This is an old revision of the document!
Coping Skills
We (in Minnesota) have been wanting to see an update to the fantastic //Coping Skills// publication (ISBN: 0-8444-0799-2) that the NLS put out in 1993, so I thought I'd attempt to re-create it here. All are welcome (and encouraged) to participate. I could certainly use the help!
I have listed all of the categories as they were in the publication, but I am not tied to them. It has been 20 years since the creation of this publication so I'm sure that everything from the category names to the books included could be outdated.
NOTE: I have created a format that I would like to retain if possible (for example, category name = Headline level 2; book titles = Headline level 3). That said, I'm open for suggestions and corrections.
--- //[[dan.malosh@state.mn.us|Dan Malosh @ MN1A Regional]] 2013/07/10 16:22//
Self Development
Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to a Great Social Life
Author: Letitia Baldrige
Annotation:
The author, a leading authority on etiquette and one-time chief of staff for former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, provides an abundance of ideas, suggestions, and advice for improving one's social life. Included are tips on making conversation, meeting people, making friends, entertaining, and re-establishing a social life after divorce or a spouse's death.
Available Formats:
- BR 07404 - 4 volumes.
Playing the Game: A Psychopolitical Strategy for Your Career
Author: Raymond Blank
Annotation:
The author contends that ability, dedication, and competence are not sufficient to guarantee success or even survival in the work world. He sets forth the essential political and interpersonal skills an employee needs to manipulate subordinates, peers, and supervisors successfully.
Available Formats:
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child
Author: John Bradshaw
Annotation:
A counselor, theologian, and television personality claims that many people harbor a wounded inner child with leftover feelings from past hurts. This inner child can contaminate an individual's life and cause overreactions, marital problems, addictions, toxic parenting, and destructive relationships. He describes how to heal the wounded child within.
Available Formats:
- DB 31960 - Read by Bill Wallace. Reading time: 12 hours, 33 minutes.
The Magic of Believing
Author: Claude M. Bristol
Annotation:
A hard-headed businessman and skeptical newspaper man tells how to get whatever you want in life by harnessing the unlimited power of your subconscious mind.
Available Formats:
Intimate Connections: The New and Clinically Tested Program for Overcoming Loneliness Developed at the Presbyterian - University of Pennsylvania Medical Center
Author: David D. Burns
Annotation:
A self-help manual for achieving self-confidence. Assuming that thoughts have an impact on the way we feel and behave, the author suggests ways to overcome shyness and depression and explores the role of intimacy in our lives.
Available Formats:
- BR 06235 - 3 volumes.
Bus 9 to Paradise: A Loving Voyage
Author: Leo Buscaglia
Annotation:
The author celebrates the here and now with the ultimate message that “life is wonderful, joy is our birthright and love is what it's all about.”
Available Formats:
Living, Loving & Learning
Author: Leo Buscaglia
Annotation:
Series of lectures originally delivered between 1970 and 1981 on the need of people for one another. Includes stories and anecdotes illustrating the joys and pitfalls that the search for love entails in these troubled times. Reassuring self-help philosophy.
Available Formats:
- DB 17739 - Read by Bob Askey. Reading time: 8 hours, 14 minutes.
Love
Author: Leo Buscaglia
Annotation:
This book is an extension of an experimental class that the author created at the University of Southern California. His basic message is that while the need to love and to be loved is innate, the way we love is learned, and that every single person can learn to love.
Available Formats:
- BR 05171 - 1 volume.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Annotation:
Originally published in 1937 and revised in 1981 to “clarify and strengthen the book for a modern reader,” this guide provides fundamental techniques in handling people. Includes how to make people like you, how to win them to your way of thinking, and how to be a leader without offending or arousing resentment.
Available Formats:
- DB 53469 - Read by Jack Fox. Reading time: 8 hours, 28 minutes.
How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age
- ADDED 2013*
- Author: Brent Cole; Dale Carnegie & Associates
- Annotation:
This update to //How to Win Friends and Influence People// (DB 53469), offered seventy-five years after the original was published, incorporates successful use of social media. Details easy-to-employ strategies for productive conversations and collaborations in business and personal life. Discusses ways to communicate, lead, and work well with others.
Available Formats:
- DB 75355 - Read by Jeff Allin. Reading time: 7 hours, 24 minutes.
Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life
Author: Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter
Annotation:
Account of how the former president and first lady made the transition from the White House to Plains, Georgia. In this joint narrative with individual interjections when recollections or interpretations differ, the Carters tell of their involvement in a host of projects and volunteerism.
Available Formats:
- DB 25995 - Read by Mitzi Friedlander. Reading time: 7 hours, 1 minute.
The Inner World of the Middle-Aged Man
Author: Peter Chew
Annotation:
A journalist examines the numerous problems and pitfalls that confront men in their middle years and suggests positive ways to face the future.
Available Formats:
How to Be a Really Nice Person: Doing the Right Thing--Your Way
Author: Pat Collins with John Malone
Annotation:
Undertakes to replace traditional rules of correct behavior and etiquette with guidelines designed to convey “niceness” without interfering with one's own priorities. “Don't let people take advantage of your purse, connections, talent, knowledge, time, and energy,” she counsels. She believes that nice people have rights too.
Available Formats:
The Secrets Men Keep
Author: Ken Druck with James C. Simmons
Annotation:
Masculinity, according to the authors, is a very fragile thing. Men have to work at hiding their feelings, maintaining machismo, and letting women know who is the boss. Because Dr. Druck believes that unacknowledged emotions are disabling to men, he offers this step-by-step course of renewal and self-understanding with insights into the male psyche. Some strong language.
Available Formats:
- BR 06418 - 2 volumes.
The Sky's the Limit
Author: Wayne W. Dyer
Annotation:
Explains how we can achieve heights of happiness and fulfillment by developing our human potential. Advises that we adopt a no-limit attitude to personal achievement, “accept our animal nature, and retain the fantasy and candor of childhood.”
Available Formats:
You'll See It When You Believe It
Author: Wayne W. Dyer
Annotation:
The author of //Your Erroneous Zones// and //Pulling Your Own Strings// gives the reader a set of directions for personal transformation. He argues that the human being is a spirit in a body, not a body with a spirit, and emphasizes spiritual experience. Using examples and anecdotes, he describes why and how to visualize what you want from life.
Available Formats:
- DB 30718 - Read by Andy Chappell. Reading time: 9 hours, 28 minutes.
Lifebalance: Priority Balance, Attitude Balance, Goal Balance in All Areas of Your Life
Author: Richard Eyre and Linda Eyre
Annotation:
The authors, who have nine children, run several businesses, revel in the arts, and enjoy life, reveal their “secret”–the ability to balance work and family life. The underlying theme encompasses thinking and rethinking one's priorities and suggests innovative approaches to living life to its fullest.
Available Formats:
Talking Between the Lines: How We Mean More Than We Say
Author: Julius Fast and Barbara Fast
Annotation:
Understanding and using metacommunication– how we say what we say. Analyzes the effects of breath, pitch, stress, rhythm, tone, inflection, word choice, and emotional overlay in communicating.
Available Formats:
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things
Author: Robert Fulghum
Annotation:
A retired Unitarian minister presents his thoughts and observations on the joy of life. The essays cover such topics as: the joys of Crayolas, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, jumper cables, a shoebox of childhood momentoes, and the author's wife. A frequently quoted maxim, from a kindergarten graduation speech, is “When you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”
Available Formats:
It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It
Author: Robert Fulghum
Annotation:
From the author who reminded us that all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten. Fulghum writes about the joy of climbing trees; about the things “grown-ups” do (such as cleaning sink strainers and plunging out toilets); about Rosa Parks, a black woman, who began the Montgomery bus boycott; and about children. He advises, “Love them long, and let them go early.”
Available Formats:
I'm OK, You're OK: A Practical Guide to Transactional Analysis
Author: Thomas A. Harris
Annotation:
A popular approach to psychological self-help based on the theory that each person contains three active elements: the Parent, the Adult, and the Child. The goal of transactional analysis is to achieve a healthy balance of these elements, freeing the Adult from the archaic recordings of the Parent and the Child.
Available Formats:
Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Energy, But Were Too Weak to Ask
Author: Naura Hayden
Annotation:
Self-help work that emphasizes reevaluation of habits that drain physical, mental, and emotional energy. Suggests ways of changing these bad habits and developing a reservoir of energy.
Available Formats:
You Are Not the Target
Author: Laura Archera Huxley
Annotation:
A practical guide to self-improvement that includes “recipes” for living and loving. The author applies psychological principles and oriental philosophy and other means to spur the reader on to better mental and physical health. The foreword is written by the author's husband, Aldous Huxley.
Available Formats:
To Love Is to Be Happy With: The First Book of the Option Process
Author: Barry Kaufman
Annotation:
Details the principles and application of the Option Process, for those who want a more loving and life-affirming basis for their lives. Kaufman uses dialogues to illustrate that one always has choices, and basically one can choose to be happy.
Available Formats:
- BR 07057 - 3 volumes.
Half the House
Author: Herbert Kohl
Annotation:
The educator and author of //36 Children// provides a look at his painful journey toward personal liberation. He confronts the question of whether one can live a healthy life in an unhealthy society and whether it is possible to change oneself in midlife.
Available Formats:
Listening as a Way of Becoming
Author: Earl Koile
Annotation:
Importance of effective listening in terms of its positive results on both the person expressing thoughts and the person hearing them. Suggestions are offered on ways to overcome barriers and become more sensitive.
Available Formats:
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Author: Harold S. Kushner
Annotation:
Impelled by personal tragedy in his own life, the author, a rabbi, helps others cope with grief, guilt, rage, bitterness, and bewilderment at God's “unfairness.” In his search for answers to why tragedies seemingly strike those undeserving of them, he offers comfort and reassurance to the troubled.
Available Formats:
Watersheds: Mastering Life's Unpredictable Crises
Author: Robert H. Lauer and Jeanette C. Lauer
Annotation:
The two social scientists interviewed more than six hundred people to learn how they managed what the Lauers term “watersheds”: unforeseen, life-altering events and experiences. Includes a multitude of examples of how people successfully cope with change.
Available Formats:
Working Smart: How to Accomplish More in Half the Time
Author: Michael LeBouef
Annotation:
How to get more done in less time and with less hassle. Teaches how to set specific goals on a daily, intermediate, and lifetime basis, and how to analyze and revise use of time accordingly.
Available Formats:
- BR 04203 - 2 volumes.
Class: What It Is and How to Acquire It
Author: Mortimer Levitt
Annotation:
A personal approach to the art of living well by a self-made millionaire and frequent lecturer on the subject of image. Levitt, a high school dropout who says he was born on the wrong side of the tracks, equates class with integrity and distinguishes between the appurtenances and the substance of class. He divides his practical advice into four categories: what you say, how you say it, how you look, and how you live.
Available Formats:
- BR 05980 - 2 volumes.
The Search for Self-Respect
Author: Maxwell Maltz
Annotation:
Dr. Maltz demonstrates, step-by-step, how to stop dwelling on unhappiness and focus on achievement. His attempts to bring commonsense to his discussions include examples for goal-building, self-understanding, and seizing opportunities.
Available Formats:
- BR 02295 - 2 volumes.
A Better Way to Live
Author: Og Mandino
Annotation:
At age thirty-five, the author was a derelict who came very close to spending his last few dollars on a gun with which he planned to kill himself. Mandino explains what prevented his suicide, and then offers “Seventeen Rules to Live By” that he hopes will help everyone avoid living even one more day feeling failure, grief, poverty, shame, or self-pity.
Available Formats:
Your Inner Child of the Past
Author: W. Hugh Missildine
Annotation:
In layman's terms a psychiatrist discusses how individuals can deal with the childhood experiences that affect their adult lives.
Available Formats:
- BR 03483 - 3 volumes.
How to Be Awake and Alive
Author: Mildred Newman & Bernard Berkowitz
Annotation:
How the perceptions and judgments of childhood can be harmful if they are not consciously updated. Advice is given on types of attitudes and how to shake free of them. Includes abbreviated case histories.
Available Formats:
How to Be Your Own Best Friend: A Conversation with Two Psychoanalysts
Author: Mildred Newman & Bernard Berkowitz with Jean Owen
Annotation:
These practicing psychoanalysts believe that everyone can help himself by learning to be aware of his own accomplishments, by having compassion for himself, and by praising himself for achievement. Aims to help the reader feel more responsible for his own fate and more capable of directing it.
- BR 02324 - 1 volume.
How to Sell Your Ideas
Author: Jesse S. Nirenberg
Annotation:
Instructs the reader in developing communication skills in business and in private life. Describes how to capture a listener's attention, how to anticipate obstacles, and how to persuade others.
Available Formats:
- BR 06052 - 2 volumes.
Enough Is Enough: Exploding the Myth of Having It All
Author: Carol Orsborn
Annotation:
A manual that is part autobiography, part self-help guide in which Orsborn shares her own experience as a recovering superwoman and looks at the lives of women today. Her message advocates that women who have achieved career success scale down their expectations in order to enjoy life more fully.
Available Formats:
- BR 06819 - 2 volumes.
The Art of Learning to Love Yourself
Author: Cecil G. Osborne
Annotation:
Popular-psychology guide by a former clergyman offers positive procedures for creating a better self-image and achieving a greater degree of self-love and self-approval.
Available Formats:
The Mind Goes Forth: The Drama of Understanding
Author: Harry Overstreet and Bonaro Overstreet
Annotation:
A study of mutual understanding among human beings, and how it can be achieved. The authors conceive of understanding as a freedom-making process, within the reach of everyone, which liberates individuals, groups, and nations from the hostilities and extremisms that separate man from man.
Available Formats:
The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
Author: M. Scott Peck
Annotation:
Twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the 1978 classic psychological treatise concerning spirituality, self-actualization, maturation, and interpersonal relationships. Emphasizes mental and spiritual growth, love, and self-discipline.
Available Formats:
Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth: The Edited Lectures
- ADDED 2013*
- Author: M. Scott Peck
- Annotation:
Continuing with the messages put forth in //The Road Less Traveled//, Peck lectures as both psychiatrist and spiritual guide. He stresses striving for self-love rather than self-esteem and proposes that being disillusioned and being confused are actually signs of mental health. Some strong language.
Available Formats:
On Lonely Street with God
Author: Duane Pederson
Annotation:
The author, publisher of an underground Christian publication, offers Jesus Christ as the solution to personal problems, especially loneliness. He combines his own experience with articles reprinted from his newspaper.
Available Formats:
The Laughter Prescription: The Tools of Humor and How to Use Them
Author: Laurence J. Peter & Bill Dana
Annotation:
The author of the bestselling //Peter Principle// teams up with humorist Bill Dana to prescribe laughter as the best medicine. Rather than a bitter pill, they recommend humor as preventive medicine for physiological and psychological health.
Available Formats:
- BR 05340 - 2 volumes.
The Peter Prescription: How to Be Creative, Confident & Competent
Author: Laurence J. Peter
Annotation:
The author presents 66 prescriptions for making things go right. High on the list are the “Peter Peacemaker,” or taking a daily vacation, and advice for avoiding the “Incompetence Treadmill.”
Available Formats:
- BR 01918 - 2 volumes.
The Theory of 21: Finding the Power to Succeed
Author: Chuck Reaves
Annotation:
An intriguing business concept that asserts for every person who will say yes, there are twenty who will say no. For a positive response you must find the twenty-first person who will say yes.
Available Formats:
- BR 05675 - 1 volume.
Opening Closed Minds, and Persuading Others to Act Favorably
Author: William John Reilly
Annotation:
Written by the founder and director of the National Institute for Straight Thinking, this book examines the problems arising from the pace and complexity of modern life.
Available Formats:
- BR 00061 - 1 volume.
Looking Out for Number One
Author: Robert J. Ringer
Annotation:
Brash, cynical guidebook outlines startling ideas for leading a life filled with more pleasure and fewer complications.
Available Formats:
- DB 10833 - Read by Bob Butz. Reading time: 9 hours, 57 minutes.
Rogers' Rules for Businesswomen: How to Start a Career and Move Up the Ladder
Author: Henry C. Rogers
Annotation:
From the choice to pursue a career through the major decisions that a woman will make in the business world, Rogers offers inspirational and practical advice. He draws on his own perspective as head of a major PR firm, and his experiences with female associates and friends. His approach focuses on achieving personal excellence and exercising sound judgment.
Available Formats:
When Am I Going to Be Happy?: How to Break the Emotional Bad Habits That Make You Miserable
Author: Penelope Russianoff
Annotation:
A guide to help readers combat “emotional bad habits” such as depression, guilt, inferiority, anger, and phobias. Stating that we are conditioned into these ways of thinking by society, Russianoff says the habits can be changed by correcting the erroneous thinking that causes them in the first place.
Available Formats:
The Blessing
Author: Gary Smalley & John Trent
Annotation:
Discusses the importance of “the blessin,” that is, the approval received from our parents, and how it affects the way we feel about ourselves and others. Also details in religious and psychological terms how to overcome the lack of “the blessing” in our lives.
Available Formats:
Sweet Success: How to Understand the Men in Your Business Life--and Win with Your Own Rules
Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem
Living a Beautiful Life: Five Hundred Ways to Add Elegance, Order, Beauty, and Joy to Every Day of Your Life
Author: Alexandra Stoddard
Annotation:
The renowned interior designer offers her prescription for a life lived “vitally and beautifully.” Stoddard believes that “only by paying careful attention to the simple details of daily tasks and to our immediate surroundings” can we achieve joy and serenity in day-to-day existence.
Available Formats:
Solitude: A Return to the Self
Author: Anthony Storr
Annotation:
Psychotherapist Storr takes issue with the idea that intimate relationships are the exclusive source of mental and personal satisfaction. He reasons that many creative people work alone and that voluntary and enforced solitude may have a restorative value through which individuals may achieve happiness even when their interpersonal relationships are inferior.
Available Formats:
Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind
Author: Shelley E. Taylor
Annotation:
“The human mind distorts incoming information in a positive direction.” This is the conclusion reached by a psychology professor from her study of people recovering from tragic situations. She discusses how this tendency toward positive bias helps maintain mental and physical health, promotes creativity, and increases the likelihood of success in the workplace.
Available Formats:
Alphagenics: How to Use Your Brain Waves to Improve Your Life
Author: Anthony A. Zaffuto & Mary Q. Zaffuto
Annotation:
A do-it-yourself book for the layman on self-regulation of mind and body through the inducement of the alpha state, those waves emitted by the brain during the state of deep relaxation prior to sleep.
Available Formats:
Relationships
Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time
Author: Melody Beattie
Annotation:
As a follow-up to //Codependent No More// in which Beattie discussed stopping the pain of codependency and gaining control of one's life, she now addresses the topic of self care–what to do when the pain has stopped. Using case histories, she discusses topics such as recovery and relapse, breaking free, dealing with shame, overcoming fatal attractions, and dealing with the fear of commitment.
Available Formats:
Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
Author: Melody Beattie
Annotation:
Codependents–those who spend too much time and energy worrying about chemically dependent people–are, according to the author, sometimes sicker than the people addicted to drugs and alcohol. They become hostile, controlling, and manipulative as they try to protect themselves, and yet they don't seem to realize that they too have a problem. The book attempts to help codependents stop the pain and gain control of their lives.
Available Formats:
- DB 28220 - IN PROCESS
The New Codependency: Help and Guidance for Today's Generation
- ADDED 2013*
Melody Beattie
Annotation:
A follow-up to the classic //Codependent No More// explains that codependency is a pattern of behavior rather than an illness. Using examples from her own life, Beattie discusses analyzing one's actions and offers enabling techniques to set boundaries and take better care of oneself. 2009.
Available Formats:
- DB 68362 - Read by Kerry Dukin. Reading time: 10 hours, 6 minutes.