Download or read book Leaving the Illusion written by Joseph Plummer and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine for a moment what it would be like; ten years worth of hard work and a life-long dream, gone. Your self respect and dignity, in shambles. As you question what you're made of, and as you wonder how you'll ever claw your way back to the top, an incredible opportunity presents itself. There is only one catch: It will cost you everything you know about the world around you. Leaving the Illusion will lead you into the darkness of an unseen world; a world where the "dominant few" do as they please to the "inferior many" that live beneath them. For the insiders, there is unimaginable wealth, power and privilege. For all others, there is only deception, theft and violence. Given a choice, to join the predators or continue living as prey, which would you choose? This is the story of Alex Watson and the agonizing decision he was forced to make.
Download or read book The Comfort Zone Illusion written by Susan Neustrom and published by Happy About. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is this place called the comfort zone? Where does the comfort zone exist? Why is stepping outside of the comfort zone so frightening? "The Comfort Zone Illusion" answers those questions by taking you on a journey of discovery to uncover the mystery of the very personal space we call our comfort zone. It is an exploration through the stages of change, beginning with the very first step outside of the comfort zone to exposing the five walls of fear that create barriers to change. This book looks beyond the illusion of comfort to the stark reality of the discomfort of change, and offers strategies to transform fear to energy, break down the brick walls of fear, develop movement habits, and create success enablers. Every breakthrough exercise provides a reflective understanding of your comfort zone, and although the exercises have a specific purpose, each offers a chance to reveal an "a-ha" moment. One of those moments is the turning point, the awakening to move you out of being stuck in the comfort of where you are to where you are meant to be.
Leaving your comfort zone is frightening, and fear can stifle action, inhibit the ability to attempt a new approach, and can create unnecessary stress, making you less likely to welcome change as an opportunity for discovery, growth, and personal development. The author, Susan Neustrom, shares numerous stories about confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and success derived from her life-changing experience of facing her fear of educational failure from being a high-school dropout at sixteen by returning to school at forty-eight to earn a GED and then a doctorate. Susan conveys her thoughts, feelings, and unbelievable discomfort with leaving her comfort zone, as well as many "a-ha" moments, in her personal transformation of abandoning a twenty-two-year career to follow her vision to do work with greater purpose and meaning. Not only does she offer her personal account, she also shares the stories of people in a variety of situations, and from experts who clearly understand change.
If you are stuck in your comfort zone, ready for change, but walls of "I can't" stand in your way, this book shows you how leaving your comfort zone is not so hard after all. "The Comfort Zone Illusion" truly demonstrates that possibilities are endless once you learn how to get out of the discomfort of being in your comfort zone, eliminate fear, and unleash purpose, passion, and potential.
Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
Download or read book The Illusion of Reality written by Howard L. Resnikoff and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Illusion of Reality was conceived during my tenure as director of the newly established Division of Information Science and Technology at the National Science Foundation in 1979-1981 as a partial response to the need for a textbook for students, both in and out of government, that would pro vide a comprehensive view of information science as a fundamental constitu ent of other more established disciplines with a unity and coherence distinct from computer science, cognitive science, and library science although it is related to all of them. Driven by the advances of information technology, the perception of information science has progressed rapidly: today it seems well understood that information processing biological organisms and informa tion processing electronic machines have something basic in common that may subsume the theory of computation, as well as fundamental parts of physics. This book is primarily intended as a text for an advanced undergraduate or a graduate introduction to information science. The multidisciplinary nature of the subject has naturally led to the inclusion of a considerable amount of background material in various fields. The reader is likely to fmd the treat ment relatively oversimplified in fields with which he is familiar and, perhaps, somewhat heavier sailing in less familiar waters. The theme of common principles among seemingly unrelated applications provides the connective tissue for the diverse topics covered in the text and, I hope, justifies the variable level of presentation. Some of the material appears here for the first time.
Download or read book The Illusion of Money written by Kyle Cease and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times best-selling author and comedian-turned-motivational speaker, Kyle Cease, shows how your obsession with money is actually preventing you from living the life of your dreams. "I can't afford that." "Now's not the right time . . . I need to save up." "Quit my job? Are you nuts?!" Sound familiar? Money is one of the biggest excuses we make to not go after what we really want. Our fixation with money--the desire for more of it, and the fear of not having enough of it--is often really just a longing to feel safe. But this obsession with money is coming at a much bigger cost: our sanity, our creativity, our freedom, and our ability to step into our true power. This book is about eliminating the need to seek safety through the illusion of money, and learning to see ourselves for the perfection that we are--so that we can bring our gifts to the world in an authentic way, and allow ourselves to receive massive, true abundance as a result. Kyle Cease has heard excuses like the ones above countless times at his live events, and he has shown people how to completely break through them. In The Illusion of Money, he shares his own experiences as well as practical tools to help readers understand their ingrained beliefs and attachments to money, and how they can tap into our infinite assets and talents. "After 25 years as a successful comedian, actor, transformational speaker, author and junior-league amateur bowler, I've experienced many times how chasing money is not an effective way to create an abundant and fulfilling life. The most alive I've ever felt was after I left my comedy career at its peak to become a transformational speaker. I left tons of guaranteed money and so-called security for a complete unknown. It was terrifying--but what was on the other side of that terror was a completely different life that is not only more abundant financially, but has more freedom, more ease, more passion, more impact and more joy." -- Kyle Cease
Download or read book The Illusion of Separateness written by Simon Van Booy and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The uncanny beauty of Van Booy’s prose, and his ability to knife straight to the depths of a character’s heart, fill a reader with wonder.” — San Francisco Chronicle Award-winning author Simon Van Booy tells a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man’s act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection. The characters in Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.
Download or read book Masters of Deception written by Al Seckel and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rings of seahorses seem to rotate and butterflies seems to transform into warriors right on the page. Astonishing creations of visual trickery by masters of the art, such as Escher, Dali, and Archimbolo make this breathtaking collection the definitive book of optical illusions. Includes an illuminating Foreword by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hofstadter.
Download or read book Suffering from Illusion written by Sayers R. Brenner and published by . This book was released on 1994-04-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Illusion of Power written by Stephen Orgel and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a study of political theater in the English Renaissance, discussing the differences between a public playhouse and a private, or court theater, and looking at masques and the role of king in the Renaissance court.
Download or read book The Self Illusion written by Bruce Hood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.
Download or read book The End of Illusions written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.
Download or read book Illusion of Separation written by Giles Hutchins and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our modern patterns of thinking and learning are all based on observing a world of 'things', which we think of as separate building blocks. This worldview allows us to count and measure objects without their having any innate value; it provides neat definitions and a sense of control over life. However, this approach also sets humans apart from each other, and from nature.In reality, in nature, everything is connected in a fluid, dynamic way. 'Separateness' is an illusion we have created -- and is fast becoming a dangerous delusion infecting how we relate to business, politi, and other key areas of our daily reality.Giles Hutchins argues that the source of our current social, economic and environmental issues springs from the misguided way we see and construct our world. With its roots in ancient wisdom, this insightful book sets out an accesssible, easy to follow exploration of the causes of our current crises, offering ways to rectify these issues at source and then pointing to a way ahead.
Download or read book The Last Illusion written by Porochista Khakpour and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.
Download or read book The Knowledge Illusion written by Steven Sloman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.
Download or read book The Money Illusion written by Scott Sumner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-05-06 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length work on market monetarism, written by its leading scholar. Is it possible that the consensus around what caused the 2008 Great Recession is almost entirely wrong? It’s happened before. Just as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz led the economics community in the 1960s to reevaluate its view of what caused the Great Depression, the same may be happening now to our understanding of the first economic crisis of the 21st century. Foregoing the usual relitigating of problems such as housing markets and banking crises, renowned monetary economist Scott Sumner argues that the Great Recession came down to one thing: nominal GDP, the sum of all nominal spending in the economy, which the Federal Reserve erred in allowing to plummet. The Money Illusion is an end-to-end case for this school of thought, known as market monetarism, written by its leading voice in economics. Based almost entirely on standard macroeconomic concepts, this highly accessible text lays the groundwork for a simple yet fundamentally radical understanding of how monetary policy can work best: providing a stable environment for a market economy to flourish.
Download or read book The Illusion of Leaving written by Jeannette Brown and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jamie Wright hates her West Texas hometown of Silver Falls, its small-minded people, the reminder of her childhood there and her failed first marriage-the source of her daddy's eternal disappointment. The size of his ranch and the influence of his pocketbook continue to make her a target for resentment. Now Big Jim is on his deathbed. Jamie's in town to plan his funeral, sell the ranch, and never look back. The funeral goes as planned, although her daddy might be galled that one of the pallbearers is Mexican. However, the reading of the will does not go as planned. The night after the funeral, Jamie and two former classmates-Wanda and Gina-go for a nostalgic ride out to the town's lovers' lane to watch the dancing lights and reminisce about high school. When a tornado system blows in, they drive to a nearby storm shelter. There, fueled by vodka, the secrets erupt. The tornado razes part of Silver Falls as well as the ranch. Jamie realizes that she is not immune to the pull of the land, the way its vast barrenness manages to sustain flora and fauna. Jamie's discovery of her father's manipulation and deceit allows her to throw off her lifelong guilt at disappointing him. She sees herself as an adult, and sees the land and the ranch as a vital part of who she is. In the process of helping clean up the tornado damage to Silver Falls, Jamie finally becomes part of the community"--
