A Redesigned Life

The very existence of HGTV, the DIY movement, and Pinterest proves we love great design. We adore plans and perfectly staged rooms. But what happens when we discover we are living a life we did not design? When our dreams lie in tatters or when we experience loss of any kind? What happens when life feels like one big Pinterest fail? Where is God in the midst of what doesn't make sense? Does he care? Drawing from time-honored design principles such as movement, contrast, and pattern, former interior designer and Bible teacher Tracy Steel offers frustrated and discontented women the assurance that God is their ever-present, caring Designer. With a mix of wit and wisdom, Tracy proves through biblical examples and personal testimony that God remains true to his plans and purposes, accomplishing them in and through us in every season of life. She helps us recognize God's design principles, enabling us to embrace our sometimes messy lives, especially when they're ones we never would have designed for ourselves.

The very existence of HGTV, the DIY movement, and Pinterest proves we love great design. We adore plans and perfectly staged rooms. But what happens when we discover we are living a life we did not design? When our dreams lie in tatters or when we experience loss of any kind? What happens when life feels like one big Pinterest fail? Where is God in the midst of what doesn't make sense? Does he care? Drawing from time-honored design principles such as movement, contrast, and pattern, former interior designer and Bible teacher Tracy Steel offers frustrated and discontented women the assurance that God is their ever-present, caring Designer. With a mix of wit and wisdom, Tracy proves through biblical examples and personal testimony that God remains true to his plans and purposes, accomplishing them in and through us in every season of life. She helps us recognize God's design principles, enabling us to embrace our sometimes messy lives, especially when they're ones we never would have designed for ourselves.

Never before have Australians worked so hard yet felt so unhappy. With anxiety rising at unprecedented levels, now is the time to stop and consider whether there could be another way to live. We renovate our houses, but what about our lives? The Great Life Redesign is an inspirational yet practical guidebook to help you reshape the life you have to create one you'll love. The Great Life Redesign is an inspiring guidebook to help you reshape the life you have to create one you'll love. The practical, simple to apply techniques and inspiring personal stories included in this book will show you how. Learn the secrets of one-on-one coaching with Caroline Cameron, an executive, career and lifestyle coach. Based on her experiences working with hundreds of professionals across Australia and beyond, she steps you through the process of designing a blue print for the life you really want. Key features: Helps the reader to create a blue print for making real and actionable change, including career, relationships, wealth and finances, health, home, personal growth, environment, leisure and spirituality. Use to instantly repair parts of your life that could be better or as a step-by-step plan for a major life renovation. Includes practical, simple to apply techniques and inspiring personal stories Written for professionals, middle income, burnt-out city slickers, corporate refugees, disillusioned 30-somethings, mid life crisis sufferers, baby boomers whose super and retirement dreams evaporated in the GFC, dedicated parents who want the best for their kids, and anyone who suspects that there's more to life but don't know what it is or how to get it.

A panoramic overview of biotechnologies that can endlessly boost human capabilities and the drastic changes these “superhuman” traits could trigger Biotechnology is moving fast. In the coming decades, advanced pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics, and genetic interventions will be used not only to heal the sick but to boost human physical and mental performance to unprecedented levels. People will have access to pills that make them stronger and faster, informatic devices will interface seamlessly with the human brain, and epigenetic modification may allow people to reshape their own physical and mental identities at will. Until recently, such major technological watersheds—like the development of metal tools or the industrialization of manufacturing—came about incrementally over centuries or longer. People and social systems had time to adapt: they gradually developed new values, norms, and habits to accommodate the transformed material conditions. But contemporary society is dangerously unprepared for the dramatic changes it is about to experience down this road on which it is already advancing at an accelerating pace. The results will no doubt be mixed. People will live longer, healthier lives, will fine-tune their own thought processes, and will generate staggeringly complex and subtle forms of knowledge and insight. But these technologies also threaten to widen the rift between rich and poor, to generate new forms of social and economic division, and to force people to engage in constant cycles of upgrades and boosts merely to keep up. Individuals who boost their traits beyond a certain threshold may acquire such extreme capabilities that they will no longer be recognized as unambiguously human. In this important and timely book, prize-winning historian Michael Bess provides a clear, nontechnical overview of cutting-edge biotechnology and paints a vivid portrait of a near-future society in which bioenhancement has become a part of everyday life. He surveys the ethical questions raised by the enhancement enterprise and explores the space for human agency in dealing with the challenges that these technologies will present. Headed your way over the coming decades: new biotechnologies that can powerfully alter your body and mind. The possibilities are tantalizing: • Rejuvenation therapies offering much longer lives (160 and even beyond) in full vigor and mental acuity • Cognitive enhancement through chemical or bioelectronic means (the rough equivalent of doubling or tripling IQ scores) • Epigenetic tools for altering some of your genetically influenced traits at any point in your lifetime (body shape, athletic ability, intelligence, personality) • Bioelectronic devices for modulating your own brain processes, including your “pleasure centers” (a potentially non-stop high) • Direct control of machines by thought, and perhaps direct communication with other people, brain-to-brain (a new dimension of sharing and intimacy) But some of the potential consequences are also alarming: • A growing rift between the biologically enhanced and those who can’t afford such modifications • A constant cycle of upgrades and boosts as the bar of “normal” rises ever higher—“Humans 95, Humans XP, Humans 8” • The fragmentation of humankind into rival “bioenhancement clusters” • A gradually blurring boundary between “person” and “product” • Extreme forms of self-modification, with some individuals no longer recognized as unambiguously human

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

When Designing Your Life was published in 2016, Stanford’s Bill Burnett and Dave Evans taught readers how to use design thinking to build meaningful, fulfilling lives (“Life has questions. They have answers.” –The New York Times). The book struck a chord, becoming an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Now, in DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work they apply that transformative thinking to the place we spend more time than anywhere else: work. DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE teaches readers how to create the job they want—without necessarily leaving the job they already have. “Increasingly, it’s up to workers to define their own happiness and success in this ever-moving landscape,” they write, and chapter by chapter, they demonstrate how to build positive change, wherever you are in your career. Whether you want to stay in your job and make it a more meaningful experience, or if you decide it’s time to move on, Evans and Burnett show you how to visualize and build a work-life that is productive, engaged, meaningful, and more fun.

Filled with fresh new research and never-before-seen photos, this updated edition of the definitive biography of Coco Chanel deepens our understanding of the history and legacy of the incredible woman who shaped modern fashion and created an empire of haute couture. Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor, conjuring up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, bestselling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time. But she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture; and what lies beneath her own glossy surface is darker, more mysterious, and far more intriguing. Uncovering remarkable new details about Gabrielle Chanel’s humble early years, Justine Picardie picks up the legend Chanel where it began—in orphanhood and poverty. Throwing new light on her passionate and, at times, dark relationships and providing profound insights into her connections with Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, and Dali, this beautifully constructed portrait gives a fresh and penetrating look at what made Coco Chanel the strong-spirited and powerful presence she became. An authoritative account, based on personal observations and interviews with Chanel’s last surviving friends, employees, and relatives, the book also unravels her coded language and symbols and tracks the influence of her formative years on her legendary style. Feared and revered by the rest of the fashion industry, Coco Chanel died in 1971 at the age of 87, but her legacy lives on. This special new edition has been extensively revised and updated and offers a uniquely authoritative account of the world’s greatest designer. Adding fresh new insights and discoveries, it comes complete with a compelling array of previously unseen images from the Chanel archives.

Since the birth of civilisation, human beings have manipulated other life-forms. We have selectively bred plants and animals for thousands of years to maximize agricultural production and cater to our tastes in pets. The observation of the creation of artificial animal and plant variants was a key stimulant for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The ability to directly engineer the genomes of organisms first became possible in the 1970s, when the gene for human insulin was introduced into bacteria to produce this protein for diabetics. At the same time, mice were modified to produce human growth hormone, and grew huge as a result. But these were only our first tottering steps into the possibilities of genetic engineering. In the past few years, the pace of progress has accelerated enormously. We can now cut and paste genes using molecular scissors with astonishing ease, and the new technology of genome editing can be applied to practically any species of plants or animals. 'Mutation chain reaction' can be used to alter the genes of a population of pests, such as flies; as the modified creatures breed, the mutation is spread through the population, so that within a few generations the organism is almost completely altered. At the same time, scientists are also beginning to synthesize new organisms from scratch. These new technologies hold much promise for improving lives. Genome editing has already been used clinically to treat AIDS patients, by genetically modifying their white blood cells to be resistant to HIV. In agriculture, genome editing could be used to engineer species with increased food output, and the ability to thrive in challenging climates. New bacterial forms may be used to generate energy. But these powerful new techniques also raise important ethical dilemmas and potential dangers, pressing issues that are already upon us given the speed of scientific developments. To what extent should parents be able to manipulate the genetics of their offspring - and would designer babies be limited to the rich? Can we effectively weigh up the risks from introducing synthetic lifeforms into complex ecosystems? John Parrington explains the nature and possibilities of these new scientific developments, which could usher in a brave, new world. We must rapidly come to understand its implications if we are to direct its huge potential to the good of humanity and the planet.