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Dismayed by the divisiveness of the Trump/Brexit era, anthropologist Hillary S. Webb began to fear that the better angels of our nature had deserted us entirely—if they had ever existed at all. In the Fall of 2017, Webb traveled to Berlin, Germany, for a week’s vacation. There, she found renewed hope in an unlikely place: Cosmic Comedy, an international stand-up venue described as “The Friendliest Comedy Club in Europe.” Down in that dark, beer-soaked basement, Webb watched with awe as the club’s eccentric-but-lovable co-promoters, Dharmander Singh and Neil Numb, gathered a group of culturally and demographically diverse comedians and audience members, transforming them over the course of an evening from strangers into allies through laughter. Convinced that Cosmic Comedy offered a model of togetherness that could help heal the divisions between us, Webb returned to Berlin a few months later with the intent of uncovering the club’s recipe for what is known in humanistic anthropology as communitas or “collective joy.” As with all journeys of the mind and heart, Webb’s investigations revealed more than she bargained for, including the unwelcome realization that collective joy has a dark side and that she, herself, was as susceptible to its intoxicating influence as anyone else. The result is a humorous, hopeful examination of the nature of human togetherness.
□ Advisor? □ Coach? □ Mentor? □ Support Professional? □ Therapist? □ Business owner? □ Spiritual beliefs? Business and spirituality are thought to be irreconcilable. In humorous, non-prescriptive style, the authors share the highs and lows of integrating the two. Touching, profound, raw, and raucous, My MacGuffin "enables the enablers" to lift the world of commerce to its highest ideal: an indispensable resource for improving your practice and your clientele. "In life you meet few special people with an undeniable sense of integrity, sharing, and generosity. I've just had such an experience, and I want to share how I feel, because these feelings create incredible memories. Thank you so much, Jayden, for your unconditional giving!" -Andrea Gutwirth, SoulTalk Foundation "Michael is a spiritual mentor for me, and when it comes to business coaching, he'll save you money and mistakes." -Simon Dixon, author, CEO, Bank to the Future Alfred Hitchcock termed a plot device as a "MacGuffin." A seemingly vital element-the hidden contents of a case, secret documents-unseen by the audience yet intrinsic to character motivation. It correlates with the quest to learn who we are, why we are here and where we're going. Jayden Bliss built a successful software company before founding a global networking organisation. He has since run property and financial services ventures, diversifying as an award-winning film-short producer. Michael Nunes Burgess has undertaken more than eight thousand client sessions in seventeen years in management consulting. Thousands of students have gained from his endorsed "social enterprise" and business programmes.
This book was written for Christian laypersons who want to think about their faith and be given creative and relevant suggestions about what it means to attempt authentic Christian living in todays world, and for religious professionals who want or need to reflect on various topics and issues of the Christian faith journey and desire mental stimulation and spiritual inspiration regarding them. The Rev. Dr. Cliff Cain, Harrod-C.S. Lewis Professor of Religious Studies at Westminster College, provides a compelling response to the question Can God be an effective and reliant participant in a user-friendly 21st century universe? This book is current, intellectually stimulating, and offers a multigenerational perspective to age-old questions that demand answers that enable deeper understanding. Set aside the time to read this marvelous book! Benjamin Ola. Akande, Ph.D. President, Westminster College This book should be required reading for any college course seeking to orient students to the issues that address meaning in their lives. It should also be used as a valuable resource for local church adult education courses. I know Cliff Cain to be a rare combination of scholar and pastor, and this blending allows the reader to catch his enthusiasm and passion for the Christian life. The reader will be drawn-in to an in-depth dialogue about the Christian journey and current Christian issues. I recommend it highly. The Reverend Erwin R. Bode, B.A., M.Div., S.T.M., D.D. Leader in Progressive Ecumenical Higher Education Ministries for 20 years In a fresh and engaging style, Professor Cain applies biblical values and stories in short reflections that give the reader a way to escape the daily rush and settle into the quiet of mindful reflection. Like Jesus own story-telling style, Cain takes language and images familiar to his audience, but turns them on their heads, reinterpreting them with Gospel values, and even connections to other faiths. A User-friendly Universe? is an enriching read for anyone connected to college as a place which celebrates the life of the mind and the cultivation of the spirit. Janice A. Thompson, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair Department of Theology Kings College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Over the course of the twentieth century, sequential waves of immigrants from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa settled in the cities of the Canadian Prairies. In Immigrants in Prairie Cities, Royden Loewen and Gerald Friesen analyze the processes of cultural interaction and adaptation that unfolded in these urban centres and describe how this model of diversity has changed over time. The authors argue that intimate Prairie cities fostered a form of social diversity characterized by vibrant ethnic networks, continuously evolving ethnic identities, and boundary zones that facilitated intercultural contact and hybridity. Impressive in scope, Immigrants in Prairie Cities spans the entire twentieth century, and encompasses personal testimonies, government perspectives, and even fictional narratives. This engaging work will appeal to both historians of the Canadian Prairies and those with a general interest in migration, cross-cultural exchange, and urban history.
On February 19, 1998, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported that more than 12,000 people had been injured in incidents of 'road rage.' In light of modernity's rapid strides forward in electronic communication and lagging efforts to explore human nature Larry G. Ehrlich's book focuses on the architecture of human communication behavior. It is divided into three sections, which deal with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and public communication. This readable book not only offers a discussion on the most recent research in information technology, and on relationships in a global community, but it is a truly inter-disciplinary approach to communication behavior.
Mindfulness-Based Strategic Awareness Training: A Complete Program for Leaders and Individuals is the first book to link mindfulness training and positive psychology to the leadership, strategy and management issues faced by individuals and organizations. Sets out a complete program in Mindfulness-based Strategic Awareness Training (MBSAT), a new form of strengths-based business mindfulness training which enhances participants’ ability to perceive opportunities, adapt and grow Draws on research from neuroscience, positive psychology, behavioural finance and management to show how leaders, managers and individuals can build and maintain more resonant relationships and adapt to constant change Includes real-life vignettes, specific instructions and a wealth of resources designed to guide experiential learning including background information, exercises, guidelines, hand-outs, graphics, and guided audio meditations Mindfulness training is increasingly used in organizational contexts – the author is a pioneer in designing and delivering training that applies mindfulness and positive psychology to the strategic challenges of management and business Reviews by Experts This book is important for all who seek to lead organizations, showing how mindfulness can be combined with the findings from positive psychology for the benefit of all. The book is not just good theory. It also provides a step-by-step practical program to cultivate a balance between motivation for outcomes on the one hand, and compassion toward self and others on the other. Here are skills that can be learned; skills that can truly inspire and sustain wise leadership. —Mark Williams, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Oxford, was also the Founding Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Now Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry of Oxford University. Author of "Mindfulness: An Eight week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World", Co-author with Zindel V. Segal and John Teasdale of "Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression". In today's disruptive times, it is happy and loyal customers that count. This rich and practical book provides an exceptionally smart learning tool to help consumers make mindful decisions that lead to happiness. And for any leader and manager it is a key reading for making wise business and marketing decisions that create value.—Bernd Schmitt, Ph.D., Professor, Columbia Business School, New York. Author of "Experiential Marketing: How to Get Consumers to Sense, Fell, Think and Act, Relate to your Company and Brands" and "Happy Customers Everywhere: How Your Business Can Profit from the Insights of Positive Psychology." Juan Humberto Young is the first to integrate positive psychology and mindfulness with a results-oriented focus on business strategy. In today's ever-changing organizations, leaders need clarity and flexibility to adapt and succeed. Built on leading-edge science, this book offers a step-by-step program that will light your path not only to greater strategic awareness but also to greater well-being.—Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Author of the two bestsellers "Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life" and "Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection". Juan Humberto Young integrates mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and extensive business experience to design a practical training program that improves personal and professional decision-making. This book offers tools to make decisions that increase subjective well-being because the sources of much unhappiness are poor decisions. For business le
Mindfulness-based STRATEGIC AWARENESS TRAINING This comprehensive workbook provides training based on new findings in computational neuroscience. It will enhance your decision-making skills by increasing the precision of your perception and mental processing. This training will enable you to navigate these disruptive, uncertain times skillfully, and in good emotional and mental health. Part 1 provides a conceptual introduction into understanding the brain as a predicting organ. Part 2 leads you through 8 systematic training sessions to enhance your decision-making skills by enhancing your strategic awareness and belief updating capabilities. The practices are designed to fit in the busy schedules of active people. Mindfulness-based Strategic Awareness Training (MBSAT) has been tested by practitioners for over 10 years and is widely acclaimed. The government of Singapore, known for its outstanding commitment to the education of its population, has included MBSAT in its official skill-building program and subsidizes participation in MBSAT training. This is a remarkable book. On one reading, it is a scholarly and pragmatic guide to self-understanding and realisation—through making the right kind of decisions as embodied creatures in a social world. On another reading, it naturalises—or perhaps socialises—the free energy principle: an account of self-organisation and sentience grounded in statistical physics and applied widely in theoretical biology and computational neuroscience. This book liberates the fundaments of the free energy principle by applying them to the delicate practice of living in the 21st-century. This is achieved by starting from the academic foundations and artfully scaffolding the readers journey with intuitive, lived examples; sometimes, touchingly personal examples. If you commit to the epistemic program offered by this book, not only will you become a fluent practitioner of embodied Bayesian inference and decision-making, you will be able to answer Einstein’s existential question: “Is the universe friendly?” Karl J. Friston, MBBS, MA, MRCPsych, MAE, FMedSci, FRBS, FRS — Scientific Director: Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging — Professor: Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London Honorary Consultant: The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery
An astrophysicist presents an in-depth yet accessible tour of the universe for lay readers, while conveying the excitement of astronomy.How is a galaxy billions of lightyears away connected to us? Is our home nothing more than a tiny speck of blue in an ocean of night? In this exciting tour of a universe far larger than we can imagine, cosmologist Paul M. Sutter emphasizes how amazing it is that we are part of such a huge, complex, and mysterious place. Through metaphors and uncomplicated language, Sutter breathes life into the science of astrophysics, unveiling how particles, forces, and fields interplay to create the greatest of cosmic dramas. Touched with the author's characteristic breezy, conversational style--which has made him a breakout hit on venues such as The Weather Channel, the Science Channel, and his own popular Ask a Spaceman! podcast--he conveys the fun and wonder of delving deeply into the physical processes of the natural universe. He weaves together the past and future histories of our universe with grounded descriptions of essential modern-day physics as well as speculations based on the latest research in cosmology. Topics include our place in the Milky Way galaxy; the cosmic web--a vast web-like pattern in which galaxies are arranged; the origins of our universe in the big bang; the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy; how science has dramatically changed our relationship to the cosmos; conjectures about the future of reality as we know it; and more.For anyone who has ever stared at the starry night sky and wondered how we humans on Earth fit into the big picture, this book is an essential roadmap.