Re: Any good books you can recommend on this topic, FOY?:-)

Ronin,

Thank you for your kind words. I am a natural list maker... guess it will help out if I ever have major memory problems, eh?

Also, I read lots of stuff - whatever I can get my hands on. But, in terms of books, I guess I just grab snippets of knowledge here and there from where ever I find them. I would look into a couple different type of books:

Inspirational, you know the kind of silly Anthony Robbins, Dale Carnegie type of books. I think that "Releasing the Giant Within" by Robbins was good (though some of the information reported as 'facts' were more likely urban legends. Regardless, it is what it is - a tool to help shift perspective to more positive messages.

I really liked The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran. This is considered a philosophy work, and in it, Gibran kind of goes through different pre-set notions that we can have (in story format). It is a nice opportunity to 'step back' and look at the reasons that we may have certain opinions or feelings about different types of people or activities. I have included a link to an online version of this book below.

A book like "Putting Your Talent to Work: Identifying, Cultivating & Marketing Your Natural Talents" by Lucia Capacchione and Peggy Van Pelt is a nice little book. It includes a lot of workbook type activities and mixes right brain and left brain use when looking into your talents/wishes.

Some type of creative visualization or guided imagery book would be a nice read - another means to re-pattern our thinking.

I always think that the words 'I want to' or 'I wish' can be stumbling blocks for us when we are talking about our futures. Granted, they have their place, but many people never take the next step at bringing them into reality. For example, saying "I will.... and setting a firm date (for a trip or a home remodel) will make it an absolute. Next, just work through and make it happen. It is too easy to put things off without using the absolutist language to define what you WILL do. With that said, I found a book titled, "Write it Down, Make it Happen," by Henrietta Anne Klauser. I had to buy the book because it really matches my practices. Alas, I have not read through the whole thing, but it looks like it offers some good advice about how to see things through.

At the end of this post, I've linked to a couple 'self-esteem' sites, perhaps these would be helpful too.

http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibtable.html
http://www.self-esteem.com/
http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/links.shtml