indecisiveness, a talk with emily p. freeman [video]

Do you ever feel that there is a more authentic, primal self within you waiting to be free? Glennon Doyle has felt this way, too—like a wild animal in captivity who was conditioned not to feel, think, or trust herself. She tells her story in Untamed, part memoir—covering her personal story of addiction and rehab, falling in love with a woman, leaving her marriage, and rebuilding her life—and part call to action for any woman who feels held captive by society’s rules and expectations.

Through exploration of her story, she instructs readers to rebuild their lives using emotion, intuition, and imagination as guiding forces. In this guide, we’ll explore Doyle’s journey out of captivity and her lessons for other captive women. Along the way, we’ll explore complementary ideas from other feminist thinkers, psychological reasoning for aspects of captivity, and practical actionables to help you live Doyle’s principles.

Released in 2010, The Gifts of Imperfection is a New York Times bestseller by researcher, speaker, and author Brené Brown. The book explores the theory and practices behind “Wholehearted living”: a concept Brown devised after years of research into shame, vulnerability, and self-worth. According to Brown, living Wholeheartedly will help you to cultivate worthiness: the conviction that you are good enough as you are and that you deserve to be loved.

In this guide, we’ll explore how Brown conceives worthiness and shame and how her approach to these topics compares to her contemporaries' work. Furthermore, we’ll discuss Brown’s 10 strategies for living Wholeheartedly and the research that underpins (and occasionally challenges) them.

Jack Canfield struck gold as a co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, but it took years for him to achieve success. In The Success Principles, he details 67 principles to help anyone achieve their goals and dreams, based on his study and interviews with hundreds of successful people. The basic formula for success is to identify what you want, know that you deserve to have it, and use the book’s principles to get you there.

The book's Principles include taking responsibility for your life, setting goals and visualizing success, facing your fears, forgiving others so you can move forward, asking for and graciously receiving feedback, and appreciating your successes.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz contends that the vast array of choices presented to us leaves us stressed and indecisive. To lift this burden, Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action, recommends we learn how to better navigate our choices, from groceries to health insurance.

Schwartz’s work combines psychology, economics, and his personal experiences. In this guide, we’ll examine the types of choices we face, the challenges of making choices, how excessive choices make these challenges more difficult, and how to live with expanded choice. Our guide adds scientific and cultural context to Schwartz’s ideas, plus updates on how choice has grown since the book’s publication.

Predictably Irrational takes a close look at the common pitfalls of human logic and explores the forces that are really driving your everyday actions. There's a big difference between how you should act and how you do act, and the difference is costing you everyday.

The book covers a range of psychological biases and how to counter them. You’ll learn why keeping your options open may actually diminish opportunities, why you’re more likely to be satisfied with your meal if you order first, and how your real estate agent might be making your decisions for you.

In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp argue that many leadership models are unsustainable because they don’t prioritize self-management and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This causes leaders to burn out, lose their passion, and succumb to an unhealthy culture of competition and greed. As a result, employees disengage, turnover soars, and organizations break down from within. To overcome these issues, the authors argue that leaders must learn to understand and manage their emotions and mindset, communicate effectively with others, and align their actions and behaviors with their goals and commitments.

Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp present 15 commitments that conscious leaders must uphold to run an effective organization, which we’ve synthesized into eight primary behaviors. We’ll explain what each behavior is, why it’s important, and how to put it into action. In our commentary, we’ll further discuss how to improve your leadership abilities and adopt the authors’ recommended behaviors, citing experts like Brené Brown (Dare to Lead) and Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth).

Do you ever feel that there is a more authentic, primal self within you waiting to be free? Glennon Doyle has felt this way, too—like a wild animal in captivity who was conditioned not to feel, think, or trust herself. She tells her story in Untamed, part memoir—covering her personal story of addiction and rehab, falling in love with a woman, leaving her marriage, and rebuilding her life—and part call to action for any woman who feels held captive by society’s rules and expectations.

Through exploration of her story, she instructs readers to rebuild their lives using emotion, intuition, and imagination as guiding forces. In this guide, we’ll explore Doyle’s journey out of captivity and her lessons for other captive women. Along the way, we’ll explore complementary ideas from other feminist thinkers, psychological reasoning for aspects of captivity, and practical actionables to help you live Doyle’s principles.

Our lives are full of big decisions, yet our minds are wired to make bad ones. Authors Dan and Chip Heath claim that we make poor decisions due to our biases and illogical ways of thinking. In Decisive, they draw on psychology research to argue that it’s possible to overcome the cognitive flaws that impair decision-making. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Heath brothers’ four-step process for improving our choices. You’ll learn how to:

• Overcome biases that distort your decision-making
• Develop options that you hadn’t considered before
• Gather credible information to inform your choices
• Put your emotions into perspective during tough decisions
• Prepare for a decision’s best-case and worst-case scenarios

As we explore this process, we’ll compare the authors’ ideas on decision-making to those of other experts on choice, such as Barry Schwartz, Annie Duke, and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also contextualize the book’s ideas using research on how culture and society influence decision-making. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the Heath brothers’ strategies with actionable steps.

We’ve all felt trapped at some point in our lives, when our motivation falters and all our hard work grinds to a halt. In Anatomy of a Breakthrough, Adam Alter argues that everybody hits roadblocks in life, and because we hide our frustration, we’re unaware that everyone else goes through the same thing. However, there’s hope even when you feel trapped, and Alter proposes a range of solutions that might help you find your way out of the woods.

In this guide, we’ll explain what it means to be “stuck,” the barriers that often cause this, and how reacting poorly to a perceived lack of progress can only dig you in deeper. We’ll then describe Alter’s remedy—slowing down, exploring new perspectives, and making your own luck through persistence. We’ll also connect Alter’s ideas with those of other motivation experts, what other writers say about perseverance, and how exploring uncharted terrain can turn failures into opportunities.

You were born to be a badass, but are you getting the most out of your life? In You Are a Badass, author Jen Sincero helps you identify and change the self-sabotaging thoughts and behavior patterns that are stopping you from living up to your potential.

Creating a better life requires only one simple shift: Going from wanting to change your life to deciding to change your life. This book will explain why you are the way you are, how to change what you don’t like, and how to love yourself as you create a new, awesome life.

Many people assume their ideal life will never be more than fantasy, but in reality, you have the power to create the life you dream about. In this book, life coach and self-help guru Tony Robbins provides insights and strategies to help you take control of every aspect of your life, from your emotions to your focus. In many cases, you can make transformational changes to your life through small adjustments, such as swapping out just one word in your vocabulary.

In this guide you’ll learn how your bad habits are wired in your brain, how to decode your negative emotions to find solutions to them, and how to create your destiny.

This guide compares and contrasts Robbins’s ideas with those of other popular self-help authors, as well as current scientific theories. This will provide you with background and a deeper understanding of the lessons in Awaken the Giant Within, as well as some alternative methods for taking control of your life.

Stillness is not just the absence of motion—it’s a perceptible state of mind that’s been sought and recognized as valuable throughout all of history and across many belief systems. Ryan Holiday says stillness already exists in all of us, and with some intentional practice, we can reap its rewards. In Stillness Is the Key, Holiday takes us through the dimensions of the mind, soul, and body, explaining how to cultivate stillness in each area to enrich our lives, guide us to make better decisions, and encourage a sense of connectedness to everything around us.

In this guide, we’ll explain what Holiday means by stillness, and discuss how stilling your mind requires also stilling your body and soul. We’ll examine each of those domains in turn, and explore Holiday’s techniques for cultivating stillness in each. Along the way, we’ll draw connections to principles from Stoicism, Buddhism, and Taoism and expand on Holiday’s ideas by comparing them with other spiritual and self-help books.

The Miracle Morning presents best-selling author and speaker Hal Elrod’s antidote to living the kind of mediocre life that most people accept as normal. Elrod argues that everyone is capable of achieving their dreams in every area of life, including relationships, finances, career, health, spirituality, and happiness. The answer is committing yourself to personal development by getting up early and following a simple daily routine of silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and writing, which can empower anyone to transform any area of life in a surprisingly short time.