Traveling Hopefully: How to Lose Your Family Baggage and Jumpstart Your Life [Hardcover]

Libby Gill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2004

"This book is for real, because Libby is for real..."
- Dr. Phil McGraw in his foreword to Traveling Hopefully

Are you living a life based on who you really are or one built on outdated messages from your past? Is your past negatively influencing your present and potentially derailing your future? What if you could shift your perspective from limiting to liberating?

Now you can learn to let go of your baggage and create a life of passion and purpose. Success strategist and executive coach Libby Gill is your partner in life change as she shares her inspiring story and guides readers step-by-step through the journey of self-transformation.

With courage and candor, Libby poignantly discloses how she struggled with a family legacy which included divorce, mental illness and molestation, robbing her of her best possible life until she learned to dissect the past so she could direct the future. With a transformative process she calls the Five Steps to Jumpstart Your Life, Libby provides practical tools and down-to-earth insights that translate abstract concepts into concrete action.

The 21 Hopeful Tools are easy-to-follow exercises that take readers through this process, showing them how to:

*dissect the past to direct the future
*link internal clarity with external action
*create a Traveling Hopefully personal roadmap
*recruit a Support Squad to provide information and inspiration
*keep moving toward what you want and away from what no longer serves you

Filled with tips and tactics, personal accounts, and client success stories, Traveling Hopefully shows readers how to create big-picture visions and turn them into bottom-line action so they can lose their baggage and live the life of their dreams.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At age 40, Libby Gill felt like a fraud. A high-profile executive coach and strategist leading individuals and corporations to success, she was "flat-out miserable" inside, shaped by her past. Her journey as a "hopeful traveler intent on finding the purpose and the passion that would allow me to create the life I envisioned" led her to share her process to fulfillment in Traveling Hopefully.  

Gill combines detailed, often painful excerpts from her personal story ("an expert in suffering," she calls herself) with client anecdotes to illustrate her Five Steps to Jumpstart Your Life and 21 Hopeful Tools: philosophical concepts turned into self-help exercises and action steps. Her point is that you need to look back at the "emotional relics" of your family legacy, understand how you got stuck there, then "deconstruct your past" in order to move forward towards your goals. Each tool is presented with detailed, step-by-step instructions in Gill's warm, personal style. You'll feel like you have an understanding coach by your side, supporting you through each step, sharing her own story as she coaxes you to reveal, understand, and move past your own. Foreword by Dr. Phil McGraw. --Joan Price

From Publishers Weekly

This book takes its title from a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson—"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," which serves as Gill's core philosophy. The communications consultant and executive coach explores the desire many people have to disentangle themselves from childhood traumas and move forward in life. Gill uses personal stories of her own apparently abuse- and neglect-filled childhood as a way of illustrating that even the biggest emotional obstacles can be overcome. The first section of the book points out that only by acknowledging and processing our past can we get rid of the negative themes that often shape our adult lives. From there it's a journey to discover who we are as individuals and what we can offer the world. She offers 21 "hopeful tools" to aid readers in reassessing themselves and their goals, with lots of exercises along the way (e.g. how to convert a negative self-image into a positive one). This book is sometimes painful but inspiring, as Gill's goal is to transform her readers from dreamers who are dissatisfied with life to doers who have renewed purpose and ambition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 253 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (September 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312323948
• ISBN-13: 978-0312323943
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,794,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

An entertainment industry veteran, Libby Gill spent fifteen years heading public relations and corporate communications at Universal Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting. She was also the branding brain behind the launch of the Dr. Phil Show.

Libby is now an internationally respected executive coach, brand strategist, speaker and bestselling author. She has shared her success strategies on the Today Show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, CNN, NPR, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, Fox News, CBS Early Show, and in Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Self and many more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical tools, plus stories from the heart, October 1, 2004

By 

W. J. Winks (Santa Monica, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Traveling Hopefully: How to Lose Your Family Baggage and Jumpstart Your Life (Hardcover)

Having read many self-help books and ultimately burned out on them, Travelling Hopefully was a pleasant surprise. The way that Libby tells her personal stories, and then goes into the steps she took - and we can take - to deal with similar issues, made me really connect with the author. Most writers are not as revealing, choosing to use stories from other anonymous people versus revealing their own dark secrets. Libby's stories are beautifully told and completely moving, and the solutions that she offers are real, and achievable. Travelling Hopefully is the best book that I've read in this arena.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read, September 27, 2004

By 

Dakota Moon "readingismylife" (Southern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Traveling Hopefully: How to Lose Your Family Baggage and Jumpstart Your Life (Hardcover)

An extraordinary book by an extraordinary woman, "Travelling Hopefully" inspires and educates, providing simple tools for the real people in the world to change their lives.It took courage to reveal her story, and even more courage to change her life. It made me feel "If she could do it, so can I". Don't miss this fascinating book which reads like a novel giving you life skills along the way.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From hopeful to JOYFUL!, October 5, 2004

By 

Jan Landis (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Traveling Hopefully: How to Lose Your Family Baggage and Jumpstart Your Life (Hardcover)

I'm a motivational book freak - and this one is at the top of my list! First of all, Libby's real life struggles read like a novel. Secondly, the tools she created to transcend her past are simply amazing! This book helps us identify our family legacies and turns negatives from our past into positives in our present. No blame, shame or guilt here - just a roadmap to creating a life full of joy and purpose. I was astonished at how effective Libby's tools are - and how quickly they return results. This book changed my life!!