The Gift of a Year: How to Achieve the Most Meaningful, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Year of Your Life [Paperback]

Mira Kirshenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2001

Are you so caught up in your busy life that you've lost sight of you?

Do you fantasize about the things you'd do if only you weren't so bogged down with family and career responsibilities?

What would you give to make those fantasies a reality?

In this one-of-a-kind book, author and therapist Mira Kirshenbaum shows women how to take their dreams off the back burner and make them a vital part of their lives. The Gift of a Year offers a practical, step-by-step program to help busy women find the time they've been longing for. The idea is simple: You give yourself one year to do something you've always wanted to do, whether it's undertaking a major challenge or merely recharging your batteries. This book will help you discover:

• The 10 "Dream-Discovering Questions" that help you learn what you really want
• How to translate dreams into deeds
• How to get the support you need to make it happen
• How your special year will change your life

Including checklists, quizzes, and empowering stories of women who have incorporated this unique plan into their everyday existences, The Gift of a Year will help you make your life more meaningful, more fulfilling, and more your own ... starting right now.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mira Kirshenbaum is an individual and family psychotherapist in private practice and the clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute of Massachusetts. She is the bestselling author of four previous books, including Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay and Parent/Teen Breakthrough (with Charles Foster). She has appeared on Today, The Maury Povich Show, Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and ABC News.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Plume (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452282144
• ISBN-13: 978-0452282148
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mira Kirshenbaum is clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute, a center for therapy and research in Boston, and has been treating patients in individual and couples therapy for more than thirty years. She is the author of ten other books, including Our Love is Too Good, To Feel So Bad, Everything Happens for a Reason, and When Good People Have Affairs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

150 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She is writing about my life!, February 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How Give Yourself Most Meaningful Satisfying Pleasurable Year your Life (Hardcover)

This book is truly inspiring. I am ordering 3 more books to give as gifts to dear women friends who are all experiencing the same "emptiness" that has invaded my life. I seem to have it all: the degrees, the family, the relative financial security that the above all bring, but I have lost myself somewhere along the way. "Quiet desperation", but not knowing why. I have FOUND my answer by reading this book. It isn't magic, it isn't "hocus-pocus", it is identifying ME in my world, and taking a year to re-discover what makes me tick, what made me dream, what made me ME so many years ago. In the process, I'm already becoming a better mother, wife, friend, "employee" ... A MUST READ! Each woman inside herself has a spark, so many of us have let our other-self and other-roles smother that spark. No more. Give yourself the gift of this book, and then the gift of a year to regain that sparkle.

109 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Changing & Uplifting, May 22, 2000

By 

Leiza A. Greenwood (The United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How Give Yourself Most Meaningful Satisfying Pleasurable Year your Life (Hardcover)

Mira Kirshenbaum spoke to the suffocating woman inside of me. I know she speaks to all women when she asks, "how does a part of yourself ever turn up missing in the first place?"

This was a gift from my mother for my 25th birthday. As a wife, full-time working mother of a four year old and all around self-inflicted super woman, I had a "sense" that a small part of me (okay a huge part) was slowly drowning in that turbulent sea we call everyday life. I trusted & loved my mother enough that if she felt it was important to give this book to me - than perhaps I better read it. I couldn't have anticipated the amazing transformation my soul would undergo. Through reading this book I was given the tools to find a center again that was in me, rather than outside of myself. I have a renewed anticipation of the wonders my life has to offer me. I have now purchased four copies to give to my closests friends, including my mother. I truly feel that it is that crucial and rewarding for all women to read this book.

If you THINK you need to regain your spirit at the start of this book you'll KNOW you need to by the end.

Be prepared to have a few good crys and to have a weight lifted from your shoulders, namely the world. You really can breathe again and she'll show you how.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great concept and practical ways of making it happen., November 11, 2001

By 

Kim Foster "Kim" (Goleta, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Gift of a Year: How to Achieve the Most Meaningful, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Year of Your Life (Paperback)

I'd give this 5 stars but I haven't finished it yet. What I have read, however, is a powerful statement and justification of taking some time off for yourself and how that can be done regardless of the demands on your time. The biggest obstacle in our way is our reluctance to be selfish - putting ourselves first for a change and realizing that if we don't take care of us, we really can't take proper care of anyone or anything else.

I'm looking forward to choosing the focus of my year and putting it into practice!