This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Alex Korb PhD author of The Upward Spiral Workbook: A Practical Neuroscience Program for Reversing the Course of Depression

About the book:

Positive life changes lead to positive brain changes. Drawing on the huge success of his groundbreaking book, The Upward Spiral, neuroscientist Alex Korb offers actionable, step-by-step skills to help you reshape your brain and create an upward spiral towards a happier, healthier life.

Depression is defined by a collection of symptoms. You feel crappy most of the time. Nothing seems interesting, and everything seems overwhelming. You have trouble with sleep. You feel guilty and anxious and have thoughts that life isn’t worth living. Each symptom reinforces and inspires new symptoms, and this is a sign that your brain circuits are caught in the downward spiral of depression. So, how can you reverse it?

In his first book, The Upward Spiral, neuroscientist Alex Korb demystified the intricate brain processes that cause depression and outlined a practical and effective approach for getting better. Based on the latest research, this evidence-based workbook takes the theory behind Korb’s breakthrough book and distills it into concrete, actionable exercises and skills.

Just as one small trigger can drag you down, an effective intervention can start enough momentum to carry you back up. Exercise, attention to breathing, gratitude, sleep hygiene, and positive social interactions are just some of the offerings in this workbook that can help alter activity in specific neural circuits, setting you on the path toward an upward spiral to happiness and well-being.

About the author:

Alex Korb, PhD, is a neuroscientist who has studied the brain and mental health for over fifteen years, starting with an undergraduate degree in neuroscience from Brown University. He received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he wrote his dissertation and numerous scientific articles on depression. He is author of The Upward Spiral, and is currently adjunct assistant professor at UCLA in the department of psychiatry. Outside of the lab, he is a scientific consultant for the biotech industry, and is head coach of the UCLA Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team. He has a wealth of experience in yoga and mindfulness, physical fitness, and even stand-up comedy.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Diane Kirschner author of Love in 90 Days: The Essential Guide to Finding Your Own True Love

About the book:

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Bill Philipps author of Signs from the Other Side: Opening to the Spirit World

About the book:

With stories and insightful suggestions, beloved psychic medium Bill Philipps demonstrates that our loved ones on the other side are available to us. He promises that, with an open heart and mind ready to receive, anyone can recognize the signs that spirits of the departed may be trying to send. Signs from the Other Side offers an in-depth explanation of how Bill does what he does, as well as practical advice on how to receive and interpret signs when they appear. By tapping into our intuition, we can experience deep connections that lead to forgiveness, reassurance, or simply one last moment with a loved one. The book also includes more than twenty inspiring examples of how others experienced comfort through such communications.

About the author:

Bill Philipps is a psychic medium who offers individual, small-group, and large-audience readings throughout the United States and the world. Bill’s fresh, upbeat, and direct approach perfectly reflects his warm and relatable demeanor, captivating audiences in person and as a guest on popular television and radio broadcasts. He lives in Southern California.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Marc Lesser author of Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen

About the book:

Today’s leaders are grappling with the pace and complexity of change, the challenge of supporting healthy collaboration and alignment among teams, and the resulting stress and burnout. The practice of mindful leadership may be one of the most important competencies in business today if leaders are to move beyond fear, anxiety, nagging self-doubt, and the feeling of constant overwhelm.
Marc Lesser has taught his proven seven-step method to leaders at Google, Genentech, SAP, Facebook, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies for over twenty years and has distilled a lifetime of mindfulness and business experience into these chapters. This incredibly practical yet accessible book draws on Marc’s experience as a CEO of three companies, as cofounder of the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google, and as a longtime Zen practitioner.
The principles in this book can be applied to leadership at any level, providing readers with the tools they need to shift awareness, enhance communication, build trust, eliminate fear and self-doubt, and minimize unnecessary workplace drama.
Embracing any one of the seven practices alone can be life-changing. When used together, they support a path of well-being, productivity, and positive influence.
Practicing mindful leadership will allow you to achieve results — with more energy, clarity, meaning, and connection. Your intentions and actions will be more aligned. You will accomplish more with less wasted effort.
After reading this book, you’ll understand why some of the world’s most successful companies routinely incorporate the Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, integrating mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and business savvy to create great corporate cultures, and even a better world.

About the author:

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Mitch Abblett PhD (PART 2) author of The Five Hurdles to Happiness and the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them

About the book: A practical approach to becoming aware of the “five hindrances”–the negative qualities that inhibit living the awakened life–and to breaking free of them in order to live more mindfully, effectively, compassionately. Five obstacles stand in between you and true happiness. What are they and how can you overcome them? Buddhist traditions teach that there are five negative qualities, or hindrances, that inhibit people from living an awakened life. Here, Mitch Abblett gives this teaching a modern, secular interpretation and helps you identify the hurdles that are blocking your contentment—desire, hostility, sluggishness, worry, and doubt—and how you can take your first steps to overcoming them. Combining traditional wisdom with contemporary psychology and using examples from his psychotherapy practice, Abblett uses the hurdles as a frame for engaging you in a process of contemplating your own life and learning to lean into your experience rather than merely repeating bad habits. By doing this, you can break free from the hurdles and live more mindfully, effectively, and compassionately.

About the author: Dr. Mitch Abblett is a clinical psychologist, author, consultant and speaker. As a clinician, his services focus on work with children, teens, parents, families and adults with whom he creates solutions for a range of concerns or desired growth areas. A clinician in the Boston area for over 15 years, he brings a wealth of clinical experience from various settings (hospitals, outpatient clinics, residential facilities and therapeutic schools) to his practice. For 11 years he served as the Clinical Director of the Manville School at Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston – a Harvard-affiliated therapeutic school program for children and adolescents with emotional, behavioral and learning difficulties. He has also served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. As a consultant and speaker, Dr. Abblett empowers changes clients through collaborative, tailored interventions. His consultative and training work focuses on mindfulness, compassion and value-driven action and empowering clients to communicate skillfully and authentically. He improves clients’ school and work effectiveness, reduces the effects of stress, and increases skills for health self-management and daily productivity. Dr. Abblett’s writing includes a mindfulness-based book for clinicians (The Heat of the Moment: Mindful Management of Difficult Clients; WW Norton & Co.), Mindfulness for Teen Depression and Helping Your Angry Teen (both with New Harbinger), five decks of mindfulness practice cards such as Growing Mindful: A Deck of Mindfulness Practices for All Ages: PESI Publishing). His upcoming book, The Five Hurdles to Happiness-and the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them will be released by Shambhala Publications in August 2018. He also blogs regarding mindfulness applications in family and relationships on Mindful.org.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Margaret Winslow author of Smart Ass: How a Donkey Challenged Me to Accept His True Nature & Rediscover My Own

About the book: How do you resolve a midlife crisis? Margaret Winslow, an overworked college professor in New York City, answered a for-sale ad for a “Large White Saddle Donkey.” Hilarity ensued, along with life-threatening injuries and spirit-enriching insight. Walk with Winslow and Caleb the donkey through training traumas, expert-baffling antics, and humiliating races, and share in Winslow’s gradual understanding of Caleb’s true, undeniable gifts: a willingness to be true to himself no matter the circumstances, to trust, and to forgive. As she and Caleb learn to thrive, you’ll learn the importance of being true to your own pure and powerful self.

About the author: In addition to an unwitting wrangler of a rambunctious donkey named Caleb, Margaret Winslow is a field geologist with over thirty years of wilderness experience in Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Antarctica, Alaska, and the Caribbean. Her award-winning travel memoirs have been featured on interviews on NPR’s “West Coast Live,” Bonnie D. Graham’s “Read My Lips” on blogtalkradio, and the Tony Kilgallin Show on NapaTV. She has published over thirty papers in international scientific journals. Her fieldwork on earthquake hazards and archaeological settlement patterns in Alaska and Chile is featured in the PBS series “Fire on the Rim.” She is Professor Emerita of Earth Sciences at the City College of New York. She lives in the lower Hudson valley of New York with her husband, Joe Stennett, a retired oceanographer. Her hobbies include continuing attempts to train her donkey, memoir and mystery writing, singing, and hiking.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest host is Shawn T. Smith PsyD who interviewed me about my book Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming the Fear of Abandonment & Building Lasting, Loving Relationships

About the book: Everyone thrives on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood―fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. These emotions are intense and painful, and when they surface they can lead to a number of negative behaviors, such as jealousy, clinging, and emotional blackmail. In Love Me, Don’t Leave Me, therapist Michelle Skeen combines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), schema therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) to help you identify the root of your fears. In this book you’ll learn how schema coping behaviors―deeply entrenched and automatic behaviors rooted in childhood experiences and fears―can take over and cause you to inadvertently sabotage your relationships. By recognizing these coping behaviors and understanding their cause, you will not only gain powerful insights into your own mind, but also into the minds of those around you. If you are ready to break the self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust, clinginess, and heartbreak and start building lasting, trusting relationships, this book will be your guide.

About the author: Michelle Skeen, PsyD, has a doctorate in clinical psychology. She is author of seven books, all designed to enhance relationships by emphasizing the importance of identifying core values and valued intentions, limited thinking, mindfulness, self-compassion, empathy, and effective communication and conflict resolution skills. Her passion is coaching individuals in creating and maintaining healthy relationships by bringing awareness to obstacles (fears and beliefs), which often work unconsciously to limit connections with others. Michelle believes that an early introduction and education in core values and healthy communication are essential life skills for success. To that end, Michelle and her daughter, Kelly, coauthored Communication Skills for Teens and Just As You Are. Skeen completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. She codeveloped an empirically validated protocol for the treatment of interpersonal problems that resulted in two books: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems and The Interpersonal Problems Workbook. Michelle’s work has appeared in more than thirty publications around the world. She hosts a weekly radio show called Relationships 2.0 with Dr. Michelle Skeen that airs nationally. To find out more, visit her website at www.michelleskeen.com.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Allie Rowbottom author of The Jell-O Girls: A Family History

About the book: In 1899, Allie Rowbottom’s great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege – but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments. More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie’s mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother’s life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the “Jell-O curse” and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family’s past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. JELL-O GIRLS is the liberation of that story. A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, JELL-O GIRLS is a family history, a feminist history, and a story of motherhood, love and loss. In crystalline prose Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family, but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience. A “gorgeous” (New York Times) memoir that braids the evolution of one of America’s most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its facade – told by the inheritor of their stories. A New York Times Editors’ Choice One of People Magazine’s Best Books of Summer An Amazon Best Book of the Month An Indie Next Pick A Real Simple Best Book of 2018

About the author: Allie Rowbottom received her BA from New York University, her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. Her work has received scholarships, essay prizes and honorable mentions from Tin House, Inprint, the Best American Essays series, the Florida Review, The Bellingham Review, the Black Warrior Review, The Southampton Review, and Hunger Mountain. She lives in Los Angeles.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Alexia Vernon author of Step Into Your Moxie: Amplify Your Voice, Visibility, and Influence in the World

About the book:

Step into Your Moxie is a soul-stirring call to action to speak up for yourself and the ideas and issues that matter most to you. Dubbed a “Moxie Maven” by President Obama’s White House Office of Public Engagement for her potent approach to women’s empowerment, Alexia Vernon has helped thousands of women (and men) slay diminishing self-talk and cultivate confidence. She has created a timely, refreshingly playful guide for women to communicate with candor, clarity, compassion, and ease every time they open their mouths to speak — in their careers, communities, and homes. Step into Your Moxie is the book women want by their side as they have that daring conversation, give an important presentation, run for office, or simply tell the people closest to them to step back from the boundaries they’ve trespassed.

About the author:

Alexia Vernon is a sought-after speaking and leadership coach to executives, entrepreneurs, media personalities, and changemakers. The creator of the Spotlight Speakers Collective and Spotlight Speaker Accelerator coaching programs, she has delivered transformational keynotes and corporate training for Fortune 500 companies and professional associations, spoken at the United Nations, and delivered a TEDx talk.

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is William Powers author of Dispatches from the Sweet Life: One Family, Five Acres, and a Community’s Quest to Reinvent the World

About the book:

Many fantasize about dramatically changing their lives — living in accordance with their ideals rather than the exigencies of job, bills, and possessions. William Powers actually does it. In his book Twelve by Twelve, Powers lived in an off-grid tiny house in rural North Carolina. In New Slow City, he and his wife, Melissa, inhabited a Manhattan micro-apartment in search of slow in the fastest city in the world. Here, the couple, with baby in tow, search for balance, community, and happiness in a small town in Bolivia. They build an adobe house, plant a prolific orchard and organic garden, and weave their life into a community of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, and creative businesspeople. Can this Transition Town succeed in the face of encroaching North American capitalism, and can Powers and the other settlers find the balance they’re seeking? Dispatches from the Sweet Life is compelling, sobering, thought-provoking, and, no matter the outcome, inspiring.

About the author:

An author, speaker, and expert on sustainable development, William Powers is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and an adjunct faculty member at New York University.