Self-Improvement Audiobooks

“Offers a hopeful beacon and a steady path for anyone struggling to find their footing in a world of impossible standards.” —Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drive and The Power of Regret In the tradition of Brené Brown’s bestseller The Gifts of Imperfection, this illuminating book by an acclaimed professor at the London School of Economics explores how the pursuit of perfection can become a dangerous obsession that leads to burnout and depression—keeping us from achieving our goals. Today, burnout and depression are at record levels, driven by a combination of intense workplace competition, oppressively ubiquitous social media encouraging comparisons with others, the quest for elite credentials, and helicopter parenting. Society continually broadcasts the need to want more, and to be perfect. Gathering a wide range of contemporary evidence, Curran offers “a clear-eyed look at how perfectionism and its capitalistic ‘obsession with boundless growth’ has contributed to mass discontent and insecurity” (Publishers Weekly). He shows what we can do as individuals to resist the modern-day pressure to be perfect, and in so doing, win for ourselves a more purposeful and contented life. Filled with “many useful lessons and valuable insights…This book offers an alternative path to a fulfilling, productive life” (Kirkus Reviews) and the relief of letting go to focus on what matters most.

Develop the life-changing ability to excel in spontaneous communication situations—from public speaking to interviewing to networking—with these essential strategies from a Stanford lecturer, coach, and host of the popular Think Fast, Talk Smart The Podcast. “A roadmap to mastering the art of thinking quickly and speaking confidently, this is the perfect book for…anyone else who talks.” —Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better and Supercommunicators Many of us dread having to convey our ideas to others, often feeling ill-equipped, anxious, and awkward. Public speaking experts help by focusing on planned communication experiences such as slide presentations, pitches, or formal talks. Yet, most of our professional and personal communication occurs in spontaneous situations that creep up on us and all too often leave us flustered and stumbling for words. How can we rise to the occasion and shine when we’re put on the spot? In Think Faster, Talk Smarter, Stanford lecturer, podcast host, and communication expert Matt Abrahams provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously. Abrahams provides science-based strategies for managing anxiety, responding to the mood of the room, and making content concise, relevant, compelling, and memorable. Drawing on stories from his clients and students, he offers best practices for navigating Q&A sessions, shining in job interviews, providing effective feedback, making small talk, fixing faux pas, persuading others, and handling other impromptu speaking tasks. Whether it’s a prospective client asking you an unexpected question during a meeting or all eyes turning to you at a dinner party, you’ll know how to navigate the situation like a pro and bring out your very best. Think Faster, Talk Smarter is an accessible guide to communication that will help you master new techniques in no time.

Dating in a modern world can be, shall we say, challenging. Between deciphering mixed messages about what is — or isn’t — a red flag, or finding potential romantic prospects that turn out to be all-around disappointing, it’s easy to get dating and relationship fatigue. Throw in the relentless cultural pressure to find the right person before it’s “too late,” and it becomes a high-stakes nightmare. No wonder so many of us feel like we’re messing it up and can’t seem to trust our own instincts. Bestselling author and comedian Lane Moore, whose hugely popular Tinder Live with Lane Moore shows have earned widespread acclaim, is no stranger to what she calls the “endless cycle of mistakes” that we find ourselves making in the quest for love. In You’re Not the Only One F*cking Up: Breaking the Endless Cycle of Dating Mistakes, Moore explores the trials and tribulations of real people who have been through the struggle of navigating the dating pool yet still surfaced to the top. Drawing from a diverse range of perspectives and experiences, their firsthand stories paint a comprehensive picture of the pitfalls that come with modern dating. She also shares moments from her own personal battles with this cycle, while reassuring the reader how each of these mistakes made over… and over… ultimately can lead us back to trusting what works for our own selves. Moore breaks down everything from missed warning signs to mistaking “potential” for love, while using her signature empathy and humor to offer actionable insight on how to grow through the all-too-frequent errors we tend to (unintentionally) make. Going beyond dating advice, You’re Not the Only One F*cking Up is a testament to the universality of the human inclination to screw up, and a call to prioritize the love and trust we have in ourselves despite living in a societal culture that aims to tell us there’s only one right way to establish romantic relationships. Whether you’re currently seeking — or in — a relationship, if you’re an expert on the digital dating landscape, or even if you’ve been out of the dating scene for years, there’s plenty to relate to — and learn from — in this Everand Original audiobook and ebook from Lane Moore.

In Permission to Be Gentle: 7 Self-Love Affirmations for the Highly Sensitive, an audio course from Everand Coach, author, teacher, and coach Maryse Cardin outlines the value of affirmations in loving yourself and regulating emotions, sharing seven powerful self-love affirmations that will benefit the highly sensitive or anyone looking for a boost in frequency and energy. In the course, Cardin shares the seven key affirmations and breaks down how you can use them to soothe yourself and create more joy in your daily life. She also shares exercises to help you dig deep and understand the affirmations on a deep, cellular level. Whether you’re a highly sensitive person or just want to enhance your sense of self-love and emotion regulation, Cardin’s course is a great introduction to the power of affirmations

"Abdaal's enthusiastic narration resonates, inspiring listeners to become amateur productivity scientists. Informative, motivational, and entertaining, this audiobook delivers an enlightening perspective on productivity."—AudioFile This program is read by the author. The secret to productivity isn’t discipline. It’s joy. We think that productivity is all about hard work. That the road to success is lined with endless frustration and toil. But what if there’s another way? Dr Ali Abdaal – the world's most-followed productivity expert – has uncovered an easier and happier path to success. Drawing on decades of psychological research, he has found that the secret to productivity and success isn't grind – it's feeling good. If you can make your work feel good, then productivity takes care of itself. In this revolutionary audiobook, Ali reveals how the science of feel-good productivity can transform your life. He introduces the three hidden "energizers" that underpin enjoyable productivity, the three "blockers" we must overcome to beat procrastination, and the three "sustainers" that prevent burnout and help us achieve lasting fulfillment. He recounts the inspiring stories of founders, Olympians, and Nobel-winning scientists who embody the principles of Feel-Good Productivity. And he introduces the simple, actionable changes that you can use to achieve more and live better, starting today. Armed with Ali’s insights, you won’t just accomplish more. You’ll feel happier and more fulfilled along the way. A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.

Silence the Voice of Self Doubt “Banish Your Inner Critic provides knowledge, insight, tools and practice for getting unstuck and expressing full creative potential." ―Rebecca Stockley, Co-Founder of BATS Improv in San Francisco CA Are you ready to boost your personal productivity—minus the fear and loathing? Are you ready to Banish Your Inner Critic and unleash the creative ideas and personal productivity within you? Help is on the way! Blocked creative ideas. Everybody has one, an inner critic that tells you that others have more talent, you’re just faking it, and that you’ll never have those great creative ideas that seem just out of reach. This inner critic is a subconscious deterrent that stands between the seeds of great creative ideas and the fruits of achievement. It afflicts us with a mental block as deadlines approach, makes us so afraid of being judged that we hold ourselves back and don’t share our expertise, forces us to question our ability to learn ideas and technologies quickly; and makes us doubt, discount, and kill our ideas before they see the light of day. Find a world of creative ideas. Denise Jacobs is a speaker, author and creativity evangelist who speaks at web conferences and consults with tech companies worldwide. As the Founder and Chief Creativity Evangelist of "The Creative Dose", she teaches techniques to make the creative process more fluid, how to make work environments more conducive to personal productivity, and practices for sparking innovation. Now, in Banish Your Inner Critic, Denise Jacobs shows you how to defeat barriers that are holding you back and achieve success through a positive mental attitude. Banish Your Inner Critic and: Identify and quiet the voice of self-doubt Master three powerful practices to transform how you relate to yourself and your creativity Generate more creative ideas than ever before If you’re a fan of books such as The Artist’s Way or The War of Art, you should read Banish Your Inner Critic.

Introducing Roxane Gay & Everand Originals, a new series from Everand and the beloved bestselling author of Hunger, Bad Feminist, and Opinions. For the series launch, renowned cookbook author Julia Turshen writes with moving honesty about her years of disordered eating and exercising and how she freed herself from the poisonous cultural conversations about weight, discipline, and how women should look. For most of her life, Julia Turshen has been at war with her body. Raised in a family obsessed with counting calories, she measured self-worth by the numbers on her bathroom scale. As the New York Times bestselling author of beloved cookbooks, including Small Victories and Simply Julia, she loved food and celebrated its social and cultural value, yet like so many women, she was convinced her own value would increase if only she lost ten, twenty, or however many pounds she arbitrarily believed kept her from the best version of herself. She worked out obsessively, using exercise as one more way to maintain control over her body and unruly appetites. Julia’s attitude began to shift during the pandemic when she took a break from writing and book promotion to work on a small local farm in upstate New York. Months spent outdoors, harvesting vegetables and carrying heavy bushels of produce, transformed her body, making it bigger yet stronger. To her surprise, Turshen reveled in her new physique; she reveled in the emotional freedom physical labor gave her to eat without harsh restrictions or self-recrimination. Finally, she was breaking free of the tyranny of unrealistic body image and disordered eating. But when the farm job ended, Julia felt herself slipping back into destructive thought patterns. Determined not to resume her relentless internal battles, she looked for activities that might replicate the joy and strength building farm work gave her. And that is how she discovered powerlifting. Through powerlifting — the precise and careful art of hoisting increasingly heavy weights — Turshen learned to listen to her body and what it needed, be it rest, water, another plate on the barbell, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And she found a community of people, women especially, who embraced the unadultered joy of being physically strong. “I lift for my younger self and wear my singlet now to make up for all the times I wore a T-shirt over a swimsuit,” she writes, “I lift to show people what it looks like to opt out of trying to erase oneself. I lift to show that to myself.” Both a critique of society’s obsession with weight and a beguiling memoir of self-acceptance, Built for This is a timely reminder that all bodies are powerful and deserve celebration.  

A USA TODAY Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this writer’s guide features encouraging essays on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado. In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it. 1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round. Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration. Featuring Roxane Gay, Bryan Washington, Susan Orlean, Maris Kreizman, Sara Novic, Rumaan Alam, Lauren Oyler, Emma Straub, Christopher Gonzales, Benjamin Percy, Mira Jacob, Laura van den Berg, Carmen Maria Machado, Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Carroll, Ada Limon, R.O. Kwon, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Elissa Washuta, Alexander Chee, Maggie Shipstead, Deesha Philyaw, Jasmine Guillory, Kristen Arnett, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Min Jin Lee, Lauren Groff, Andrew Sean Greer, Camille Dungy, Megan Giddings, Isaac Fitsgerald, Hannah Tinti, Michael H. Weber, Celeste Ng, Elizabeth McCracken, Will Leitch, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Morgan Parker, Kiese Laymon, Melissa Febos, Alissa Nutting, Liz Moore, Laila Lalami, Megan Mayhew Berman, Rebecca Makkai, Meg Wolitzer, Mychal Denzel Smith, Josh Gondelman, and Dantiel W. Moniz.

An NPR ""Best Books of 2023"" Pick A leading financial expert breaks down the personal, cultural, and societal forces that have led us to falsely believe we can never have, do, or be enough, and shows us a fresh new path toward “MoneyZen”—her joy-based approach to living a life rich in financial health and emotional wealth. For anyone who has ever felt that they can never measure up, MoneyZen is your cure. No matter your age, income, or profession, it’s all too easy to fall prey to the false belief that the amount of money you earn, or accomplishments you achieve, or praise you receive is just Never Enough. In MoneyZen, financial industry veteran Manisha Thakor candidly shares how she overcame toxic behaviors around work, money, and prestige that had threatened her relationships, her health, and her career, told alongside the inspiring stories of individuals from all walks of life who reveal their own struggles with “Never Enough.” Through Thakor’s interviews with a wide range of interdisciplinary experts, you’ll learn how personal traumas, cultural influences, societal pressures, and even our own biology have conspired to make us believe that “more” is the answer to all our problems. And you’ll discover a unique way to reclaim your life using a formula that’s ultimately rooted in less: Financial Health + Emotional Wealth = MoneyZen. The result is a powerful, research-based framework for getting off the hamster wheel of 24/7 striving so you can start to live a life fueled by authentic joy, connection, and meaning.

In Protecting Your Time, an audio course from Scribd Coach, Lauren Shippy guides you on gaining mastery over your schedule, cultivating effective habits, and setting yourself on the right path toward your goals. In this comprehensive course, Shippy helps you unleash your potential by eliminating the roadblocks and distractions that hinder your progress and explores how to establish crucial routines to fuel your personal and professional growth while sustaining positive habits in the long run. The course is complete with interactive exercises to help you put what you’ve learned into practice right away. With Shippy’s approach, making lasting changes in your daily life becomes effortless. Anyone looking to unlock unparalleled productivity will find valuable insights in Shippy’s course.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER Create a lasting and loving attachment with the help of the expert couple’s therapist behind the popular Instagram account @TheSecureRelationship. What does a healthy relationship look like? A good question, in theory, but expert couple’s therapist Julie Menanno wants you to consider: what does a securely attached relationship feel like? The answer to this question is the ultimate goal in Secure Love, a groundbreaking guide to understanding secure attachment in adult relationships. While attachment theory has grown in popularity to explain the relationship between children and their caregivers, it’s also the closest science has come to making sense of our adult romantic connections. Julie Menanno is the couple’s therapist behind the popular Instagram account @TheSecureRelationship, whose valuable relationship advice from her expertise gained her over a million fans. In Secure Love, Menanno tackles: - Why you and your partner have the same fight over and over (hint: it’s called a negative cycle, and underlying every fight, argument, silent treatment, or passive-aggressive comment is an unmet attachment need). - The four attachment types, with exercises designed to help you understand you and your partner’s attachment style. - How to improve communication, including staying connected during conflict by prioritizing vulnerability rather than protecting yourself. - “Instead of that, say this” suggested scripts of how to approach difficult situations in your relationship. - Why insecure attachment negatively impacts a couple’s sex life and how to restore that sexual connection. Secure Love is a crash course in understanding how you show up in a relationship and how to get out of negative cycles. Menanno teaches you how to establish a secure attachment with your partner to create the bond you’ve been longing for.

Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2023 A revolutionary guide that will transform your relationship with failure, from the pioneering researcher of psychological safety and award-winning Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well. After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—Amy showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm. With vivid, real-life stories from business, pop culture, history, and more, Edmondson gives us specifically tailored practices, skills, and mindsets to help us replace shame and blame with curiosity, vulnerability, and personal growth. You’ll never look at failure the same way again.

Read by the author.   NEW YORK TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER To Jeezy’s legion of fans, his name is synonymous with hustle, grit, and the integrity to go out there and achieve your dreams. In his first book, Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe, Jeezy shares never heard stories of what it took for him to beat the odds and get out of the streets, his mindset he carefully honed to get an edge, and the lessons that changed his life and business. Born into poverty and raised in a small town in the middle of South Georgia’s so-called “Black belt,” Jeezy realized at an early age that nothing was going to come easy, there were no handouts headed his way, and if he ever wanted anything in life, he was going to have to get out there and get it on his own. So that’s what he did.  Now, for the first time, Jeezy retraces his steps, going back to day one to share how he turned nothing into something, stayed solid, survived the trap, and triumphed over adversity to become the successful artist, father, husband, entrepreneur, and philanthropist that he is today.  Adversity for Sale isn’t a street memoir. Like his music, these pages are filled with lessons from his deeply personal story to motivate you to go out and get after your dream.

The New York Times bestselling author of Unfu*k Yourself helps cut through our anxieties about being a “good parent” so we can take charge of our lives and show our kids how to take charge of their own. Gary John Bishop has helped millions of people break free of self-sabotaging behaviors. Yet we all seem to feel like we’re failing at this thing called parenting. Common wisdom isn’t working—our kids are struggling. Gary argues we don’t need more tips, tricks, and techniques, we need an overhaul of who we are. We’re never going to measure up to the “perfect parent” model we’ve built up in our heads—a Frankenstein version of mom and dad cobbled together from our childhoods, our parents, cultural ideals, social media, and everything in between. We want to be good parents, but our pasts hold us back. If you’re thinking: “I can’t be a good parent because I had a shitty childhood, bad parents, or a traumatic experience”—stop! Let go of what came before and start taking action in the present to be the person that nurtures their child from a place of love, forgiveness, and integrity. By doing so, you are modeling and equipping your kids to confidently face the world and thrive. Whether you are a parent, want to be a parent, or simply have parents, this book will cut to the heart of who you are and how you show up in the world—to fully take charge of the direction of your life and show your kids how to follow theirs.

This program is read by the author. Alex Toussaint, the rising Peloton star who counts everyone from Roger Federer and the Golden State Warriors to the Today Show’s Carson Daly as fans, hops off the bike and gives readers the inspiration and motivation they need to activate their greatness in every aspect of their lives. Alex Toussaint is known for his grueling workouts where he promises “to kick your ass” – yet thousands keep coming back for more. Why? Because he might be the most motivational teacher out there right now. His mantra is “Feel Good, Look Good, Do Better.” He expects more from you, and from himself. Yet so much of what he talks about is NOT about the bike. Alex’s enthusiasm for life is infectious –“You woke up today!” “Breathe in confidence, exhale doubt.” Because Alex knows what it is like to be overlooked and undervalued, to be the underdog. He knows what it’s like to not expect the best from yourself. The child of Haitian immigrants who sacrificed so much to give him an education, he knows what it is like to be one of the few Black kids growing up in East Hampton. After a turbulent adolescence that saw him being sent to military school, Toussaint dropped out of college and was mopping floors at a gym. A few years later, he's one of the most iconic cycling instructors on Peloton, helping thousands of users along their fitness journeys through his inspirational workouts. Finally, Alex gets off the bike to help readers activate their own greatness in every aspect of their lives. Part self-help, part memoir, Activate Your Greatness details Toussaint’s mental and physical practices, on and off the bike, that have influenced his daily habits, fueled his motivation, and that have ultimately contributed to his astronomical success and shows readers how they can do the same. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

Your Go-to Guide for Finding Happiness Life got you down? Discover the cure to gloomy days in this book—packed with wisdom and inspiration guaranteed to bring your smile back. The obstacles to your happiness. There are a lot of things in life that we worry and stress about. Our jobs, relationships, and possessions are important to us, and because of that, we look to them for happiness. But when they ultimately disappoint us, they act as obstacles to attaining that very happiness we thought they would bring. In this motivational book, author Hugh Prather urges readers to let go of attitudes that hold us back from experiencing happiness. How to live a happy life. When we recognize and address the obstacles in our lives, we open the door for happiness to come in. But it doesn’t happen without putting in the work. During his years of counseling, Prather learned and developed an actual program for being happy. Through following this program, and examining our own lives, we can learn how to actively work towards achieving the happiness we all long for. In How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy learn: How to find your happy life with the help of concrete exercises About the obstacles that may be standing in your way The benefits of an inspirational guide that you can return to again and again If you enjoyed books like Resisting Happiness, How to Be Happy (Or at Least Less Sad), A Year of Positive Thinking, or Get Out of Your Own Way, then your next read should be How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy by Hugh Prather.

Let It Go and Find Happiness “Letting go—particularly of fear—has been my desire and goal for years. With the help of this book, I am finally beginning to do it!” —M. J. Ryan, author of Attitudes of Gratitude 2021 International Book Awards finalist in Spirituality: Inspiration Life does not have to be as complicated as we often make it. Little Book of Letting Go shows us how to let go of the blocks that interfere with experiencing our natural state of wholeness, joy, and peace. Let it go and shed what weighs you down. From long-harbored guilt to deep-rooted prejudices, many of us bear the weight of harmful tendencies in our daily lives. Whether we realize it or not, these things are actively holding us back from the happiness we long to attain. In this inspirational book, minister and counselor Hugh Prather provides a guide for mental cleansing. It is only in ridding our minds of the fear and judgments we cling to that we open the door for happiness. Embrace opportunities as they come. The more we hold on to, the less room we have to take on more. If our minds are clouded by negativity, then we aren’t facing each day with the openness that it deserves. By facing each moment with enthusiasm, we pave the path for positive thinking and make the most out of every opportunity that comes our way. Practical exercises and lasting tools. Changing how we think takes practice. This is why Prather doesn’t just tell us that it’s important to let go—he shares with us simple steps for how to go about letting go of things that hold us back. Through learning from Prather’s shared experiences and adopting the practices he offers, we can find happiness, peace, and a chance at spiritual renewal. Inside discover: A simple 3-step process for letting go A 30-day plan for spiritual renewal Personal stories from Prather Readers of Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, It’s All Under Control, The Art of Happiness, or Love is Letting Go of Fear, will love Little Book of Letting Go.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A profound and gripping memoir by Nicole Walters, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who became a self-made multi-millionaire by showing others how to recognize their own strengths—and her own harrowing journey to the discovery that she was worthy all along of the life of her dreams. Nothing Is Missing is a riveting, unputdownable story of what it takes to show up for yourself—and the joy that can come once you do. Raised in a home where food was unstable and anger was the norm, Nicole learned early that she needed to take charge of her own safety and security. So she did: She got into an elite private school by talking to a stranger in her dad’s cab, she strategized her way onto Wheel of Fortune to pay for college, she adopted three girls after meeting their mother panhandling, she quit her job to launch her own business, and she struggled. Hustling endlessly to try to achieve society’s definition of success left her exhausted, compromising her own sense of worth in order to accommodate others. Nicole worked herself straight into a health crisis that threatened her life and the family she had worked so hard to build. It was not until she was forced into a major reckoning in both her business and her marriage that Nicole realized that she was already enough, that she had and was everything that she needed. In Nothing Is Missing, Nicole contemplates how she was able to create the life she wanted using the strength she had within herself all along.

The second installment in the series from Everand and Roxane Gay, the beloved bestselling author of Hunger, Bad Feminist, and Opinions. Memoirist, essayist, and novelist Randa Jarrar offers an honest and wholly original user’s manual on how to raise a happy and well-adjusted child with little help and even fewer resources, but a fierce willingness to live out loud. She was a young college student, barely eighteen. As the daughter of overbearing immigrant parents, she reveled in the freedom of being away from home, having fun, spreading her wings. But then she got pregnant. Life as a single mother is a challenge, even in the best of circumstances. If you’re like Randa Jarrar — young, marginalized, yet fiercely determined to get an education and forge a career — it’s seemingly impossible. Yet she did it, and she shares her story in this honest, deeply moving, and profanely funny how-to that parents of any age will find useful not just for raising a happy child but for keeping oneself sane, healthy, and fulfilled. Randa, the author of the acclaimed books A Map of Home; Him, Me and Muhammad Ali; and the memoir Love Is an Ex-Country, came to parenthood with no expectations. As little more than a child herself, with a family who offered criticism but not much else, she more or less made it up as she went. “Raising a child alone and working and going to school is doable,” she writes, “but you will need to do one at a time at first. See: a juggler’s instruction manual.” Jarrar’s own juggling act yielded hard-won lessons you won’t find in other parenting guides. Without a partner or much disposable income, she relied on her wits and common sense to make the best life for herself and her son. As he grew up, so did she, working her way through graduate school, finding community among single moms like herself, and refusing to crumble beneath the societal presumption that, as a brown-skinned woman of limited means, she was doing it all wrong. By holding on to her confidence against all odds, she raised a young man any parent would be proud of while establishing herself as a respected author and professor. But it was far from easy, and Jarrar’s missteps and misadventures offer readers both moments of great wisdom and hilarity. Her moving story, a series of thirty-three short chapters with instructive titles such as “How to Advocate for Your Child” and “How to Explain Easter to Your Muslim Child Who Doesn’t Realize He Is Muslim,” reflects the challenges that come with raising a child on your own. Parenthood, especially single parenthood, is a serious, ridiculous business, and Jarrar shows us there is no one way of doing it right.

Instant New York Times Bestseller Unlock your potential by cultivating self-awareness and curating a fulfilling life full of self-improvement, emotional intelligence, and a growth mindset. Leadership expert and entrepreneur Dr. Josh Axe teaches 12 revolutionary mindshift transformations to beat the grind and reach the life you've always wanted. Redefine success and replace the limiting beliefs of yourself with the healthy mental toughness to think this, not that. Perhaps you're busy but still feel empty. Maybe things haven't turned out how you'd hoped, and life seems stale and unfulfilling. What if you could wake up every morning excited about your purpose, knowing you're fulfilling your greatest potential? A more meaningful life is within your reach, and it starts in one place: your mind. Living with a mindset of false narratives will keep you stuck, locked in a prison of unpursued dreams and goals. But cultivating a new mindset based on what is actually true will set you free—free to start exploring and growing beyond the limits you thought you had. In Think This, Not That, Dr. Josh Axe unpacks the top twelve mental barriers holding people back from realizing their potential and becoming the greatest version of themselves, and contrasts each one with a new empowering mindset, such as: Don't simply drift; clarify your purpose. Don't define success based on what you accomplish; base it on who you become. Don't be the victim; be the hero. Don't be a slave to your vices; overpower them by building virtues. Don't live by popular opinion; follow enduring principles of wisdom. Don't allow unintentionality; visualize a strategy.   Whether you want to improve your physical or financial health, raise the quality of your relationships, or take your career to new heights, these mindshifts will help transform your life. It's time to break through your limiting beliefs and find out who you can become, to build a meaningful life through new thoughts and actions, and to make the switch from what's stalled you toward a life of ultimate significance. Graphics and QR codes can be found in the audiobook companion PDF download. 

In Navigating Uncertainty, an audio course from Scribd Coach, Tanya Dalton equips you with the tools to confidently handle life’s unpredictable twists and turns by planning with a vision in mind and accounting for the flexibility and grace needed to recover from setbacks. Offering evidence-based advice and exercises designed to cultivate experience, Navigating Uncertainty will teach you to embrace challenges for opportunities for growth, and how to understand the importance of letting go of things that are beyond your control. By the end, you should feel comfortable releasing your need for control and developing a healthy relationship with uncertainty. Perfect for anyone who wants to learn how to effectively handle unknowns, this Scribd Coach audio course will empower you to throw whatever life throws your way with confidence and grace.

In Mastering Productivity: Everything You Need to Know About Habit Formation, an audio course from Everand Coach, productivity YouTuber and habit expert Demetri Panici dives deep into the life-changing power of habit formation — the ability to develop and maintain positive new habits and effectively brain new ones. As comprehensive and rigorous as it is accessible, Panici’s course offers all you need to go forth into the world as a habit champ. Blending established research with personal anecdotes, Panici breaks down the rules for making behavior change stick, the value of purpose and identity in habit formation, the importance of starting small and tracking habits, ways you can tap into social pressure to maintain habits, and much, much more. There are also exercises included so you can begin actively thinking about and applying the principles outlined by Panici. Evidence-based and actionable, Panici’s Mastering Productivity is an excellent introduction to those just setting foot into the world of habit formation and a great resource for habit pros. Let’s jump into it.

Philosopher Myisha Cherry teaches us the right ways to deal with wrongdoing in our lives and the world Sages from Cicero to Oprah have told us that forgiveness requires us to let go of negative emotions and that it has a unique power to heal our wounds. In Failures of Forgiveness, Myisha Cherry argues that these beliefs couldn’t be more wrong—and that the ways we think about and use forgiveness, personally and as a society, can often do more harm than good. She presents a new and healthier understanding of forgiveness—one that will give us a better chance to recover from wrongdoing and move toward “radical repair.” Cherry began exploring forgiveness after some relatives of the victims of the mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, forgave what seemed unforgiveable. She was troubled that many observers appeared to be more inspired by these acts of forgiveness than they were motivated to confront the racial hatred that led to the killings. That is a big mistake, Cherry argues. Forgiveness isn’t magic. We can forgive and still be angry, there can be good reasons not to forgive, and forgiving a wrong without tackling its roots solves nothing. Examining how forgiveness can go wrong in families, between friends, at work, and in the media, politics, and beyond, Cherry addresses forgiveness and race, cancelling versus forgiving, self-forgiveness, and more. She takes the burden of forgiveness off those who have been wronged and offers guidance both tothose deciding whether and how to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. By showing us how to do forgiveness better, Failures of Forgiveness promises to transform how we deal with wrongdoing in our lives, opening a new path to true healing and reconciliation.

In Intentional Relationships, an audio course from Scribd Coach, renowned minimalism expert Stephanie Seferian invites you to apply the principles of minimalism to your interpersonal life, fostering deeper connections and enhanced personal growth. In the course, Seferian empowers you to embark on a relationship check-in, enabling you to discern which relationships truly serve both individuals involved (and which don’t). She also shares invaluable insights on gracefully ending friendships that no longer resonate with a heart-first approach, infusing intention and kindness into the process so you can have these challenging conversations with grace and empathy. Above all, Seferian’s course will help you uncover the secrets to cultivating “fewer but stronger” connections. Through her essential lessons and a series of exercises, Seferian equips you with practical techniques to enrich and nurture your existing relationships. Unleash the power of authentic connections, fostering more rewarding and fulfilling bonds in your life. The road to more intentional relationships begins here.

Power is not working—for women, for men, or for the world. We don’t need to remake women. We need to remake power. New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission to reclaim power for women. In the wake of sweeping changes in the way we work, the veteran journalists challenge pre­conceived notions of what power is and what it’s good for, along with the insidious, mostly hidden structures of the status quo that hold women back. What started as a straightforward examination of best practices has become a manifesto for a new form of power, a distinctly female version that is already emerging in workplaces, in politics, and on the home front. It’s a version that is more appealing to women (and most men as well). It offers women a blueprint for shaping their own professional futures, maximizing their impact for the benefit of others, and experiencing the real joy that comes from taking the reins and influencing outcomes. Writing from their own lived experiences, Kay and Shipman interviewed dozens of women of all ages, races, and backgrounds around the world, as well as cutting-edge academic researchers. Taken together, these per­spectives offer a clear-eyed and hopeful redesign of the workplace and our relationships at home, one that puts women in a remade and modernized seat of power. And now is exactly the right moment for women to step into their power. What’s at stake is much greater than the next job; it’s about the need for a new vision of what power can be, for a new code that focuses not simply on hierarchy, on having power over others, but also on purpose, on what power can achieve. Both a prescription for societal change and a pro-fessional guidebook for individual women, The Power Code shows you how to leverage the power you already have, find new sources of power in yourself and your community, and remodel your workplace and your home-life to produce less ego, more joy, and maximum impact.

Matters of the Heart: 8 Courses on Relationships is a collection of eight titles from the Scribd Coach library that offers a deep dive into the intricate tapestry of human connections. These expert-guided courses, complete with exercises, will empower you to gain the crucial insight needed to forge healthier, more meaningful relationships. With the titles in this anthology, you’ll be able to uncover techniques for managing anxious attachment; decode the psychology of relationships; learn how to identify and steer clear of toxic relationships; overcome the anguish of heartbreak and loss; cultivate bonds that enrich your life; and more. Tune in and embark on your path toward more fulfilling relationships!

“A thoughtful recipe for building social justice” (Kirkus Reviews) from acclaimed Harvard sociologist Michèle Lamont that makes the case for reexamining what we value—the quest for respect—in an age that has been defined by growing inequality and the obsolescence of the American dream. In this capstone work, Michèle Lamont unpacks the power of recognition—rendering others as visible and valued—by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults and cultural icons—from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay. Decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth, up and down the income ladder, just as the American dream has become out of reach for most people. By prioritizing material and professional success, we judge ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes of the upper-middle class in our values system feeds into the marginalization of workers, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minority groups. The solution, Lamont argues, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognize the diverse ways one can live a life. Building on Lamont’s lifetime of expertise and revelatory connections between broad-ranging issues, Seeing Others delivers realistic sources of hope: by reducing stigma, we put change within reach. Just as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone did for a previous generation, Seeing Others strikes at the heart of our modern struggles and illuminates an inclusive path forward with new ways for understanding our world.

In The Obstacle as Companion, an audiobook from Scribd Coach, Andrew Chapman explores the Buddhist concept of hindrances and how they can be transformed into powerful allies on the path to personal growth.  In the course, Chapman helps you understand the nature of obstacles, clarifies the distinction between judgment and discernment, and enables you to creatively engage with any obstacles you may encounter. Chapman also provides a deep dive into the Five Hindrances and how to navigate them as you work to develop a more mindful approach to life’s challenges. Chapman’s course is complete with brief written exercises to help you put what you’ve learned into practice right away. Whether you’re new to meditation and mindfulness or an experienced practitioner, The Obstacle as Companion is a must-listen for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the human experience, and the challenges we encounter in our day-to-day lives.

Atomic Habits meets The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in this life-changing guide to freeing yourself from the behaviors, values, and relationships that keep you from being happy. When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill, author Julio Vincent Gambuto realized a powerful truth: in the pre-pandemic world, Americans were exhausted, lonely, unhappy, wildly overworked and overbooked, drowning in sea of constantly being on the go and needing to buy more, more, more. But when that pressure disappeared, people rediscovered what was important to them. They quit jobs that made them unhappy and moved their families to suburbs. Simple things like outdoor walks replaced gym memberships; home cooking and backyard gardens replaced takeout; less commuting meant more time for family and creative projects; and for perhaps the first time in a long time, people were being honest. Honest about what they wanted, what they believed in. Honest about the problems they were facing within their families, friend groups, workplaces, towns, and society overall. That honesty, he noticed, had the potential to make the ground shift. It created a capacity for change. But he also knew that it likely wouldn’t last, because the most powerful forces running our world would not allow it to. They wanted control over our clicks, our conversations, our dollars, our work, our votes—our lives. The only way that we could beat those systems, would be to resist the calls to keep moving, and to “go back to normal.” In order to change, we had to unsubscribe. Now, in Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!, Gambuto gives us a radical blueprint for the ways we can take a deep breath, renew and commit to a life that we really want, individually and collectively, from unsubscribing to emails and automated subscriptions to reevaluating the presence of people and ideas and habits that no longer serve us or make us happy. Infused with the practical advice in James Clear’s Atomic Habits and the humor of Sarah Knight’s The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, this groundbreaking guide helps us focus on where we find joy in our lives and encourages us to toss out what doesn’t bring us joy in this modern world.

An NPR best book of the year * New York Times bestseller The Washington Post sportswriter and New York Times bestselling author of the “fascinating” (The Wall Street Journal) The Real All Americans presents a love letter to the extraordinary coaches and athletes she has covered over the years and the actionable principles of excellence they embody. Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent her entire adult life observing and writing about great coaches and athletes. With her engaging and expert prose, she has helped shape the way we view these talented sports icons. But somewhere along the line, she realized, they had begun to shape her. Now, she presents the astonishing inner qualities in these same people that pushed them to overcome pressure, elevate their performances, and discover champion identities. Based on years of observing, interviewing, and analyzing elite coaches and playmakers, such as Bill Belichick, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, and more, Jenkins reveals the seven principles behind success: -Conditioning -Practice -Discipline -Candor -Culture -Resilience -Intention Discover how you can apply these same principles to your life and become your own champion. Colorful, inspirational, and accessible, The Right Call is the one stop shop for anyone wanting to learn how to effectively elevate themselves to greatness.