Download or read book Stories We Tell Ourselves written by Richard Holloway and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of our place in the universe. Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are. He examines what we know about the universe into which we are propelled at birth and from which we are expelled at death, the stories we have told about where we come from, and the stories we tell to get through this muddling experience of life. Thought-provoking, revelatory, compassionate and playful, Stories We Tell Ourselves is a personal reckoning with life’s mysteries by one of the most important and beloved thinkers of our time.
Download or read book Stories We Tell Ourselves written by Sarah Françoise and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank and Joan's marriage is in trouble. Having spent thirty years failing to understand each other, Joan's frustrations have finally reached boiling point. But it's Christmas, and their three children are coming home for the holiday. So Joan determines to make things work. With the Christmas tree up, plates of mince pies artfully arranged and the obligatory poinsettia in situ, the stage is set for a traditional family Christmas. If only this family were up to the challenge. Told with wit, understanding and disarming honesty, this is a novel about the thorniness of family love and its capacity to endure.
Download or read book We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live written by Joan Didion and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 1196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Stories We Tell Ourselves written by Michelle Herman and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two thought-provoking, extended essays that make up Stories We Tell Ourselves draw from the author’s richly diverse experiences and history, taking the reader on a deeply pleasurable walk to several unexpectedly profound destinations. A steady accumulation of fascinating science, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history—ranging as far and wide as neuro-ophthalmology, ancient dream interpretation, and the essential differences between Jung and Freud—is smoothly intermixed with vivid anecdotes, entertaining digressions, and a disarming willingness to risk everything in the course of a revealing personal narrative. “Dream Life” plumbs the depth of dreams—conceptually, biologically, and as the nursery of our most meaningful metaphors—as it considers dreams and dreaming every whichway: from the haruspicy of the Roman Empire to contemporary sleep and dream science, from the way birds dream to the way babies do, from our longing to tell them to the reasons we wish other people wouldn’t. “Seeing Things” recounts a journey of mother and daughter—a Holmes-and-Watson pair intrepidly working their way through the mysteries of a disorder known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome—even as it restlessly detours into the world beyond the looking glass of the unconscious itself. In essays that constantly offer layers of surprises and ever-deeper insights, the author turns a powerful lens on the relationships that make up a family, on expertise and unsatisfying diagnoses, on science and art and the pleasures of contemplation and inquiry—and on our fears, regrets, hopes, and (of course) dreams.
Download or read book The Stories We Tell Ourselves written by R. Scott Gornto and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Change the story. Change your life. From imagined catastrophes to play-by-play interpretations of others' behavior, we are expert storytellers, quick to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, all too often our behavior is determined by baseless suspicions, which trigger needless pain. Real life passes us by as we fall for powerful fantasies of our own creation. It doesn't have to be this way. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, author and therapist Scott Gornto shows us how to break the cycle of false assumptions that lead to unnecessary anxiety. By taking control of our reactions to the people around us, we can learn how to be truly present in our lives as we nurture the relationships that matter most. Based on more than 20 years of research and experience, Gornto demonstrates how family narratives, media, and past experiences shape compelling story lines that blind us to reality and wreak havoc on our relationships. Through persuasive examples, he models fresh, life-enhancing approaches to engaging with friends, business associates, and loved ones alike. Don't waste your life making up stories. The Stories We Tell Ourselves is a wake-up call and a compassionate, accessible guide to transforming your relationships-and your life.
Download or read book Becoming Real written by Dr. Gail Saltz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring work that pushes us to mature past the obstacles we create for ourselves. In this refreshing and unique book, Today Show psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz shows how to pinpoint, deal with, and eliminate the debilitating baggage that stands in the way of success. Through revealing and intensive questionnaires, Becoming Real helps identify the symptoms that lead to repetitive self-defeating behaviors and provides essential tools for becoming a stronger person-in love, friendship, career, and in life-with a newfound confidence.
Download or read book Lies We Tell Ourselves written by Robin Talley and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes questions for discussions and an excerpt from another novel.
Download or read book The Stories We Tell Ourselves written by J. Mark Thompson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Mentalizing Tales of Dating and Marriage is about the dynamics of intimate interpersonal relationships (dating and marriage) - how and why human pairings occur, what helps them function optimally and how therapists can intervene when they don't. J. Mark Thompson and Richard Tuch employ a multidimensional perspective that provides a variety of "lenses" through which intimate relationships can be viewed. The authors also offer a new model of couples therapy based on the mentalization model of treatment developed by Peter Fonagy and his colleagues. This book is aimed at those interested in the nature of intimate relationships as well as those wishing to expand their clinical skills, whether they are conducting one-on-one therapy with individuals struggling to establish and maintain intimate relations or are conducting conjoint treatment with troubled couples who have sought the therapist's assistance. Thompson and Tuch view relationships from a wide array of different perspectives: mentalization, attachment theory, evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, pattern recognition (neuroscience), and role theory. A mentalization based approach to couples therapy is clearly explained in a "how to" fashion, with concrete suggestions about how the therapist goes about clinically intervening given their expanded understanding of the dynamics of intimate relations outlined in the book. The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Mentalizing Tales of Dating and Marriage will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage therapists, and all those interested in both learning more about the dynamics of one-on-one intimate relationships (dating and marriage) from a truly multidimensional perspective and in learning how to conduct mentalization-based couples therapy.
Download or read book The Truth about Stories written by Thomas King and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2003 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.
Download or read book Waiting for the Last Bus written by Richard Holloway and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do we go when we die? Or is there nowhere to go? Is death something we can do or is it just something that happens to us? Now in his ninth decade, former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway has spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, guiding countless men and women towards peaceful deaths. In The Last Bus, he presents a positive, meditative and profound exploration of the many important lessons we can learn from death: facing up to the limitations of our bodies as they falter, reflecting on our failings, and forgiving ourselves and others. But in a modern world increasingly wary of acknowledging mortality, The Last Bus is also a stirring plea to reacquaint ourselves with death. Facing and welcoming death gives us the chance to think about not only the meaning of our own life, but of life itself; and can mean the difference between ordinary sorrow and unbearable regret at the end. Radical, joyful and moving, The Last Bus is an invitation to reconsider life's greatest mystery by one of the most important and beloved religious leaders of our time.
Download or read book The Psychology of Narrative Thought written by Lee Roy Beach and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how we think and how what we think shapes our attempts to manage the ongoing course of our lives. Our primary mode of thought is in the form of stories, called narratives, which help us make sense of what is going on around us and provide context for it by linking it to what has happened in the past. Moreover, narratives allow us to use the past and present to make educated guesses, called forecasts, about what will happen in the future. When the forecasted future is undesirable, we intervene to ensure that the actual future, when it arrives, is more to our liking. Narrative thought has its limits, particularly when logical rigor is required. The implications of these limits are discussed, as are the ways in which people have attempted to overcome them.
Download or read book Fables and Futures written by George Estreich and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—require us to imagine who counts as human and what it means to belong. From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreich—an award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndrome—delves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on “three-parent IVF,” a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.
Download or read book Choose Your Story Change Your Life written by Kindra Hall and published by HarperCollins Leadership. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The things we tell ourselves affect how well or poorly our path in life goes. It’s time to flip the script on the internal stories you tell yourself and live life on your terms. Most of the “self-stories” you tell yourself—the kind of person you say you are and the things you are capable of—are invisible to you because they have become such a part of your everyday mental routine that you don’t even recognize they exist. Yet, these self-stories influence everything you do, everything you say, and everything you are. Choose Your Story, Change Your Life will help you take complete control of your self-stories and create the life you’ve always dreamed you’d have. Author Kindra Hall offers up a new window into your psychology, one that travels the distance from the frontiers of neuroscience to the deep inner workings of your thoughts and feelings. In Choose Your Story, Change Your Life, Kindra will help you: Uncover the truth of how you have created the life you have; Challenge everything you think you know about how your life has been built; Uncover the clear steps you can take to create the life you want; Take control of your self-story to become the author of who you are; and Live your life in a way you never have before. This eye-opening, but applicable journey will transform you from a passive listener of these limiting, unconscious thoughts to the definitive author of who you are and everything you want to be. Changing your life is as simple as choosing better stories to tell yourself. If you can change your story, you can change your life.
Download or read book Rising Strong written by Brené Brown and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending. Don’t miss the five-part Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! Social scientist Brené Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy. But living a brave life is not always easy: We are, inevitably, going to stumble and fall. It is the rise from falling that Brown takes as her subject in Rising Strong. As a grounded theory researcher, Brown has listened as a range of people—from leaders in Fortune 500 companies and the military to artists, couples in long-term relationships, teachers, and parents—shared their stories of being brave, falling, and getting back up. She asked herself, What do these people with strong and loving relationships, leaders nurturing creativity, artists pushing innovation, and clergy walking with people through faith and mystery have in common? The answer was clear: They recognize the power of emotion and they’re not afraid to lean in to discomfort. Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we’re feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness. It’s the process, Brown writes, that teaches us the most about who we are. ONE OF GREATER GOOD’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “[Brené Brown’s] research and work have given us a new vocabulary, a way to talk with each other about the ideas and feelings and fears we’ve all had but haven’t quite known how to articulate. . . . Brené empowers us each to be a little more courageous.”—The Huffington Post
Download or read book Humbitious written by Amer Kaissi and published by Page Two Press. This book was released on 2022-01-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fortune favors the humble Arrogant. Charismatic. Narcissistic If you were to name traits that define strong leaders, these are some of the words that likely spring to mind. Conventional thinking would have us believe that it's those filled with hubris and free of self-doubt that make the best leaders. The evidence, however, tells quite a different story. In Humbitious, professional speaker, executive coach and distinguished Trinity University professor Amer Kaissi shatters the common myths about leadership being an ego-driven game. Drawing on extensive research, personal stories, and fascinating historical examples of leadership done right (and wrong), Kaissi reveals why the most effective, high-performing leaders aren't those with the biggest egos, but who possess humility, coupled with ambition and drive. Tracing triumphs (and missteps) of leaders from Napoleon Bonaparte to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, soccer star Alex Morgan to Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, and others, Kaissi illuminates what true humility is-and what it isn't-and how to cultivate it within yourself and with others. As you gain insight into this critical leadership trait, you'll come to understand that humility requires ambition, courage, and fierce determination. Humility, you'll learn, isn't about false modesty; it's about being honest with yourself, and others, about your abilities and potential, so you can make a realistic plan for improvement. The unequivocal truth is that the successful narcissists that you either know or are working for right now are the exception to the rule. The highest performers are those who adopt and integrate humility into their relationships with others, with their organizations, and with themselves. Because fortune favors not simply the bold-but the humbitious.
Download or read book Immortality written by Stephen Cave and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be. A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization. Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals. Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain. But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths. Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently. In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments. He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body. Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them. Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist. We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one? Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started? If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live? And can civilization survive? Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.
Download or read book Retelling the Stories of Our Lives Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience written by David Denborough and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful ideas from narrative therapy can teach us how to create new life stories and promote change. Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdoms from the field of narrative therapy, this book is designed to help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives. The book invites readers to take a new look at their own stories and to find significance in events often neglected, to find sparkling actions that are often discounted, and to find solutions to problems and predicaments in unexpected places. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like the externalizing problems - 'the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem' -and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises demonstrate how these ideas have helped many people overcome intense hardship and will help readers make these techniques their own. The book also outlines practical strategies for reclaiming and celebrating one's experience in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Filled with relatable examples, useful exercises, and informative illustrations, Retelling the Stories of Our Lives leads readers on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future.
