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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 [Paperback]

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

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Book Description

December 26, 2007

"Susan Piver shows us how to create a fearless life." -Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Healthy Aging

“…a beautiful book about how to overcome fear and be empowered in your life…”

-Susan Orloff, M.D., author of Positive Energy

 

In this inspirational and practical guide to conquering fear and embracing joy, Susan Piver gives you the tools you need to break down the barriers that are holding you back from joyful relationships, a meaningful career, and unshakeable self-confidence.

With a direct, warm, and playful approach to ancient practices, Susan Piver teaches you how to incorporate principles of Buddhism and mindfulness into everyday life.  These common-sense ideas and practices can help you to find contentment in every situation and bring love to those around you. Most important, you will find the courage to live the life you were meant to—no holds barred.

Discover the courage to live with authenticity and ease– discover How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life.

Susan Piver is the author of the bestselling The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say “I Do”.  She has been featured as a well-being expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, The Early Show, and The Today Show and  in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Redbook, and O, The Oprah Magazine.  She has trained in Buddhist practice for ten years, is a graduate of Buddhist seminary, and is an authorized meditation teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage.  She is the meditation expert on www.drweil.com. Visit her website at www.susanpiver.com.

“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

 


Frequently Bought Together

How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy + The Wisdom of a Broken Heart: An Uncommon Guide to Healing, Insight, and Love + Quiet Mind: A Beginner's Guide to Meditation
Price For All Three: $37.56

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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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (December 26, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312355971
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312355975
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #531,266 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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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Coming in to yourself, April 28, 2007
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
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
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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)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
journaling exercise, meditation program
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Seven-Day Meditation Program, Dalai Lama, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, New York, Own Life
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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