Best-selling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Featuring advice from Congdon herself and interviews with a roster of established artists, illustrators, and creatives, this one-of-a-kind book will show listeners how to identify and nurture their own visual identity, navigate the influence of artists they admire, push through fear and insecurity, and appreciate the value of their personal journey.

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. This is a book about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.

This brief, easy-to-understand and inspiring book has become a guide for thousands of people—giving them the tools they need to find their next move, trust themselves, and take action.

Ikigai is a Japanese phenomenon commonly understood as "your reason to get up in the morning". Ikigai can be small moments: the morning air, a cup of coffee, a compliment. It can also be deep convictions: a fulfilling job, lasting friendships, balanced health. Whether big or small, your ikigai is the path to success and happiness in your own life. Author Ken Mogi introduces five pillars of ikigai to help you make the most of each day and become your most authentic self.

What happens when you learn to communicate better with everyone? No doubt you’ve had to endure a painfully awkward conversation, more than once in your life. Maybe it was a stranger, a colleague, or a date. Maybe it was a group discussion. You found yourself breaking a sweat, not knowing what to say. The more time passed, the more tense you became. You thought about all the communication books you’ve read in your life and wished you had them with you…to knock yourself unconscious as a way out of the conversation. The best thing about the whole situation was the moment it ended.

Is talking to others your Achilles' heel? Do you dread having to talk to your boss or show a presentation at a meeting? Is your lack of public speaking skills holding your career back? If so, Crucial Communication: Control Difficult Workplace Conversations Using Essential Dialogue Tools to Achieve Positive Results More Often is the right book for you! This book will show you real-life communication techniques so that you feel more comfortable talking to people at work, in different social settings, and more!

Your vagus nerve is the largest and most important nerve in your body. It carries messages to and from your brain, gut, heart, and other major muscles and organs. However, common issues like inflammation, stress, or physical trauma can interfere with the nerve's ability to function. Luckily, there are tons of quick-and-easy ways to activate and exercise the nerve, strengthening its function and restoring your body to good health.

It’s self-love that makes us feel truly happy, and this book is here to show you exactly how to achieve that. The author, a successful entrepreneur, and mentor for women in business has listened to what women want and now gives them the tools to achieve that. If you want to discover ways of increasing your self-worth, gain more confidence, and be free of self-doubt, this book is for you.

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt, the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant, thunking shovel full of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved, the hell of betrayal, the hell of betraying, the hell of divorce, the hell of a kid in trouble...the hell of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last. We all walk through hell. The point is not to come out empty-handed.... There is real and profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform that suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life.

In Write It Down, Make It Happen, Henriette Anne Klauser, PhD, explains how simply writing down your goals in life is the first step toward achieving them. Writing can even help you understand what you want. In this book, you will hear stories about ordinary people who witnessed miracles large and small unfold in their lives after they performed the basic act of putting their dreams on paper. Klauser's down-to-earth tips and easy exercises are sure to get your creative juices flowing. Before you know it, you'll be writing your own ticket to success.

Great leaders are driven to win. Yet career wins can come at great cost to your health, relationships, and personal well-being. Why does it seem impossible to both win at work and succeed at life? Michael Hyatt knows we can do better because he's seen it in his more than four decades as a successful executive and a loving and present husband and father. Today Michael and his daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller, coach leaders to live the double win.

With the world going remote, and data science following along, you can start and pursue a career in data right here, right now. How do I start? What do I need to know? What is data analytics? I'm sure one, if not all, of these questions have run through your mind. Well, the answer is data literacy: the ability to read, understand, and communicate data into information. Building a solid foundation of practical knowledge is the first step to being successful in data. From there, you can finally decide what direction you should go in and start gaining the required knowledge.

Shetty grew up in a family where you could become one of three things—a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. His family was convinced he had chosen option three: Instead of attending his college graduation ceremony, he headed to India to become a monk, to meditate every day for four to eight hours, and devote his life to helping others. After three years, one of his teachers told him that he would have more impact on the world if he left the monk’s path to share his experience and wisdom with others.

Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors. This is why we resist efforts to change, often until they feel completely futile. But by extracting crucial insight from our most damaging habits, building emotional intelligence by better understanding our brains and bodies, releasing past experiences at a cellular level, and learning to act as our highest potential future selves, we can step out of our own way and into our potential.

In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

This audiobook is for highly sensitive people who have felt out of place in the modern world. It provides a narrative that describes how they fit into a lineage of creatives throughout history. Jacob Nordby offers a bold new definition of success in the modern era. "The only success now is living and creating a work-of-art life: unique, rich with meaning, naked of anything we don't care about, and ruthless about carving out something absolutely real from a world that has gorged itself on fakeness and become critically ill from it."

If you are an artist, you need to make your art. That's not an overstatement - it's a fact; if you stop doing your creative work, your quality of life is diminished. But what do you do when life gets in the way? In this down-to-earth handbook, experienced artist coach Beth Pickens offers practical advice for developing a lasting and meaningful artistic practice in the face of life's inevitable obstacles and distractions. This thoughtful volume suggests creative ways to address the challenges all artists must overcome.

Based on the authors' wildly popular Huffington Post article "18 Things That Creative People Do Differently" (which generated five million views and 500,000 Facebook shares in one week), this well-researched and engaging audiobook uncovers what we know about creativity, and what anyone can do to enhance this essential aspect of their lives and work.

Best-selling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Featuring advice from Congdon herself and interviews with a roster of established artists, illustrators, and creatives, this one-of-a-kind book will show listeners how to identify and nurture their own visual identity, navigate the influence of artists they admire, push through fear and insecurity, and appreciate the value of their personal journey.

All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, The Creative Habit provides you with 32 practical exercises based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable 35-year career.

In The Art Therapy Way: A Self-Care Guide, you will discover how creativity can help you calm anxiety, destress, boost your mood, and more (even if you do not believe that you have a creative bone in your body). Inside you will find therapeutic art prompts, meditations, and process questions to help you tune in to your inner experience and connect with your heart, body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

Writer Flora Bowley believes that everyone can learn how to create a joy-filled life by practicing what she calls The Art of Aliveness. Aliveness, in this context, goes well beyond the acts of sleeping, eating, working, etc., inviting us instead to look into the depths of our own experience, embrace what we find there, and commit to bringing our truest self into the world. The Art of Aliveness teaches us how to create beauty out of sorrow, find meaning in the apparent madness that we sometimes find in the world, and choose to build a life we love regardless of the cards we've been dealt.

What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives.

From artist, psychiatrist, and founder of The Artist's Journey courses in creativity: the path to the art and life you've dreamed of. Inspiration for your creative journey. Art mirrors our inner state in ways that are meaningful and mysterious. Creativity is central to feeling alive. Are you an artist tired of feeling blocked from expressing onto the canvas the art that lives deep within you? It's later than you think. You don't want to come to your final moments regretting your unlived dreams.

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reveals what leads to these moments - be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab - so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists, to politicians and business leaders, to poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous flow theory to explore the creative process.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve.

Best-selling author and creativity expert Jeff Goins dismantles the myth that being creative is a hindrance to success by revealing how an artistic temperament is in fact a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

A burned-out businessman takes an unplanned vacation to his mountain lodge and meets a strange visitor who issues a startling summons. He is to leave his whole life behind and journey into the unknown on a mission which may have world-changing impact. Faced with the agony of this decision, he realizes that he may not have any choice against the hand of destiny. Join him on the path to discovery as he encounters teachers, guides and ragged shamans who change the way he sees the world forever.

Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration - and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt - Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief.

Every person is born a creator, but the world has conditioned us to believe that we are not. Most of us are not fulfilled because we have forgotten who we truly are and what we were created to do — create. There is a reason that one of the most fulfilling, expansive, and healing actions we can do as humans is to create using our gifts. The reason many of us do not create is not that we don’t know how, but simply that we are afraid and think ourselves out of it, even though we know deep down it is what we want to be doing every single day.