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How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy
 
 
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How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy [Hardcover]

Susan Piver (Author, Reader)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 3, 2007
How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life is an inspirational and practical guide to conquering fear and embracing joy.
 
Although you may not realize it fear is getting in your way and stopping you from connecting with others, realizing the significance of your life, and finding fulfillment and joy.  It doesn't have to be this way.  Susan Piver has the key to breaking down the barriers of fear that are holding you back.  Using simple meditation techniques, based in Buddhist principles, she will teach you how to:
            -Open your heart to relationships
            -Gain the confidence to pursue a meaningful career
            -Achieve perspective to live your authentic life
 
With a contemporary approach to ancient practices Susan teaches you how to incorporate principles of meditation and mindfulness into your everyday life.  This isn't about enlightenment on a mountaintop it is a way of bringing intelligence and courage to the way you relate to yourself, your family, your friends, and your life.  
 
How Not to be Afraid of Your Own Life features the "7-Day Freedom from Fear Meditation Program" a guided journey into discovering what may be holding you back from experiencing life to the fullest.  Using meditation, journaling, and other reflective practices you will find a respite from everyday pressures and learn techniques to help you re-enter your busy life refreshed, renewed, and ready to live the life you were born to.
 
Advance Praise for How Not to be Afraid of Your Own Life
 
"I have long recommended meditation as central to a healthy lifestyle.  Susan Piver teaches this important practice in a trustworthy and practical way - and shows us how to use its lessons to create a fearless life."
            -Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Healthy Aging
 
"Susan Piver has worked her magic again. She gives us an everyday approach to Buddhism, so that all of us can benefit from the wisdom of this magnificent philosophy. In this wacky world we all need practices and perspectives that ground us in the here and now. Navigate and swim the river more gracefully with Susan's advice."
-Rodney Yee, author of Yoga: The Poetry of the Body
 
"In direct and playful language, Susan Piver's new book translates Buddhist wisdom to show its relevance to daily life."
            -Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
 
"Susan Piver has written a beautiful book about how to overcome fear and be empowered in your life based on her years of Buddhist practice."
­-Judith Orloff, MD, author of Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength, and Love
 
"How we can live a life more awake, present and connected without the impediments of beliefs, ideas, and fears created from past experience?  In simple but startlingly clear language, Piver takes the mystery out of Buddhism, and makes it relevant to our struggles to be happy in the 21st century."
            -Mark Hyman, M.D., author of Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss
 
Susan Piver is the author of the bestselling The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do".  She has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, CBS The Early Show, The Today Show and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Modern Bride, O Magazine, and Redbook.  She has trained in Buddhist practice for ten years, is a graduate of Buddhist seminary, and is an authorized meditation teacher.  She is the meditation expert on www.drweil.com and www.healthyageing.com.  She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.  Visit her website at www.susanpiver.com
 


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers of popular self-help books may recognize Piver as the author of The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do." But Piver has also been a student of Buddhism for 10 years and is an authorized meditation teacher. This little book distills what Piver has learned from meditation, retreats and sessions with her spiritual teacher, offering a skillful description of Buddhist meditation for the beginner. Her point is very simple: "There is a kind of happiness that is effortlessly present at all times. This happiness comes from stopping the relentless search to fulfill our own needs. It comes from relaxing with things exactly as they are." In that vein, she explores several basic Buddhist concepts and also lays out a sort of in-home retreat for greater self-awareness, a seven-day, hour-by-hour program of journaling, walks and meditation. In trying in this way to combine the more spiritual Buddhist and more pragmatic self-help genres, she produces a book that's both personal and contemplative, but that may not appeal to readers of either genre. (Apr. 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"I have long recommended meditation as central to a healthy lifestyle. Susan Piver teaches this important practice in a trustworthy and practical way--and shows us how to use its lessons to create a fearless life."--Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Healthy Aging
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (April 3, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312355963
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312355968
  • Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.2 x 0.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Piver is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do" and the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life, chosen as best spiritual book of 2007 by Books for a Better Life.

Piver teaches internationally on love, creativity, meditation, and spirituality for actual humans with relationships, jobs, deep yearnings, depressions, triumphs, bad hair days, and a multitude of ridiculously petty grievances. She teaches from personal experience.

Piver has been a practicing Buddhist since 1995 and graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004.

Her new book is The Wisdom of a Broken Heart: An Uncommon Guide to Healing, Insight, and Love, published by Simon and Schuster in January 2010.

Piver has written for Body and Soul, SELF, Oprah magazine, Buddhadharma, and the Shambhala Sun and is regularly featured in the media, including appearances on Oprah, Today, The Tyra Banks show, CNN, and in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Money, and others.

For more information, visit susanpiver.com.


 

Customer Reviews

20 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Coming in to yourself, April 28, 2007
This review is from: How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy (Hardcover)
When I read the title of this book I was a little taken aback--Afraid of my own life? Could I be? But Piver addresses issues and fears that are common themes in life--fears that are part of the human experience--and shows us in a methodically, and linear way, how to acknowledge and then diffuse those fears, by facing them head on. She disects some basic ideas in a very clear, direct, friendly and accessible way. It is as though Ms. Piver is sitting down to a cup of tea with you, to be that friend that listens and affirms all the crappy stuff that can happen to us, but then goes on to show us that by using the ancient practice of meditiation, ultimately, we can be ok with it. Or perhaps more accurately, it can be ok with us.

The meditation instructions are clear, specific and very accessible--and the 7 day meditation program looks like a great way take a committed practice of meditation to the next level. I'll say, it has inspired ME to get my butt to the cushion more, since reading the book.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful intro to Buddhism, July 12, 2007
By 
Kate (Cleveland OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy (Hardcover)
Susan Piver's book is a wonderful introduction to Buddhism for the beginner. She explains the basic meditations of Buddhist practice with a fresh, light approach. Many Buddhist meditation texts are bogged down in background, and she skips the unnecessary details to cut to the chase. She is able to use references to the everyday situations most people encounter, and apply principles in the book.
This is my "go-to" book for my practice and I highly recommend it.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Appealing, honest, brave, July 29, 2007
By 
This review is from: How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy (Hardcover)
This is an excellent book on Buddhism that weaves Susan's own stories and challenges into the fabric of a meditation practice.
I found it accessible, straightforward, and compelling.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
ONE MORNING I TURNED on CNN and saw that the terror alert had been elevated to orange. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
journaling exercise, meditation cushion, meditation program
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Dalai Lama, Day Meditation Program, New York, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
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