Philosophy, Metaphysics and Science
The Biology of Belief
Written by a renowned cell biologist, this book gives a modern Western scientific explanation and description of how the cells of the body are affected by thought. More importantly, it gives scientific evidence and credence to the simple fact that your physiology is profoundly affected by your thoughts.
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The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
This book, first published in 1963, details the power of your subconscious mind. Understanding the purpose of your subconscious mind and how it functions is the first step in gaining conscious control and wielding the immense power it holds.
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The Game of Life and How To Play It
This book is golden. Be forewarned that, written in 1925, it uses language and vocabulary that may seem arcane - or, depending on how you feel about Christianity, downright offensive. If however, you manage to look past your discomfort with certain names and words that you have a negative association with, or even replace them with your own - you will be able to connect with the abundance of insight, clarity and wisdom this book has to offer. I highly recommend anything written by Florence Scovel Shinn; if I were you I would just go ahead and get her Complete Works, it only costs a couple of dollars more.
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Theatre of the Imagination, Volumes I & II
In this is a 12-part live performance series: i.e. 12 live lectures on audiobook/CD. Most well-known for her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, Dr. Estes is an amazing (Jungian) analyst, poet and cantadora (story-teller). I adore everything I have read by her, but love this book especially as her voice is as powerful, enchanting and priceless as her wisdom and her words. Honestly, I would recommend any of her books - and do yourself an even greater gift by having her speak them to you (i.e. buy them as audiobooks).
purchase the audiobook on Amazon
purchase the audiobook on Audible.com
purchase Women Who Run With the Wolves on Amazon
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The Power of Kabbalah
Whether you are 'into' Kabbalah or not, the philosophy, perspective and wisdom contained in this book is truly inspiring and spot on. It is an enjoyable, simple and easy read; and if you manage to internalize even one of the insights expressed in the book, even better.
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The Neville Reader
This book explains, describes and expounds the metaphysical relationship between mind and thought. It contains a plethora of examples, and principles to put into practice.
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Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives
This is my number one recommendation for anyone interested in reincarnation and non-physical existence. It is also my number one recommendation for anyone in bereavement. The book would be an absolute pleasure to read if it were fiction/fantasy; but even more so as it is non-fiction. Written by a hypnotist with over 50 years of experience, Dr. Newton chronicles his journey and research with clients, resulting in truly fascinating and mind-blowing discoveries concerning past-lives and incarnation.
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Personal Transformation and Practice
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun and one of the foremost students of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the renowned mediation master (see his book Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior below). She is absolutely amazing: her insight, knowledge and clarity; her message and her ability to communicate it; her compassion; her presence and gift. She is a remarkable teacher, and I would highly recommend reading and listening to anything that comes out of her mouth and eyes - seriously. Integrating and practicing her insight, knowledge and teachings would be enormously transformational and healing. Even more, finding and making a best friend in Pema is as they say, profound nourishment for your self and your soul.
purchase the Pema's Audio Collection on Audible.com
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Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
This book speaks to my own personal mission of being an existential ninja.
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The Power of Now
A wonderful, insightful book on the meaning of presence, what it means to be present, and what it means to live in the present. There is a wealth of wisdom, clarity and understanding in this book concerning the (healthy and dysfunctional) relationships between our selves, our mind, and our ego.
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Healing Feelings … From Your Heart
Sometimes self-help books are shrouded in covers so cheesy and cliché that we never even get to the first page, (in fact a wrote a blog post on the subject), and therefore miss the wealth, the opportunity, and the wisdom they contain. This is likely to be one such book. If you can get past the title, and the cover, you will have in your hands truly powerful wisdom, advice and exercises that can indeed transform you and your life without having ever having stepped into the therapist's office.
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The Astonishing Power of Emotions: Let Your Feelings Be Your Guide
The original source of the 'Law of Attraction' philosophy, I would recommend any titles by Esther and Jerry Hicks (or Abraham-Hicks as they are sometimes known). I have chosen this title not because it is necessarily superior to any others - they are all good, and all worth reading or listening to - but because I especially enjoy the final chapter/audio CD of this series.
purchase the audiobook on Audible.com
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Awareness
A short and very enjoyable read containing anecdotes, insight and exercises toward gaining presence and awareness in your life.
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The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Battles
A fierce, insightful, pleasurable, and witty, treatise on resistance. This is a book for anyone who has serious plans. (More recently, in 2011, Pressfield published round 2 entitled Do The Work, also stellar and listed under Work, Career and Financial Wealth below.)
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Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway
Highly recommended for anyone riddled with fear, self-doubt and anxiety - i.e. the overwhelming majority of us. This book contains a transformational perspective on fear, courage and what it actually means to be fearless. Containing great exercises, this book will help create a daily practice of overcoming and conquering your fears.
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I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Telling the Truth About Perfection, Inadequacy, and Power
If you are suffering from shame, or from fear of shame and embarrassment, please read this book. Again this description is likely to apply to the great majority of us. We could all benefit from reading it, and learning how to negotiate and deal with shame - in addition to cultivating compassion and minimizing the shame and judgment we throw on others. But I am speaking especially to those of you who already know that this is one of your main issues, one of the biggest shackles binding and holding you back - please get this book now. This is one I personally prefer in the audiobook version, but as always how you receive the material best is a matter of personal preference. Just get it, absorb it, and listen to the conversations, thoughts and reactions you have to it while listening or reading. You will come to know yourself and your hang-ups infinitely better as a result. And, hopefully, as a result, find the space to consciously and deliberately make choices that will serve you, and all life around you, better.
purchase this audiobook on Audible.com
check out Brené Brown's TED Talk "The Power of Vulnerability"
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Work, Career and Financial Wealth
Zen Habits: Handbook for Life
Overwhelmed by your 'to dos', your life, yourself? Get this book: short, sweet, easy to digest and apply - and, in terms of creating space, order and freedom, life changing when you do.
check out Babauta at ZenHabits.net
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Money is My Friend
This book is golden. It is short and sweet - and gives you everything from philosophy to practice (practical application).
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Think and Grow Rich
This classic was first published in 1937 under the direction of Andrew Carnegie. It contains the wisdom and the self-professed methods of success employed by hundreds of the 20th Century's most successful men (including Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, John Wanamaker, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas A. Edison, F. W. Woolworth, ... and on and on). I don't know if it is part of the mandatory reading list of all M.B.A. programs, but I know that it should be. If your mission is unbridled success, wealth and affluence, this book is a must read.
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Overcoming Underearning: A Five–Step Plan to a Richer Life
A wonderful book filled with great exercises to help you clear out the dysfunctional patterns keeping you from earning your worth and creating financial independence, wealth and abundance. Highly recommended to anyone with a habitual pattern of earning less than they desire, working more than they desire, and incessantly feeling they have nothing to show for it.
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I Will Teach You To Be Rich
A real solid, and entertaining, 6-week program making sure you cover all your financial bases: from credit cards and bank accounts, to saving and investing. Consider this your basic, (humorously and efficiently communicated), education: Financial Health 101.
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The Flower Exercise (from What Color is Your Parachute?)
The Flower Exercise, (in Part Two of Bolles' What Color is Your Parachute?), is one of my favorite exercises to give someone who wants to make a career change, but doesn't know exactly what they want to do. Even better: when they have no idea what they want to do, where they belong, or what their career/work/gift is or should be. The book in its entirety has a wealth of practical information on career changing, job searching, applying, interviewing, resumes, etc.; and is updated regularly to stay useful and relevant. In my experience most people to whom I recommend the exercise do not need or want the whole book. My recommendation is to go into your local bookstore or, even better, go old school: visit your local library and check the book out, or sit there and do the exercise! Don't waste paper, green or white, on something you do not likely need. Check the book out first to make sure it is something that will truly be useful for you. The utility of the Flower Exercise (contained in Part Two of the book), on the other hand, I can unilaterally recommend. Do it as a creative exercise, as a meditation - forget about the job, the title, the career: just let go for a minute, or 40, and take to the exercise in a mental space free of judgment, pressure and logic. Doing it in this way will work magic of its own.
Locate your nearest public library and borrow this book.
purchase the Flower Exercise workbook (containing just the exercises) on Amazon
purchase the entire book on Amazon
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Entrepreneurship
Rework
This book will teach you about shipping - and shipping faster. By shipping I mean getting your sh*t out there, delivering - and delivering on time. Great philosophy, great application, great handbook for the 21st Century entrepreneur. Buy it; read it; do it.
purchase the audiobook on Audible.com
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The 4–Hour Work Week
An inspiring and practical book that will help you increase productivity and decrease your hours 'at the office', 'in front of the computer', or slaving away in whatever way you do it. Highly recommended to anyone looking to transform their relationship to work and to play, to create a healthy, enjoyable balance between the two. Best part of all, the author dreams (and lived) even bigger than you might ever allow yourself: a four hour work week that leaves you richer than the 40+ hours you are putting in now.
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Do the Work
Pressfield's latest insightful, pleasurable, and witty, treatise on resistance. Another must for anyone who has serious plans to make a difference and, more pointedly, to create. You can easily read this book in one sitting. Don't choose between Do the Work and The War of Art (under Personal Transformation and Practice above) - but read, and make best friends of them, both.
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RHH B-School
Founded by Marie Forleo (marketing expert) and Laura Roeder (social media expert), "Rich Happy & Hot B-School" is an 8-week on-line course that specializes in helping 'female entrepreneurs live rich, happy & hot' by leveraging on-line marketing. It is the best contained, effective and efficient resource that I know of for solid education on making, running and growing a business, with particular attention to using the inter-sphere to create higher leverage on your efforts. B-School usually happens only once a year, so be sure to check out Marie's website for marketing and business tips all year round, and Laura's for all things social media and technology-related.
check out Forleo at MarieForleo.com
check out Roeder at LauraRoeder.com
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Creativity and Art
The Artist's Way
A classic. Cameron's book, which is essentially a recreation her workshop, will lovingly guide you to re-uniting with, expressing and living your inner artist. If you are feeling stifled or blocked creatively - no matter what your craft - this book, or rather as always, diligently following the program and doing the exercises, will bring you through your blocks. Even more importantly, it will foster a life-long awareness and practice of keeping you connected and devoted to your inner artist and your creativity. Again, you do not have to be a painter, a writer, or an 'artist' in the more obvious or traditional sense of the term: this book is a gem for any creative expression or outlet. We are all creative and artists in this sense, and the great majority of us could use giving this part of ourselves more expression, and a more front-and-center place, in our lives. Follow the program diligently, and the results will be transformational and phenomenal.
purchase the audiobook on Audible.com
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The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Battles
This is Pressfield's third appearance now on the Resources List, and for good reason. His books are not only pleasurable, witty and no hold's bar, but, most importantly, entirely on point. Again, his books are a must - and a best friend - for anyone who has any serious plans creatively and entrepreneurely (in the broadest sense of those words). To read more about his works go to the Personal Transformation and Practice, and Entrepreneurship Categories above.
purchase The War of Art on Amazon
purchase Do the Work on Amazon
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Relationships and Love
Calling in The One: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life
Whether you are looking to attract 'the love of your life', have already found him or her, or have no desire for a romantic relationship right now, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is noticing a consistent pattern of dysfunction and ill-health in their inter-personal relationships. The philosophy of the book is spot on, and contains short, daily exercises that effectively increase your awareness and help to rid you of the patterns, beliefs and ways of being that are blocking you from creating and manifesting the healthy, supportive and functional relationships (romantic and otherwise) you deserve.
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True Love: A Practice of Awakening Your Heart
This book is short, and sweet, and, quite honestly, beautiful. It gives of a picture of a way of being, towards ourselves and others, that may very well be the highest vision one could attain.
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Woman's Health and Empowerment
Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts
A number one recommendation for any woman who is 'dissatisfied' with her life or seeking genuine empowerment. If you are put off by the flamboyance of the cover - or anything you find between the covers - it's worth getting over. This book is solid in philosophy, practice, wisdom and insight. Buy it - and use it: reading the words will get you almost nowhere compared with practicing and doing the exercises contained within it.
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S Factor
Dance classes for women only. These classes do more good for you, (and, through you, every person you touch), then words can say.
check out S Factor classes at SFactor.com
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Prince Charming Isn't Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money
This is a must read for any woman on a mission toward true and profound empowerment. Complete empowerment involves every aspect of our lives: relationship to self and others, sexuality, career - and finances. Do not kid yourself: if you think owning your money is any less important or empowering than owning your sexuality you are greatly mistaken.
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Woman: An Intimate Geography
An exquisite, humorous, and thorough journey through the mystery and wonder of the female body. From anatomy, biology and physiology, to evolutionary and social psychology, from organs to orgasm, this book has it all. If you are seeking to understand and own yourself fully as a woman, do not leave biology and cultural conditioning out. This book is a remarkable, effective - and enjoyable! - source to skyrocket your knowledge on all-practical-things-female.
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Taking Charge of Your Fertility
I highly recommend this book to each and every woman. Its most obvious use is toward achieving, or avoiding pregnancy, naturally. (That's right: there is a natural, effective form of birth control.) And while this is sufficient, in my opinion, to make it mandatory reading, its even bigger gift is the wealth of knowledge it contains on the female reproductive organs and system. And this is a case where knowledge is unmistakably power.
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Psychism and Energy
Personal Power through Awareness
A step-by-step course in sensing energy and extra-sensory perception. Even if you don't do it consciously, you are still doing unconsciously - why not become aware, conscious and deliberate in using your intuition and ability to interpret the energies around you? I recommend any books in the Orin-Roman series.
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Spiritual Growth: Being Your Higher Self
Another helpful easy-to-learn, step-by-step book in the Orin-Roman series. Its purpose is to help you contact and own your connection to the Divine Intelligence within you. Obviously the consequences and possibilities that come to you as a result are ... out of this world.
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Opening to Channel: How to Connect With Your Guide
Another helpful easy-to-learn, step-by-step book in the Orin-Roman series.
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Other
TED
Really my only source of news, and the best kind. TED (an acronym for technology, entertainment and design) is a nonprofit devoted to 'Ideas Worth Spreading', which is exactly what it does: it spreads ideas worth spreading. The site houses talks from TED conferences of all kinds, often less than 20 minutes long, given by cutting-edge, and often world-renown, researchers, educators, artists, leaders - you name it, in a wide variety of fields - all for free. It is absolutely my favorite source of 'news' - and, though entirely current and contemporary, it is news you are not likely to find in the usual suspects. Which is really too bad, because what you learn is that, while there certainly are things to be fixed out there, there are also people doing absolutely inspirational and mind-blowing things to fix them. Here are a few examples to get you started - but honestly, there is a whole world of interesting things going on here, quite literally, and I urge you to explore more:
Jill Bolte-Taylor's Stroke of Insight
Hans Rosling Shows the Best Stats You've Ever Seen
Brene Brown on Vulnerability
Kathryn Schulz on Being Wrong
Jeff Han Demos His Breakthrough Touchscreen
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The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
Hands down the best resource I think I will ever come across on smoking. Golden. Mind-blowing. Seriously, try it. You'll be baffled at how powerful words on a page can be.
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