The Book of Aspiration is a collection of memoirs of ten carefully selected social leaders. Apoorva Oza, Farhad Merchant, Geeta Goel, Noorjehan Safia Niaz, Pankaj Ballabh, Pavithra YS, Rajeshwari Narendran, Ravi Sreedharan, Suresh Reddy and Vivek Prakash had the passion to do something meaningful in their lives. In their autobiographical accounts, they mention influence of their parents, friends and spouses, and effects of various forces beyond their control, fortuitous coincidences, mentors, etc. Yet, reaching where they have reached is a result of several conscious choices they made on the way. Their stories will inspire young Indians to do something about their surroundings and guide them in creating a future they desire for themselves.
Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn is the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, for example, becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational, if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is only available to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one's own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn't (really) know what one is doing, or why one is doing it? In Aspiration, Agnes Callard asserts that these questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, acknowledged defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp. The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between their old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire. They cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding-rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way. This work has a teleological structure: by modeling oneself on the person he or she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being. Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.
If you want to live a life of purpose, build good habits and achieve your goals, there is one skill that is more important than anything else: Self-Discipline. Self-discipline is not about punishment, it’s about self-respect. It is not about being inflexible, but about living your best life. It is the superpower of focus in a world of distractions — allowing you to overcome procrastination, excuses, bad habits, low motivation, failures, and self-doubt. With it, you can stay on track with your values and goals even through the times when you are least inspired. Self-discipline allows you to choose who you want to be and live by design rather than by default. As a meditation teacher and self-discipline coach, Giovanni Dienstmann has helped hedge fund managers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals, artists and pro athletes to live a more focused and disciplined life. Since 2014 he has been successfully coaching people to overcome distractions, procrastination, self-doubt, fear, and other forms of self-sabotage. Whatever self-discipline challenge you face, whatever excuse you are telling yourself — Mindful Self-Discipline is a collection of all these years of experience, converted into a tool for you to use. This revolutionary book is a comprehensive and practical guide for you to develop self-discipline in a balanced way — without beating yourself up. It emphasizes the use of mindfulness and awareness as key components for building habits, rather than forcefulness and willpower. If you have tried other methodologies and failed, then this is for you. This manual for living your life purposefully contains: — Over 50 step-by-step exercises — Over 100 illustrations and diagrams — Links to the scientific studies about each topic Many, many examples — all to make it as easy as possible for you to actually apply all this knowledge and transform your daily life. If you have tried other approaches (Miracle Morning, Atomic Habits, Willpower Instinct, Tiny Habits, Discipline is Freedom, Hooked, Can’t Hurt Me) and didn’t get the results you were after, then this is for you. Mindful Self-Discipline goes much beyond building habits, time management, and forcing yourself. It is gentler, more achievable, and rooted in living a life of purpose. Think you are not made to be self-disciplined? Think again.
In an age when leaders have left our world's most pressing problems unsolved, Activate Leadership takes a radically new look at the workforce's growing Generation Y. What if within the very traits Millennials in the workplace are criticized, lay the seeds of strong leadership qualities ready to be activated? Activate Leadership draws new wisdom from an ancient source -- aspen groves -- to inspire Millennials to lead on purpose. Author and Thin Difference founder Jon Mertz matches his "Aspen Truths" to four distinct Millennial traits for leadership skills. With ample narrative studies and pragmatic yet inspiring leadership practices, Activate Leadership makes the case for Millennials as great leaders and gives clear guidance to further the big strides they're already making in their workplaces and communities. The time for new leadership has arrived. Activate Leadership offers Millennials an inspired, workable path forward.
What would your work and your life look like if you knew how to stay focused yet flexible, if you got more of the right things done, and if you were helping to create a more peaceful world at the same time? “A mindful leader makes the work environment a generative social field in which compassion, connection, and creativity thrive. The seven accessible practices in this book can teach you how to become just such a leader.” — from the foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, executive director of Mindsight Institute Today’s leaders are grappling with the pace and complexity of change, the challenge of supporting healthy collaboration and alignment among teams, and the resulting stress and burnout. The practice of mindful leadership may be one of the most important competencies in business today if leaders are to move beyond fear, anxiety, nagging self-doubt, and the feeling of constant overwhelm. Marc Lesser has taught his proven seven-step method to leaders at Google, Genentech, SAP, Facebook, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies for over twenty years and has distilled a lifetime of mindfulness and business experience into these chapters. This incredibly practical yet accessible book draws on Marc’s experience as a CEO of three companies, as cofounder of the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google, and as a longtime Zen practitioner. The principles in this book can be applied to leadership at any level, providing readers with the tools they need to shift awareness, enhance communication, build trust, eliminate fear and self-doubt, and minimize unnecessary workplace drama. Embracing any one of the seven practices alone can be life-changing. When used together, they support a path of well-being, productivity, and positive influence. Practicing mindful leadership will allow you to achieve results — with more energy, clarity, meaning, and connection. Your intentions and actions will be more aligned. You will accomplish more with less wasted effort. After reading this book, you’ll understand why some of the world’s most successful companies routinely incorporate the Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, integrating mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and business savvy to create great corporate cultures, and even a better world.
The Business of Aspiration is about how consumers' shifting status symbols affect business and brand strategy. These changing status symbols, like taste, aesthetic innovation, curation or environmentalism create the modern aspirational economy. In the traditional economy, consumers signaled their status through collecting commodities, Instagram followers, airline miles, and busy back-to-back schedules. By contrast, in the aspirational economy, consumers increasingly convey status through collecting knowledge, taste, micro-communities, and influence. This new capital changes the way businesses and entire markets operate, and yet the modern aspirational economy is still an under-explored area in business and culture. The Business of Aspiration changes that. In this book, marketers will find examples, analyses and tools on how brands can successfully grow in the modern aspirational economy. The Business of Aspiration answers questions like, "what is good for my brand long-term?", "how is this business decision going to impact our culture?" or "what are the main objectives of our growth?" Marketers will learn to shift their brand narrative and competitive strategy, to create and distribute new brand symbols, and to ensure that their brand’s products and services create both monetary and social value.
Every few thousand years, our human culture experiences a massive evolutionary transformation. In the next few years, our consciousness will change very rapidly and move us beyond anything we can presently imagine. This change of consciousness is happening naturally to each of us now, and it will affect every aspect of how we think, how we live, and how we love. We are a culture in search of its spirit, and this change of consciousness is evolutionarily next for humankind on this planet. When the awareness opens, one may search many avenues and attractions for truth and enlightenment and find the search lacking in result. The next step may be the path of Self-discovery. But the direction on this path will not be given to us by a great teacher who comes down from the mountaintop with answers cast in stone, but rather by lots of little great teachers who could be called pathfinders. And to move into this new consciousness, we will transform the mind and the way it works with new mental skills and mental technology. Our success is inevitable. The ease or difficulty with which we achieve this success is still in formation. We will survive the transition physically. The question is whether we will survive psychologically. Psychological survival in this transition depends on only one thing: Developing the ability and inner discipline to completely, instantaneously, unquestioningly and continuously adapt to change.
Live Life from the Inside Out Despite living in a hyperconnected world, individuals are more disconnected from each other and themselves than ever before. In her engaging new book, Life, Incorporated: A Practical Guide to Wholehearted Living, Halley Bock will inspire you to slow down, wake up, and pay mindful attention to all facets of life in order to generate self-worth and to live whole, more gratifying lives. In conversational prose, Bock shares her own experiences and guides you toward purposeful living—what she terms living life from the inside out—with topics ranging from inner life, wellbeing, and a personal mission statement to core values, avocation and vocation, and relationships. Bock’s focus on connection to the self and others makes Life, Incorporated particularly intriguing. Life, Incorporated is a must-read for anyone interested in redefining and recapturing life and provides a revolutionary alternative to the age-old money = happiness mind-set. Bock expertly braids her personal path to fulfillment with compelling activities, thought-provoking quotations, and life-changing lessons that will captivate, along with a journal component to ensure that you can put this work into practice. Securing mindfulness and balance—from the inside out—is the only way to achieve fulfillment and real happiness. Bock shows you just how to make that happen.
Completely revised and updated, this broad yet comprehensive edition contains twenty-nine chapters on nursing issues and clinical practice. Topics cover practice and process, documentation, legal issues, health promotion, physical assessment, I.V. therapy, surgical care, and more. Disorders are organized by body system and feature an overview of anatomy and physiology, assessment, diagnostic tests, medication, treatment, and home care, with coverage of care for maternal-neonatal, pediatric, geriatric, emergency, and psychiatric patients. Added features include grabbing nursing procedure graphics, complementary therapies, clinical pathways, and cultural information. Over 1,000 illustrations, charts, and graphs enhance the text, with a new appendix relating Internet sites for nurses.
This volume explores the professional experiences of a vast array of educators through a series of research essays that focus on the interplay of gender, race, class, and sexualities as well as how these dynamics influence the educators’ teaching. The volume illuminates this interplay not only in traditional classroom settings, but also in non-traditional contexts such as prisons and juvenile detention facilities, family education, dual-language immersion programs, early childhood education, and higher education, including teacher training programs. The concluding chapter, written by the editors, provides general recommendations for recruiting and retaining a more diverse teacher workforce worldwide. From autoethnographies to pláticas, testimonios and in-depth interviews, this qualitatively rich volume offers powerful and timely insights about the experiences of teachers who are too often overlooked. Gilda L. Ochoa, Professor of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies This illuminating book centers educators’ intersectional subjectivities and lived experiences, bringing to life the radical possibilities of transformative education. It is a much needed resource for anyone invested in understanding and advancing education as a catalyst for equity and social justice. Lorena Garcia, Associate Professor of Sociology & Latin American and Latino Studies
