Creative Development

We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook - or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google or Facebook or Uber. We see software coders becoming millionaires or billionaires before age 30 and feel we are failing if we are not one of them.

This step-by-step guide leads you easily and clearly to successfully create the life you truly want and finally move from hoping to having.

In every industry, there are companies that take off. They effortlessly hire talented people, attract loyal customers, create cool products and make lots of money. These companies seem to stand out and scale up quickly with support from investors, partners and the media. Sadly, most companies don't perform this way. Most entrepreneurs aren't building anything of value. They work hard, make sacrifices, struggle, dream, plan and strive, but in the end, it doesn't pay off. This audiobook sets out a method for building a business that becomes a valuable asset.

From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the "nail it then scale it" method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate. These processes and principles have now been distilled into a handbook to guide entrepreneurs and innovative product managers to victory. Stop following conventional wisdom, and join the few entrepreneurs that can consistently take their innovative idea all the way to a successful company launch.

“How are you feeling today?” We may think of emotions as universal responses, felt inside. Using decades-long, cutting-edge research, acclaimed psychologist Batja Mesquita asks us to reconsider emotions through the lens of what they do in our relationships, both one-on-one and within larger social networks.

There is a paradox. As children, most of us think we are highly creative; as adults many of us think we are not. What changes as children grow up? Organizations across the globe are competing in a world that is changing faster than ever. They say they need people who can think creatively, who are flexible and quick to adapt.

What do you do when you feel like you’ve won the game of life? Share the secrets you’ve learned so everyone else can win too! At least, that’s what we decided to do. After all, we didn’t set out to win anything when we each took a chance on ourselves and followed our hearts. We both just knew there had to be something more than the unfulfilling lives we were living. We each took a step, and the universe rose up to meet us - taking us on a wild adventure up the mountain of success, health, fitness, happiness, love, fulfillment, and inner peace.

Mary Gauthier was 12 years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day. Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn’t until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to.

Journey through the archetypal wisdom of the divine feminine to reclaim your authentic self and to follow your soul’s longing. Embodiment teacher Mara Branscombe takes an intriguing look at the seven feminine archetypes that prevail in the modern psyche—Maiden, Mother, Sage, Huntress, Lover, Mystic, and Queen—and traces their continuing influence throughout different stages of our life, sometimes dormant, sometimes prominent.

Humans are coded for relational connection with other humans. Often, that coding has been short-circuited and needs reactivating. However, we do not need to learn it; we need to relearn it. This is not a new language; it is the language of your birth. The Connection Codes are the blueprint and tools for the relational connection we all need and crave. They are the culmination of over 30 years of research, education, and experience and draw from many centuries of insights and wisdom.

Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware of and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: During much of the day, we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, and during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

As a childfree woman, Dr. Amy Blackstone is no stranger to a wide range of negative responses when she informs people she doesn't have - nor does she want - kids: confused looks, patronizing quips, thinly veiled pity, even outright scorn and condemnation. But she is not alone in opting out when it comes to children. More people than ever are choosing to forgo parenthood, and openly discussing a choice that's still often perceived as taboo. Yet this choice, and its effects personally and culturally, are still often misunderstood.

The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult).

Jessica Ortner's new audiobook, the latest in the best-selling Tapping Solution series, shares the lessons she’s learned about what it feels like to flow through change and how to create positive, lasting change in ways that feel both authentic and empowering. Ultimately, Jessica tells us, there’s profound beauty and joy in change, even when it doesn’t feel that way at the start. Listeners will learn how to use tapping (also known as emotional freedom techniques, or EFT) to navigate the unknown with new energy, hope, and an open heart.

In my Strategic Coach® workshops, I’ll draw a circle on the white board, and in the center, I’ll write, “Self-Managing Company”. I’ll say to the group, “You don’t know exactly what I’m going to say about this, but right off the bat, how many of you want one of these”? Every hand in the room goes up. Every ambitious entrepreneur in the world wants to have their own self-managing company. This 60-minute audiobook will provide you and your Unique Ability® Team with the eight crucial entrepreneurial mindsets necessary to make this.

Too often our inner critic fabricates stories that undervalue our capabilities or make us question where we're going and why. The things we keep telling ourselves eventually start to feel true and even inevitable—as if we're destined to live within the confines of that story for the rest of our lives. Sought-after speaker and executive coach Chad Sanschagrin teaches that "you find what you focus on," and he's shown millions in search of a better life how to write a better story by focusing on who they want to become instead of what they want to achieve.

Going from small business to successful start-up to scalable growth takes more than just good luck, it takes a system. Over the last 34 years franchising consultant and growth expert Mark Siebert has been sought out by more than 70,000 executives looking to expanding their company. Out of those 70,000, only 5,000 had the right systems in place to go from successful to scalable.

Steve Almond shares the insights gleaned from three decades as a beloved teacher and mentor, and a considerably less-beloved literary rabble rouser. His tone is irreverent. His ideas are iconoclastic. And his approach is stubbornly, radically, empathic. The goal is to explode the well-meaning but misguided myths that hold us back from writing our deepest and most honest work, to awaken the joys of storytelling while also confronting how grueling the process can be.

Don’t trade your 40-hour workweek for an 80-hour-a-week side hustle. The promise of entrepreneurship is to create a lifestyle of freedom—but the pursuit often leads to a time-bankrupt life. If you’re an overworked employee who’s done with the 9-to-5, a serial entrepreneur who has yet to realize the American dream, or a burned-out side hustle owner who’s tired of the grind, this book was written for you.

From Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer and acclaimed business journalist Charles Fishman comes a brilliantly entertaining peek into the weekly "curiosity conversations" that have inspired Grazer to create some of America's favorite and iconic movies and television shows - from 24 to A Beautiful Mind.