As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them?

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

Harvard Medical School has followed 824 subjects - men and women, some rich, some poor - from their teens to old age. Harvard's George Vaillant now uses these studies - the most complete ever done anywhere in the world - and the subjects' individual histories to illustrate the factors involved in reaching a happy, healthy old age. He explains precisely why some people turn out to be more resilient than others, the complicated effects of marriage and divorce, negative personality changes, and how to live a more fulfilling, satisfying and rewarding life in the later years.

At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life. Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach.

Whether you choose it or it is thrust upon you, change brings both opportunities and turmoil. Since Transitions was first published, this supportive guide has helped hundreds of thousands cope with these issues by providing an elegantly simple yet profoundly insightful road map of the transition process. With the understanding born of both personal and professional experience, William Bridges takes listeners step by step through the three stages of any transition: The Ending, The Neutral Zone, and, eventually, The New Beginning.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

Best-selling author and New York Times family columnist Bruce Feiler found himself squeezed between caring for aging parents and raising his children. So he set out on a three-year journey to find the smartest solutions and the most cutting-edge research about families. Instead of the usual family "experts", he sought out the most creative minds - from Silicon Valley to the set of Modern Family, from the country's top negotiators to the Green Berets - and asked them what team-building exercises and problem-solving techniques they use with their families.

In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness. Full of inspiration and wisdom, this book will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.

The first person ever to complete the perilous 10,000 mile journey across the inscrutable desert landscape of the Middle East, Bruce Feiler, a fifth generation Southern Jew, embarks upon a quest to reconnect with the stories of the Bible, and uncover fresh answers to profound questions.

Almost everyone feels stuck in some way. Whether you’re muddling through a midlife crisis, wrestling with writer’s block, trapped in a thankless job, or trying to remedy a fraying friendship, the resulting emotion is usually a mix of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, anger, and numbness. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Anatomy of a Breakthrough is the “deeply researched and compelling” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism) roadmap we all need to escape our inertia and flourish in the face of friction.

In Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances - a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

"True belonging doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are." Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives - experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Your thoughts and actions will be challenged. And if you take the steps John outlines, you’ll learn how to leave the past where it belongs and get on the path to healing.

Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right - a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research and delivered in energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception.

As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Nicole LePera often found herself frustrated by the limitations of traditional psychotherapy. Wanting more for her patients—and for herself—she began a journey to develop a united philosophy of mental, physical and spiritual wellness that equips people with the interdisciplinary tools necessary to heal themselves. After experiencing the life-changing results herself, she began to share what she'd learned with others—and soon "The Holistic Psychologist" was born. Now, Dr. LePera is ready to share her much-requested protocol with the world.

This is a book for working women and mothers who are ready to release the culturally inherited belief that their worth is equal to their productivity, and instead create a personal and professional life that's based on presence, meaning, and joy. As opposed to focusing on "fitting it all in", time management, and leaning in, as so many books geared at ambitious women do, this book embraces the notion that through doing less women can have - and be - more.

Everywhere around you are distractions: That text you respond to quickly, just to get it out of the way. The newest money-making side hustle to cross your mind. The evening spent organizing your overflowing kitchen cupboards. Disruptions are the enemies of a life well lived—both the new distractions of our generation and timeless ones that have existed for centuries. They all add up to make you feel restless, tired, and unfulfilled. They’re keeping you from living with joy, from accomplishing the good that only you can do.

During his 20 years as a Navy officer and SEAL, Rich Diviney was intimately involved in a specialized SEAL selection process, which whittled a group of hundreds of extraordinary candidates down to a handful of the most elite performers. Diviney was often surprised by which candidates washed out and which succeeded. Some could have all the right skills and still fail, while others he might have initially dismissed would prove to be top performers.

At Your Best gives you the strategies you need to win at work and at home by living in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. Influential podcast host and thought leader Carey Nieuwhof understands the challenges of constant pressure. After a season of burnout almost took him out, he discovered how to get time, energy, and priorities working in his favor. This approach freed up more than one thousand productive hours a year for him and can do the same for you.

Amanda Kloots bravely reflects on love, loss, and life with her husband, Broadway star, and Tony Award nominee Nick Cordero, whose public battle with COVID-19 and tragic death made headlines around the world.

To know your true calling - your dharma, as the yogis say - is perhaps the greatest desire within each of us. And yet, few can say we know our purpose with absolute certainty. Fortunately, there is a time-tested guide - an ancient map - for discovering and fulfilling your unique calling. In The Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope walks you through each step of the journey.

Joe De Sena has spent his life running toward challenge and discomfort. Why? Because how we react to challenging situations defines us and our families. The only tools we have as humans to survive the many peaks and valleys of a full life are preparedness, health, leadership, and most importantly, resilience. Why do so many parents struggle to finish things we start, delay gratification, and protect our health - and why do our kids continue to struggle in every facet of life? Because we haven’t showed them a path to resilience, and we haven’t fought for it ourselves.

The cacophony of modern life can be deafening, leaving us feeling frazzled and uneasy. In this warm, wise book, Prem Rawat teaches us how to turn down the noise to “hear ourselves” - to listen to the subtle song of peace that sings inside each of us. Once we learn to truly “hear ourselves” and the voice of peace within, then we can hold on to that as we face all the noise of the world. The culmination of a lifetime of study, Hear Yourself lays out the crucial steps we can use to focus on the voice within.

As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone.

Whether it’s meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it. In The Awakened Brain, psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller shows you how. Weaving her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, Dr. Miller’s book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it.

Researchers estimate that the average person will influence up to eighty thousand people over the course of their lifetime—or 2.8 people daily. That’s a stadium full of people whom each of us affects in ways positive or negative, sometimes without us realizing. What if we paid attention to this fact? Would we live differently? Would we lead differently? Would we put down our phones and be more present with the people in front of us?

Joe Navarro spent a quarter century with the FBI, pursuing spies and other dangerous criminals across the globe. In his line of work, successful leadership was quite literally a matter of life or death. Now he brings his hard-earned lessons to you. Be Exceptional distills a lifetime of experience into five principles that outstanding individuals live by.

Acclaimed professional organizer Judith Kolberg and Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, renowned ADHD clinical psychologist, are back with an updated edition of their classic text for adults with ADD. Their collaboration offers the best understanding and solutions for adults who want to get and stay organized. Listeners will enjoy all new content on organizing digital information, managing distractions, organizing finances, and coping with the "black hole" of the Internet.

This deeply inspiring book by Dr. Susan Biali Haas, M.D.—a physician, executive coach, and leader in conversations on burnout and mental health—can help you break the cycle of overwhelm and exhaustion by using simple, science-based shifts that restore joy, health, and meaning to your work and life.

Whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. No matter how hard you try, you’re somewhere else. The consequence is that you miss out on 50 percent of your life - including the most important moments.