creatures, including plants, animals...and even babies!"
   
   "The phrase I expect miracles is more than a New Age slogan, it's how you feel when you live each day in spirit. You leave the world of anxiety, fear, doubt, and impossibility and enter a new, wonderful world where all things are possible."
   
   By the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.



2. I am enjoying reading all of wayne dyer's books. I find them quite
   inspirational and full of wisdom. thanks, esther



3. I read the book - Inspiration - this booklet has a saying for everyday that keeps the thoughts on "Inspiration" in focus. I enjoy it very much.



4. This book is so beautiful. I received it as a gift and get inspiration everyday from it. Would highly recommed as a perfect gift when you dont know what to get a special person in your life.

1 comments about Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It.

1. I took the authors' empowerment workshop about 15 years ago where I received my first copy. The book and the accompanying exercises and journeys are exciting and enlightening. I recently purchased another copy for a friend in need of establishing "life affirmations" and ridding herself of depressive "old scripts". It caused me to revisit my old copy and do a "tune up" on myself. What an uplifting and helpful tool. A must read.

5 comments about Ten Zen Seconds.

1. This small book guides you through easy Zen breathing techniques and 'incantations.' Also, every step is followed by examples of how other people benefited which will help you decide how to apply these methods to your own unique life situation.



2. Ten Zen Seconds could be ten pages long. After the meditations are listed and use suggestions made, the rest is fluff -- personal experiences about using the Zen Seconds. But that does not mean I condemn it -- oh contrary! In fact, I use them often. If simplicity is genius this is Einstein. A quiet moment in a frazzled world. What's not to love?



3. I have read many meditation books. Meditation sounds like a great idea, but with my hectic, stressful lifestyle and my ADD, I never do seem to get around to it. It just doesn't seem practical. This book offers a technique that is so practical. The technique can be used for any stressful situation, no matter how little time you have. Also it is something that I believe could be developed over time, a book to return to over and over. There are many wise little passages here. I have never written a review before, but I just had to share my enthusiasm for this little book!



4. Unlike other self-help type books, this book really only has one main suggestion/idea and it is super simple to immediately implement. The purpose of the technique being to "center" and to become mindful. The author suggests 12 short phrases (or, "incantations" as they are referred to on the cover). The technique is to take a 10 second long breath--5 in, 5 out and to use the breath as a "container" for a specific thought. You think the first half of the phrase on the in breath and the second half on the out breath. An example:
   
   (I am) (open to joy)
   
   I started reading the book shortly after I got it last month and tried the technique that same day and have been using it in some form ever since. Really helpful and easy. I find all 12 phrases to be very useful and I can remember almost all of them at any one time.
   
   As I read the book I thought, this book is giving me a skill that I will use for the rest of my life. It is essentially a tiny meditation technique that is MUCH more readily incorporated into one's daily life (especially a life that includes small children) than traditional, dedicated, more elaborate meditation practice.
   
   This review is excerpted from my book blog, Molly Reads.



5. Another 'get rich quick' rehash of obvious commonplace stuff by a guy who has written more books about how to be creative than God. Ironically, for a 'creativity coach', you'd think he'd've 'created' himself another topic, or at least something original to say. In this 'offering', Maisel's big secret is one slow ten second breath while saying a positive affirmation. He lists 12 and goes into a chapter for each (which we like to call 'padding'.) Ironically, in the chapters about the affirmations (he calls them 'incantations' because calling them an affirmation is like, so 1990s, I think) his little case studies/guinea pigs often state that this affirma--sorry, incantation didn't work for them as worded. So, he coaches, come up with your own! So...if I have to come up with my own...why did I buy this book again?
   
   So, reader, here's the deal--breathe one ten-second breath while saying a positive affirmation. I just saved you $12. Oh, and if you're looking for ANYTHING zen in this book beyond the cover art, good luck!

5 comments about Wishing Well: Making Your Every Wish Come True.

1. Dr. Pearsall's book shows how to find greater success with our "wishful thinking" by taking stock of our heart-head tendencies (using a head-heart inventory self-test). The idea is to learn to "cardiocontemplate", as Paul Pearsall playfully puts it, in order that our heart can "have its way rather than allowing your brain to busy you with trying to get its way". Pearsall describes the characteristics of mature wishers as being persistently patient, harmoniously connected, pleasantly agreeable, modestly humble, and kindly tender -- in other words, loving in five different ways. One of my favorite sections in Pearsall's book is his concept of the "Wish Star", where we can focus on the five key domains of what we are wishing for -- such as serenity, compassion, meaning, purpose, and delight (along with the darker realms of turmoil, loneliness, despair, stagnation, and disillusionment). This book is full of fascinating information, and it even comes with a CD-ROM wish training program for Windows!



2. Dr Pearsall's book is very timely. His ability to incorporate a state of the art CD, ShapeChanger, as a free addition to this book is truly amazing. This CD which independently sells on the web for $49.95 allows you to practice making your wishes come true and it gives you your score on how well you are wishing, I'am familiar with the work of MindSong Inc who produced the CD and the work of the PEAR Lab at Princeton on whose research the CD is based but to actually watch your intention,"Wish", manifest itself on a computer screen using nothing more than your thoughts is pretty amazing. I guess Quantum theory, Bell's theory and PEAR's lab research are proving by this CD that we really do live in an observant reality and anything is possible or better yet the power of positive thinking is backed by scientific fact. Wishing Well proves it!Wishing Well is a paradigm shifter! This book is the key that teaches you how to make your wishes come true! (Yes, I loved the Book:)



3. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Or so the old saying goes. This dull, pedestrian treatise begs a little more horsepower in its chapters.

   Can't sleep? Then do pick up "Wishing Well." It takes a rather childish subject and tries make it into a medical research project.

   Author Paul Pearsall, who appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show with this book, can't decide what sort of book he wants to write. One minute, he's telling you about his strange near death experience in the hospital, the next, about parents talking to their kids when watching a meteor shower. He may then jump to the psychology of wishing or tell you about a witch doctor's wish or draw confusing diagrams about wising on stars. Oh yes, there's also a lot of pop quizzes to further muddle up the reader.

   Wasn't it Washington Irving who said great minds have purposes, others have wishes? Pearsall has a lot of wishes, but doesn't seem to have a clear purpose in writing this book. Even at Amazon.com's great prices, you may end up wishing you hadn't bought it!




4. A key point made by Pearsall is based on the Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) tradition that we can wish "well" or poorly". Sometimes we try so hard that we find it difficult to surrender to the larger healing. He writes, "Wishing is the enemy of the positive thinker who prides herself on being so strong-willed that there is little need for mysticism or the equanimity of wishing. Wishing is much too passive, gentle, and humble for the needy and power-motivated brain." So in wishing well we let go of needing to be in control, of expecting a specific outcome. We focus on serenity, delight, purpose, meaning, and compassion vs. "trying" to heal a certain part of the body in a certain way. It involves a kind of easy flow with the cosmos. This quality is conveyed by one person who said, "When I wish, I blow bubbles..." Pearsall (who was himself healed overnight from "terminal" disease) tells us that it is important to relax, be patient, wish from the heart (vs. the mind), connect lovingly; to allow "the surrender of self."



5. This is a book I read with a highlighter, and keep around forever. It's really good. I wish I'd learned stuff like this in high school, or earlier. I really like the energy of this book, which feels very Hawaiian to me. I got quite a bit out of it.

5 comments about With Love and Prayers: A Headmaster Speaks to a New Generation.

1. With Love and Prayers : A Headmaster Speaks to the Next Generation is the best inspirational book that I have ever read. It is written to be read by teenagers to help them through this unsteady time in their lives. This book tells them that they can become wiser if they are not self-centered, selfish, and arrogant. I believe that if people show these virtues everyday the world would be a much kinder and wiser planet.



2. As a former student of Roxbury Latin and attendee of our infamous "halls", I enjoyed returning to my roots to read over many of the wonderful speeches that I heard so many years ago. I would recommend this book to people of all ages- if not for the lessons and values expressed in Tony's words, then for the often humorous and entertaining anecdotes told along the way.



3. I picked this book up in the Harvard bookstore when I was visiting Boston last summer. I thought it would be a good birthday gift for my son-in-law.After I got it home I sampled it and got hooked. I bought a copy for myself and for my son too. I wish it had been available 7 years ago when I was trying to help my girls pick colleges and goals. Dr.Jarvis has a way of making some very complicated things very clear. I would recommed this book for anyone who is helping young people but I think it would be especially helpful for widows with teenagers. It gives some very clear advice about what is important in life, what some of the lies of our culture are, and encouragement to reach beyond our narrow lives and embrace new things.



4. Mr. Jarvis is like a modern, entertaining T.S. Eliot. His social criticisms are sharp and opinionated, his expectations firm and unwavering, his hope unlimited. Jarvis adapts tidbits of his own life (embellished perhaps, yet always poignant and usually fun) into his broader discussions of social ennui and relaxing values--and how to avoid them. At his most severe he is a bit too preachy, but overall his vignettes are not only touching, but adaptable to most any life. At the core of his ideology is the belief that there is more to human life than the self; people of all faiths and backgrounds can thus empathize with his demanding opinions about growing up (and living) in our time. Well, in any time. 'Life you may evade', said Eliot, 'but death you shall not'. Jarvis urges us to make the most of our brief time in this life, and look with hope and humility towards the next.



5. I don't know Jarvis personally, but these essays are tremendously inspirational especially when you consider that they make up some 25 years worth of talks to the Roxbury Latin students. It's refreshing to hear an educator who freely told students that RL was NOT a college prep school but rather a preparation for leading a moral life. His collection of talks combines anecdotes and encounters from many years and ties them together into talks that you just WISH you could read out loud to every student in the country: that you really never get away with anything, that college admissions is not the be all and end all to every academic quest, that we should go out of our way to help others and make an impact on them. This was a fantastic collection -- I ended up dog earing dozens of pages and reading them outloud to anyone who would listen. Do yourself a favor and read it pronto. They don't make them like Jarvis anymore.

5 comments about Thoughts From the Seat of the Soul: Meditations for Souls in Process.

1. I have only just started reading this book and I already find it all encompassing.The teaching so far is significant for me and enlightening for my life path.



2. Gary's openness allowed me to be at ease looking within myself. Page 99 of the book let me know that I will always have assistance. I now know I will never be alone again. Every Human should read this book it brings all you have learned about God and the Universe into a place where you understand ...what was missing ....I now know it's going to be ok..Thanks Gary for giving me this tool.



3. Gary Zukav has taken his book, The Seat of the Soul, and pulled out the best parts, the parts you would have underlined or highlighted or marked with a star, and put them into a spiral bound, stank-alone book that I think is very useful to me. I flip open a page and let it sit on my desk here next to my computer and every now and then I glance over at it and think about it. It's well worth the price.



4. Gary Zukav has really put together a great compilation of "Seat of the Soul" into this book. It is inspiring, and helps bring me back to center. I recommend this to anyone that cold use some inspiration combined with wonderful concepts that will help you in your life.



5. This book is an excellent meditative companion for those who have read Gary Zukav's other books--"Seat of the Soul," "The Heart of the Soul," and "The Mind of the Soul" as well as "Soul Stories" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters." I keep my copy of this book in my car where I can grab moments of mini-meditation when I am stuck in traffic or waiting for my daughter to get out of school.

1 comments about Great Attitudes!: 10 Choices for Success in Life.

1. Hi everyone, I have used this book primarily for presents. Chuck Swindoll always has good stuff....(of course, this is a personal oppinion). Lets work at getting good books in the hands of people. take care!

5 comments about Answering Your Call: A Guide for Living Your Deepest Purpose.

1. I am a student of callings and following one's passion. Mr. Schusters offers an archetypal construct that was very helpful...the elements of Saboteurs, Evocateurs and Provocateurs changed the way I have organized my own search. Excellent story teller with vivid examples plus examples from many varied arenas. Also wonderful quotes from other writers that inspire and encourage one along their own personal quest. Good addition to personal library as well as a gift for those who are seeking.



2. As many of us do, in January of this year, I was pondering my resolutions. But this year was different for me in that I wanted to look more long term and take a "strategic" view of my life. "Am I in the right place and time for what I am doing? Should I be doing something different? Am I sabotaging my own goals by just living day to day and not stretching myself to new horizons?"

   After reading John's book, I didn't have ALL the answers, but I knew that I was asking the right questions. His book gave me ideas for tools that I can and should use for my life planning and a sense of hope that I don't have to live from day to day - but could "re-discover" the passion for life I embraced years ago. I was able to write an "approach" to "what next" for my life from his inspiring ideas. I've recommended the book to several and so far all who have read it found it inspiring and challenging.




3. As a 'twenty-something with a clean slate', trying to balance my potential career choices with my passions and callings, this book was a refreshing reminder of what I need to consider when I am making my next life decisions. I also feel like I have several callings--which this book helped me understand.

   After reading it, I can only think: "Yes, I want significance over success in my life."

   The author is a great storyteller, and I will look for counsel in these pages as I move on to the next phase of my life.




4. Sorry to say it, but this book is crap. It makes little sense. It's more like a New Age-y, Stuart Smiley pep-talk rather than a practical guide.



5. "Answering Your Call" helps one let go of negative presumptions about reality and embark on a life of authentic purpose. If you've ever wanted to protest, to share your wisdom freely, to correct an entrenched injustice, to fertilize a desperation with hopeful insight, or to heal yourself from comfortable boredom, you'll certainly find something to inspire and guide you in "Answering Your Call".

1 comments about Miracle Cards.

1. "Achievement doesn't come from what we do, but from who we are..." (from the card titled Personal Power). Marianne Williamson shows us quite a bit about herself in this, her latest work. In this beautiful boxed set of 50 cards, Williamson shows us how to confront many areas of human experience and some of the issues we individually, and collectively face.

   She provides universal truths derived from many faiths and traditions, with the main concept revolving around the idea that, all that is good is derived out of love. On the Health and Healing card, she states, "Illness is a sign of separation from God, and our healing lies in returning to him. The return to God is merely the return to love".

   Beautiful photographic images adorn the very durable cards, with one side, displaying the subject, the other side, the words of inspiration. Besides those already discussed, topics include: personal power, the future of the planet, war and peace, life and death, learning from children, relationships, healthy eating, and God's love.

   Regardless your spiritual orientation, you will find peace, comfort and renewed hope by reading these inspiring cards. Try choosing one at random each day and living its principles, or, look for the applications in your life that day.

   One only wishes that there were an accompanying booklet where Williamson could elaborate further on some of these spiritual concepts. But, if you want to explore Williamson's ideas more indepth, the cards are derived from some of her previous works, such as: Illuminata, A women's Worth, and a Return to Love.

   This makes a wonderful gift for yourself or someone close, perhaps in need of a little TLC. Enjoy and take some of these words to heart. Williamson, lecturer and best-selling author, is also a spiritual leader at Renaissance Unity Church in Warren, MI.