Musings on Living Authentically


Book Description

The best advice for authors, "Write what you know," is counsel Grace Anne Stevens embraces in her weekly blog, "My Transgender Life," for The Huffington Post. She is not only vulnerable sharing about herself but also touches on a wide range of topics that go beyond the transgender experience. She inspires everyone, in and out of the LGBT community, to follow their own truth and live their authentic lives. Musings on Living Authentically, shares the 2015 collection of her muse-inspired stories, inviting everyone to examine their own choices, to grow and become better human beings.




Scary Close


Book Description

When it comes to authenticity, is being fully yourself always worth the risk? From the author of Blue Like Jazz comes New York Times bestseller Scary Close, Donald Miller's journey of uncovering the keys to a healthy relationship and discovering that they're also at the heart of building a healthy family, a successful career, and a trusted community of friends. After decades of failed relationships and painful drama, Miller decided that he'd had enough. Trying to impress people wasn't helping him truly connect with anyone--and neither was pretending to be someone he wasn't. He'd built himself a life of public isolation, but he dreamed of having a life defined by meaningful relationships instead. At 40-years-old, he made a scary decision: he was going to be his true self no matter what it might cost. Scary Close tells the story of Miller's difficult choice to impress fewer people and connect with even more. It's about the importance of knocking down old walls to finally experience the freedom that comes when we stop playing a part and start being fully ourselves. In Scary Close, Miller shares everything he's learned firsthand about how to: Deconstruct the old habits that no longer serve us Overcome the desire to please the people around us Always tell the truth, even when it's hard Find satisfaction in a daily portion of real love Risk being fully known in order to deeply love and be loved Apply these lessons to your everyday life If you're ready to drop the act and find true, life-changing intimacy, it's time to get Scary Close.




Journey in the Present


Book Description

The life of the average American can be summed up in one word: busy. Busy with work, busy with kids' activities, busy packing too many things into the day. While running ourselves ragged seems to be the norm, it's important to stop and ask ourselves: does it have to be this way? Every event in our day is the result of a decision we've made. So, instead of staying 45 minutes late at work to finish up an important email, how about deciding to go home and ask your child about his or her day? It can be as simple as deciding to put your phone away during a conversation with someone. Journey in the Present explores various ways to awaken a greater sense of self awareness and live more authentically. With each chapter containing inspiring anecdotes and powerful questions to trigger self-reflection, your journey toward mindfulness starts today. All net proceeds from Journey in the Present go to brain tumor & epilepsy research.




The Ethics of Authenticity


Book Description

Everywhere we hear talk of decline, of a world that was better once, maybe fifty years ago, maybe centuries ago, but certainly before modernity drew us along its dubious path. While some lament the slide of Western culture into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Charles Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernity's challenges. "The great merit of Taylor's brief, non-technical, powerful book...is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social... Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people... The core of Taylor's argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that 'respect for difference' requires you to respect every human being, and every human culture--no matter how vicious or stupid." --Richard Rorty, London Review of Books




The Authenticity Principle


Book Description

In a society that pushes conformity, how can you be courageously authentic despite fear of judgment? Award-winning leadership and diversity expert Ritu Bhasin gives you the tools to make this happen. This is more than a call to "be yourself"-it's a rally to disrupt the status quo, bring your differences to the light, and help others do the same.




Search For The Real Self


Book Description

From the authoritative expert in personality disorders, Search for the Real Self is a thorough dissection of how one’s real self is developed, how it relates to the outer world, and how personality disorders are understood and treated in our modern society. Personality disorders—borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid—have become the classic psychological disorders of our age. Outwardly successful, charming and powerful, personality-disordered individuals have long confounded their colleagues, family, lovers and employees—as well as mental health professionals. The author helps the reader understand them. After describing how the healthy real self develops and functions, he explains what can go wrong. Drawing on case histories, he shows how the false self behaves in relationships and on the job, and then delineates appropriate treatments, offering real hope for cure.




Awaken Your Authentic Self


Book Description

What if I told you that complete acceptance of our identity is fundamental to our way of life, since every interaction emerges from our authentic self? The number one problem nowadays is the fact we have lost contact with our true identity. We subscribe to ideologies and beliefs regarding who we should be because we want to be accepted. This comes at a cost to our self-worth, since we give up an aspect of ourselves and lose our authenticity. Are you tired of not having your personal needs met? Do you want to live a better life but don't know how? My book will help you reconnect you with the core of your essential self. It is a move away from whom you should be, which is adopted by popular culture. My book invites you to reconnect with the deepest part of your being, which knows who you are and how you should live. * You have more power than you realise. * More genius than you can imagine. * More wisdom and knowledge than you can ever access. * When you let go of the false belief that you are lacking or inadequate, in that moment, you arouse your potential. This is not a patronising statement to seduce you into a false belief. You have unlimited power, and accessing that power is the basis of my book 'Awaken Your Authentic Self.' My name is Tony Fahkry. I am a three-time author, expert speaker and life coach for over 15 years. I believe everyone has great potential within them. It is a matter of awakening it to reach your most efficient level. By focusing on what is meaningful to you, my book will bring value to your life by helping you think clearly and make decisions in alignment with who you are. My book will help you discover your genius, talents and gifts and awakening your highest potential. If you are ready to break free from your limited beliefs, thoughts, and ideas of the world, I invite you to purchase your copy of 'Awaken Your Authentic Self' today, so you can experience the results I speak of. Unless you challenge the status quo, you will remain one of the masses. One has only to look to mainstream culture to see the effects the media and marketing hype have on our society. Don't become of the masses. You have so much potential within you waiting to come alive. Believe that you are worthy and capable of great things and it will become your reality. Awaken Your Authentic Self is endorsed by the international acclaimed spiritual author and silver prize winner of the Nautilus award, Dennis Merritt Jones, who wrote the foreword.




Being You: How to Live Authentically


Book Description

Being You is about reaching your highest potential through authentic living. It helps you to exercise your own choices and feel and act with confidence and effectiveness in every situationto be free of fear and doubt, to have a life filled with meaning, success, and well-being. This is the freedom to live according to your unique needs, personality, purpose, and values; to be accepted unconditionally for who and what you are; to feel all lifes pain as well as its joys; to live from the hearttrusting your inner nature and your experience of the worldand to accept responsibility for all your actions. The philosophy of Adaptive Freedom, outlined in the book, shows that the ability to adapt and grow is the essence of personal freedom, which is the core of authenticity. You need to be adaptive to be free, and both make it easier to become truly authentic. The power to change and realize the life of your highest imaginings lies in the Freedom Codea set of seven practice pillarsoffering a liberation path to self-fulfillment, a code to unlock the greatness that lies within. The seven pillars create new ways to guide you through knowledge to self-awareness and purposeful action. They offer a systematic and holistic framework to help you lead a meaningful, successful, happy, and authentic life.




AuthenticTM


Book Description

A stimulating, smart book on what it means to live in a brand culture Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. AuthenticTM maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of green branding and “shopping for change.” In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading AuthenticTM to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.