Books

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life
by Gregg Michael Levoy

A calling may be to do something (change careers, go back to school, have a child) or to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving). While honoring a calling’s essential mystery, this book also guides readers to ask and answer the fundamental questions that arise from any calling: How do we recognize it? How do we distinguish the true call from the siren song? How do we handle our resistance to a call? What happens when we say yes? What happens when we say no?

Drawing on the hard-won wisdom and powerful stories of people who have followed their own calls, Gregg Levoy shows us the many ways to translate a calling into action. In a style that is poetic, exuberant, and keenly insightful, he presents an illuminating and ultimately practical inquiry into how we listen and respond to our calls, whether at work or at home, in our relationships or in service. Callings is a compassionate guide to discovering your own callings and negotiating the tight passages to personal power and authenticity.

Creating a Life Worth Living
by Carol Lloyd

Dreaming is easy. Making it happen is hard. With a fresh perspective, Carol Lloyd motivates the person searching for two things: the creative life and a life of sanity, happiness and financial solvency. Creating a Life Worth Living is for the hundreds of thousands of people who bought Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, but who are looking for more down-to-earth solutions and concrete tasks for achieving their goals.

Creating a Life Worth Living helps the reader search memory for inspiration, understand his or her individual artistic profile, explore possible futures, design a daily process and build a structure of support. Each of the 12 chapters, such as “The Drudge We Do For Dollars” and “Excavating the Future,” contains specific exercises and daily tasks that help readers to clarify their desires and create a tangible plan of action for realizing dreams. The book also provides inspiring anecdotes and interviews with people who have succeeded in their chosen fields, such as performance artist Anna Devere Smith, writer Sally Tisdale and filmmaker R. J. Cutler.

The pursuit of one’s dreams is one of the great joys in life but also one of the most terrifying. Creating a Life Worth Living is an invaluable road map for this journey, guiding readers as they take the first tentative steps that are necessary before they can fly.

A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born to Do
by Thomas Moore

In this slender volume, bestselling spiritual guru Moore (Care of the Soul) says that finding the right work, finding one’s vocation, is also part of the care of the soul. Often Moore proves astute; for instance, he urges people to think about having not just one but a variety of callings. His consideration of the pleasures and foibles of friendship in the workplace is especially insightful. Although confident that even the most mundane job can be enjoyable and life-giving, Moore sets the question of vocation in a broader frame, suggesting that it is best addressed as a part of fashioning lives that are organically whole and meaningful. Though still influenced by Jung, Moore draws inspiration from a delightful array of sources, including Yeats, Socrates, and Rapunzel.

The 4-Hour Workweek-Revised
by Tim Ferris

More than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content.

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:

• How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week
• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”

The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:

• More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point
• Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal
• How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times
• The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either

Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love
by Barbara Sher

Beloved author Barbara Sher is back with her next bestseller: a life-making guide for the over-interested and undecided

With her popular career counseling sessions, motivational speeches, workshops, and television specials, Barbara Sher has become famous for her extraordinary ability to help people define and achieve their life goals. Now she tackles a problem that millions of people face today in a universe of infinite possibilities.

Sher identifies someone she calls The Scanner–someone who frequently has a multiplicity of interests, but finds it hard to create a successful life he or she loves because their passions and abilities are taking them in so many different directions. Sher identifies 7 types of Scanners–ranging from the Serial Specialist (someone who learns all about one subject, only to get bored and need to move on to the next) to Sybil (a person with so many areas of interest, she can’t finish a thing).

Contrary to popular wisdom, Sher tells Scanners that theirs is a unique ability, not a liability. She also states that they must do everything they love, not zero in on one pursuit at the expense of all others. With dozens of powerful techniques Sher has developed to free people from “goal paralysis,” readers will stop thinking of themselves as dabblers or dilettantes, and find innovative ways to live lives of variety, challenge, and joy.

It’s About Time: Finding Magic, Power and Ease in Your Life
by Leslie Keenan

Do you have the relationship with time that you desire? Are you doing what you most want to do, regularly? Do you have a sense of ease and abundance about time? Are you consciously choosing your life, or are you running around struggling to keep up? There is another way. By discovering new ways of looking at time, and freeing yourself from our society’s limiting view of time as urgent and limited, you will reconnect to your own rhythm. Discover the magic of your life. Experience a new balance, harmony and peace. Accomplish more. Become whole. Access all of your energy. The good news is you don’t have to live in a monastery and give up all earthly possessions to find peace around time. Nor do you have to win the lottery. You can have what you want right here, right now, from right where you are. You just have to be willing to look inside yourself, and begin.

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
by Richard N. Bolles

“How many jobs are out there, in this economy?”

“Where do I go from here with my life?”

These are some of the questions at the forefront of the modern job-searcher’s mind. And they are thoroughly and thoughtfully answered with all-new chapters in the 2011 edition of What Color Is Your Parachute?, the best-selling job-hunting book in the world for more than three decades–in good times and bad. A longtime fixture on best-seller lists, What Color Is Your Parachute? features life-saving information that is updated each year to cater to the specific requirements of today’s job market.

Career guru Richard N. Bolles leads job-searchers to find meaningful work. He asks, WHAT skills do you most love to use? WHERE–in what field–would you most love to use them? And HOW do you find such jobs without depending on agencies, ads, and online postings?

Green Careers: Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future
by Jim Cassio and Alice Rush

People of all ages and backgrounds are seeking work in career fields that will help save the planet, yet many people are unaware of the variety of green careers available. This unique career guidance book, based on labor market research, covers green jobs representing almost every area of career interest.

The authors’ extensive experience in workforce development will help you explore tomorrow’s green career options by answering such questions as: What green careers are available? What salary can I expect? What education do I need? What is the demand for this profession? How do I change to a green career?

Green Careers offers clear and concise information about the emerging field of environmental jobs. Chapters include:

• Industry-by-industry overview of green jobs
• Ninety different occupations in twelve different career groups
• Over sixty case studies and interviews of people working in green jobs
• Career planning information
• Job search resources

This book will appeal to students, career explorers, job seekers, and career and workforce development professionals. It is an indispensable guide for finding a career to feel passionate about and prospering while doing what you love.