Free Today! Don't Stay Stuck!: Eliminate Your Excuses and Gain the Confidence to Achieve Your Dreams by Lori Chavez-Wysocki

Have you ever felt "stuck" at your entry-level job or in a certain aspect or your professional career? Do you feel like you have set backs impeding you from achieving your goals? This inspiring self-improvement book will give you the courage to eliminate excuses and gain the confidence to achieve your dreams, and even increase your income. It is your very own personal trainer for getting you to your next level. It's filled with concrete steps, valuable lessons and ideas worth spreading. All the strategies I share in my book have proven successful results and I know that if you apply even just a few to your career and life, you too can achieve your most desired goals. As a business minded woman, my strategies help you leverage your skills and maximize your potential. Don't Stay Stuck addresses many life events that people usually consider as "roadblocks" but teaches us instead to view them as "detours" and how to convert them into opportunities. Don't Stay Stuck will give you the strategies to get "unstuck" and on your way to your next level.

About the Author

Lori Chavez-Wysocki believes "There is no such thing as a dead end job." She has gone from field worker, to kitchen prep, to top performing district manager. She has earned the coveted Circle of Excellence award for Jack in the Box, Restaurants six times. Lori is a popular mentor and sought after motivational speaker and real estate investor.

At age 2, Lori witnessed her father drown which later led her into foster care. Consequently, she was left with stress and confusion However she yearned for control and peace of mind. She was a teen mom and a high school dropout. Determined to make some changes, she earned her high school GED and Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration while a full-time mother of three.

Lori has learned various ways to attain success by self-education and enjoys teaching life principles, beliefs and habits that inspire people to find success an their entry-level jobs.

She also wishes to motivate readers to push through their struggles and accomplish their goals so that they too can achieve their next level of success.

Lori believes that "We were all born a winner." and knows that we achieve success by investing time and effort, because "What we put into life we get out of life."

Book Review: Living in the Flow: Practicing Vibrational Alignment

This book is an interesting one that is, in some ways, hard to categorize. It's part journal, part self-help book, part meditation guide. The author, Ruth Cherry, PhD, takes readers on her personal journey toward healing through her diary entries. Later, she discusses aligning with Life/Source and shares exercises to help one accomplish that. 

Cherry's diary mostly chronicles her health struggles and her desire to walk again. She also discusses people and events that have come along to teach her lessons, as well as her work with clients and a meditation group. 

While she seems to clearly have an audience in mind (people in mid-life), I think that there is a lot readers could take from this, no matter what stage they're in. She is frank in her struggles, and I found it fascinating and comforting to see her gradual improvement and backsliding in her journey toward walking normally and getting in the flow in all areas of life. Rarely have I seen people writing this type of material show such vulnerability and frankness. She doubts, she gets angry, she makes progress and then regresses. I think it will give hope to people who are on the path toward aligning with Source/Abundance/Whatever the goal. There will not always be smooth sailing, but this book shows that there can still be a good outcome. 

As for the sections on meditation, spirituality, and other topics, I found those interesting as well. I didn't try the meditations (for me, I feel I am in a place where I still prefer to have a voice guiding me through them), but I am sure I will be before long. The meditations are simple for the most part, and wouldn't require a lot of memorization. I'd recommend this one for people who are on their own journey toward connecting with Source.

Book Review : Five Steps to Enlightenment

Mark Aspa’s core teaching is that we are already the perfect Self, we have been this perfect Self from birth and will be until death and beyond. We simply have to realise it! As we follow the path of Self-enlightenment, a journey of unsurpassed joy unfolds. The awareness of the temporarily hidden, but ever-present inner dimension of peace and joy reveals itself to our heart. To aid this realisation, you will find many practical lessons to help you feel at peace and kindle your joy. You will be inspired to think and feel and act in new ways, as you discover the sweetness of the fountain of love within. You simply have to follow the directions and watch as a new world of understanding takes birth in you. The book portrays the five steps to attain the highest aim in life, which is to know who we really are. You will come to know the answers to these often neglected questions: What is my true self? What is the meaning of life? What is my life purpose? Why is this universe here? ‘I can guarantee that in time you will find the answers and know your peaceful Self, because I and many others have done so - and I know that you are Divine. With inspiring teaching, advice how to pray and meditate, positive thinking and visualisation exercises, scientific research and humourous anecdotes, make Five Steps to Enlightenment your guide to a happier, more peaceful and confident you!

My Thoughts

I enjoyed this book. Simple to follow this book is really just about getting back to Self. Being positive is something that we forget about today. We are so busy and allow so much to separate us from our true purpose. This book really teaches you how to love yourself and to remember that positivity goes a long way!

There are grey areas in the book that point out exercises and the like. You really have to make time for yourself, and time for these things. Praying, mediating, etc. I'm excited to read this book again, and really engage this time and be active to remembering my true purpose.

All in all this book is one to recommend to someone really wondering what life is all about. 

The Resilient Woman with Author and Doctor, Patricia O'Gorman PhD

By Tara. *No financial reimbursement or item was received in exchange for this post*

‘How taking care of your own needs will help you take care of others;’ seeing as women are programmed from a young age to put everyone else’s needs before their own, they can use the powerful advice of Dr. Patricia O’Gorman in her new book, The Resilient Woman. Filled with tips on how to ditch those societally informed ‘girly thoughts,’ listen to your own needs and become resilient, From a very young age, women learn an incessant stream of self-limiting interior dialogue that tells them they are not thin enough, smart enough or good enough to succeed, personally or professionally. In fact, Dr. O’Gorman recently wrote an excellent article on how to overcome these ‘girly thoughts’ – you know, the ones in those less-than-helpful societal messages that tell us how to judge ourselves and other women and what we can expect if we don’t fit within this narrow, unobtainable structure. They cause us to blame ourselves for our lack of achievements and give us reasons why we tend to place ourselves in no-win situations at work.

Eliminating that stubborn barricade would no doubt change the world, particularly that part of the world that you inhabit. The secret, Dr. Patricia O'Gorman tells us, has been inside of us all along. In The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI Books), we learn how to access that wisdom. Read her excerpt below:

The Conscious Use of Resilience
The fact is that most of us underestimate the degree of strength and flexibility our lives require on a daily basis. We focus instead on our unfinished tasks, pushing ourselves harder while we simultaneously ignore our self-nurturing. To do what seems like the impossible task of taking care of ourselves, we need to be reminded of our own power from time to time, as my own mother—a competitive ballroom dancer in her golden years—did when she told me on more than one occasion that while Fred Astaire received top billing, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. And she just did it backwards and in high heels, and slimmed down in the process.”

So even though we are most successful in life when we can achieve a balance between our two vital sources of strength—self and other—achieving this can be quite a challenge. It requires us to use all of who we are and dares us to be in touch with our own desires and our own needs. How to do this? The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power offers you a comprehensive, practical, step-by-step guide to understanding your own resilience and to consciously expanding its role in everyday life through learning how to combat those girly thoughts. This is a process you can do at your own pace and will not take a lot of time that you don’t have. I will help you learn to think differently about yourself, begin to listen to your needs and wants, start to nurture yourself, and learn very simple experiments to try out different ways of taking care of what you need within yourself and with others.

I’ve done this through creating simple assessments and seven steps designed for daily use. The steps in Part Two are designed to bring out the best in you—your resilience—by helping you develop strategies to build your resilience consciously. These include having you consider solutions that you used in the past that could be dusted off and used today, considering yourself in a new light as a resilient woman by challenging some of your existing attitudes about yourself, those girly thoughts, and learning some new skills. I will do this through:

• Helping you use your natural qualities, such as curiosity and creativity,
• Showing you how to make space within your life to perfect the art of really listening to yourself instead of all the external messages that bombard you,
• Guiding you in setting helpful boundaries,
• Encouraging you to free yourself to take risks while thinking positively, and
• Helping you learn how to develop the gift of gratitude in your life, and experiencing the joy that comes from living in the safety of the life you have created.

You will find that your resilience can be built and expanded through taking control of your thinking and your actions, which you will be guided in doing by the seven steps provided in the third part of this book. Of course to do this does require that you consciously challenge those girly thoughts, your less-than-helpful negative inner dialogue, but I will show you how! Each chapter will guide you in creating your very own Resilience Plan, and through writing a personalized Resilience Journal you will develop a complete set of action steps that are specific to you….. 

… Given that these messages have a societal origin, girly thoughts are much more difficult to challenge: they exist in the images that surround us, and we feel them in the very air we breathe. Girly thoughts crowd us out as we try to know ourselves and our needs, including our sexual needs. And they let us know how we will be judged if we do not measure up to the ideal. These thoughts are often reinforced by family dynamics and intensified by trauma that may further disempower women….

And fighting girly thoughts is tricky. Makeup and perfume are marketed to us, designed to bring out our inner qualities in a particularly alluring way; so, too, are clothes (which change every season) that are must-haves if we want to look current and fashionable; and we are encouraged to sculpt a body like the ones we see in magazines, but in many photos those bodies are digitally enhanced, and, quite frankly, there is no one who quite has the proportions that are considered ideal—just think of Barbie dolls.

Your Resilience Journal:
Using Your Resilient Voice
Listen to the voice or image in your mind the next time you need to make a decision—whether you want another cookie, need to work late, or want to set a limit with your child. Pause for a moment. Ask yourself how to proceed and listen to the answers that come. Weigh which one feels right.

Perhaps you’ll hear an internal verbal response or feel a drop in tension as you consider a new option. Or perhaps you’ll see yourself doing what you would really like to do. Practice calling on this part of yourself—your resilient voice—on a regular basis. Consider the following, and journal your responses in your own time. Find out which of these three different avenues you use to perceive your resilient voice:

1. Are you primarily auditory, and you hear the right answer?
2. Are you primarily visual, and you see yourself?
3. Are you primarily kinesthetic, and you literally feel the right answers in your body? Do your dreams or daydreams provide clues? For many people, resilience speaks through their unconscious, which is why making this process conscious is such a priority. Continue to cultivate your resilience by using it frequently.
Use it throughout your day. Ask yourself what you need, and see which answer is the right one. Play with this, and enjoy getting to know you!

About the Author:
Being a coach, a psychologist, and raising twin sons in a rural community has certainly fostered Patricia O'Gorman's resilience and made her honest in understanding the subtle gender-specific nuances of developing resilience. Internationally recognized for her work on women, trauma, and substance abuse, and at home for her award winning menus, Dr. Patricia O’Gorman also is a recognized public speaker known for her warm, funny, and informative talks. She was one of the first researchers exploring the dilemmas faced by children of alcoholics in the early 1970s and went on to create the Department of Prevention and Education for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. She is cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics and has run a rape-crisis center. In addition to her private practice in Saranac Lake and Albany, New York, she is Chairperson of the Advisory Board of Horses Healing Hearts, Inc., an equine learning program for children of alcoholics. For more information on Dr. O’Gorman’s work or her latest book, please visit: www.patriciaogorman.com, where you can also find her blog: thepowerfulwoman.net.

*No financial reimbursement or item was received in exchange for this post*