THE NEW YEAR USHERS IN an extraordinary peak for body-mind-spirit publishers. The demand for high-quality, well-produced products has blossomed beyond what even the most optimistic of us had envisioned. For this issue we have chosen to represent a broad range of topics and as many landmark publishers as possible. The field has become too large and complex for us to cover it all, but here’s an intriguing and diverse selection that will have your customers singing your praises.
Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight
Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell (ISBN 978-0-06-241569-1) HarperBusiness
www.harpercollins.com
Good customer service doesn’t just happen, no matter how great your employees are. It needs to be built into the foundation of your business, not painted on after the fact. Service design is the new kid on the block in the world of business management and analysis. The authors walk readers through the basics in understandable and compelling language, providing plenty of anecdotes and examples. Topics covered include: Designing for Delight, Traps and Pitfalls, and End-to-End Excellence. It’s a thorough resource with a prevailing sense of respect for the customer consistent throughout the book. Customers are not pawns in a bottom-line, one-size-fits-all game—they seek connection and satisfaction in ways that are manageable when everyone in the business, not just the owner, understands them. One of the most impressive parts of this book is the substantial Tools for the Journey appendix. This is a must-read for anyone involved in a public-facing business, no matter what their job description is.
The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others
Kristi Hedges (ISBN 978-0-81-441773-7) AMACOM
www.amacombooks.org
Whether you’re sitting at the head of the table in the boardroom or trying to get your children off to school in the morning, presence is key to your success. Often overlooked, dismissed, or avoided, presence is a much bigger part of the game than most people realize. Throughout a very successful career, first as founder of a public relations firm and then as an executive coach, Hedges developed a protocol to build and energize presence. She begins with the three “I’s” (intention, individuality, and inspiration) and then offers readers techniques for enhancing those things in their lives and work. She deals with topics such as Self-Presentation, Negativity Loops, Balancing Competency and Vulnerability, Empathic Leadership, Inspiring Change, and Using Language to Transform. Let customers know this one can truly change their lives. Promote it to your student customers—they’re never too young to learn how to maximize their potential.
Beautiful Money: The 4-Week Total Wealth Makeover
Leanne Jacobs (ISBN 978-0-14-311151-1) TarcherPerigee
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Can we really transform our lives in just four weeks? YES! Is the emphatic answer from Leanne Jacobs. Each week of her Beautiful Money system requires three steps to implement, but it’s not a rigid system. Readers are invited to adjust the suggested schedule to suit their own needs and schedules. There are practical money-management strategies. The larger piece of the work, however, is the realignment of internal processes to help rid readers of inner obstacles to financial success and embrace the life changes that will bring them the happiness and accomplishment they seek. Her guidance is based on her own experience. She turned a worldly success that was draining her of her life-force energy into an alternative life path that merged spiritual development with financial security. Let customers know Jacobs is inviting them to join a global community seeking holistic abundance, spiritual growth, and authenticity.
Where God and Medicine Meet: A Conversation Between a Doctor and a Spiritual Messenger
Neale Donald Walsch & Brit Cooper, M.D. (ISBN 978-1-93-790748-8) Rainbow Ridge Books
www.rainbowridgebooks.com
How many of your customers regularly seek out spiritual healers and traditional medical doctors and still believe the two are mutually exclusive? This book intends to let them know it doesn’t have to be that way. In a thoughtful, open, and no-holds-barred dialogue, Walsch and Cooper show they have much to share with each other and with their clients. The topics include defining ourselves spiritually, celebrating every experience, everybody is a healer, stop arguing with life, the truth of our oneness, is there a place for God in the medical system, soul lessons of dementia, assisted living facilities, abortion, sexuality, and disabilities. The two end up agreeing that it is time to put the metaphysical back into the practice of Western medicine and to allow allopathic physicians to openly acknowledge and utilize the spiritual component of their craft.
Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing
José Luis Stephens, Ph.D. (ISBN 978-1-62-203793-3) Sounds True
www.soundstrue.com
The first book I read on shamanism, Secrets of Shamanism, was written by this author. It opened many doors for me, and I still refer to it often when I teach. Twenty-five years later Stephens is still opening doors for people. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools used by shamans, and he regularly holds students spellbound at workshops. Now, he has finally written down some of his most popular stories. His personal, spiritual path took him to distant, mysterious destinations, but the lessons he learned were always grounded solidly in the world most of us inhabit. It is the voice of a storyteller that vibrates off the pages, and all of the stories are true. Insightful Postscripts and brief Questions and Exercises at the end of each story guide readers to discover the lessons of the story within themselves.
Ignite Your Spark: Discovering Who You Are From the Inside Out
Patricia Wooster (ISBN 978-1-58-270564-4) Beyond Words
www.beyondword.com
Wooster set out to discover how seemingly extraordinary teens manage to channel the impulsive, often explosive, energy of adolescence into steady work toward a challenging goal. She soon realized the common denominators: self-identity, determination, and grit. But, where did it come from? The answers she discovered fill this all-out, “go-for-it” motivational book: insights and anecdotes; enlightening self-assessment quizzes; warnings about traps, saboteurs, and self-limiting behaviors; plus unrelenting encouragement spill off the pages. There is also tried-and-true advice from such successful adults as Lady Gaga, Collin Powell, and Bill Gates. The last chapter brings it all together in no uncertain terms: The most important things are to really, REALLY want it and to get started. It’s a strategy that helps teens choose—and become—the kind of adults they want to be. Everyone has a special spark. Let your customers know this book will help young people find theirs and figure out their best individual path to igniting it.
Call of the Cats: What I Learned About Life and Love from a Feral Colony
Andrew Bloomfield (ISBN 978-1-60-868398-7) New World Library
www.newworldlibrary.com
Bloomfield set out to make it big in Hollywood. Instead he ended up adopting a colony of feral cats, and it altered the course of his life. Laced with spiritual insight and anecdotes from his spiritual travels in India and Nepal, this story is one of unconditional commitment and the lessons that brings. Rather than lofty goals, he suddenly found himself preoccupied with the search for the perfect cat food and an affordable, competent veterinarian. His ability to control the fate of these independent creatures was limited, yet he loved them anyway. As he shares his heartfelt story, Bloomfield offers details of cats’ relationships with humans going back as far as earliest recorded history and offers a thorough discussion of the Working Cats Program and the highly regarded “trap, neuter, release” program used by none less than Disneyland. Don’t let customers who love animals miss this one.
Bonsai and Penjing: Ambassadors of Peace and Beauty
Ann McClellan (ISBN 978-0-80-484701-8) Tuttle Publishing
www.tuttlepublishing.com
We’ve come a long way since Japan gifted the United States 53 bonsai in 1976. The museum that was created to house them has flourished, and 10 years later, a large collection from China followed. The creative superstars responsible for these living works of art are finally being celebrated as the visionaries they are, and this book showcases them along with the caregivers of these living treasures. There is plenty of history for those who are interested. Of course, at the heart of the book are the exquisite photographs of these living masterworks, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the Washington museum that makes them accessible to visitors from around the world.
Mindfulness and the Art of Drawing: A Creative Path to Awareness
Wendy Ann Greenhalgh (ISBN 978-1-78-240283-1) Leaping Hare Press
www.quartoknows.com
A few decades ago, the Western world took serious notice of Buddhist meditation practices and began incorporating them into their lives. Now generally referred to as mindfulness, they focus on the switch from thinking-mind to being-mind. Any form of creative expression serves as a pathway to mindfulness, perhaps none more easily than drawing. Everyone can draw, and Greenhalgh helps readers get started with such exercises as Mindful Doodling, The Mindfulness of Seeing, Capturing Time, and Drawing in the Mirror. This gentle, informative book includes everything readers need to know.
Diary of a Tokyo Teen: A Japanese-American Girl Travels to the Land of Trendy Fashion, High-Tech Toilets, and Maid Cafes
Christine Mari Inzer (ISBN 978-4-80-531396-1) Tuttle Publishing
www.tuttlepublishing.com
When this Japanese-American teenager decided to return to the land of her birth, she saw Japan with a perspective that was new and traditional at the same time. Funny, dynamic, and insightful, her drawings take readers on a tour of Japan they won’t find in the guidebooks. She explains why the best American fast food is found in Japan, marvels at the enthusiasm of Japanese employees, masters the art of using hi-tech Japanese toilets, sings the praises Tokyo Crepes and breaded pork over rice (Katsudon), tells us where to see geisha out and about, chats with a Big Buddha (Daibutsu), and warns us that Japanese sweets aren’t that sweet, throughout we get a running commentary on Japan’s teenagers.
