A Turbulent Mind

Sometimes in life, you are hit by an unexpected wave of change. A change that will forcibly stir you out of your cocooned comfort zone. You may face despair, loneliness and depression. This is not a dead end but just a test to rediscover yourself and unleash your inner potential. I wasn't ready to put myself through a gruelling training regime. At the same time I had to conquer my fear of swimming in open water and lay those inner demons to rest. When I completed my first Sprint distance Triathlon, I was elated. It motivated me to pursue this sport called Triathlon for which I developed passion over time. Ultimately, I followed my dream of crossing the finish line of the Ironman 70.3, to consider myself worthy of something. For those of you who are thinking about getting into this sport, this bookwill motivate you to take that plunge. And for the rest of us triathletes, you will find a part of yourself in the chapters of this book. Happy reading and keep 'Tri'-ing!

More than 100 themes of affirmations grounded in neuroscience. We live in complex and unsettled times. The issues before us are unimaginably difficult, and range from the personal to the global. This beautiful little book accompanies readers toward a greater sense of peace and self-compassion, reminding us that even though our world is so turbulent, we can still have quiet places within, filled with love, that make it easier to live and to breathe with ourselves. Rooted in the neuroscience of affirmations, and covering more than 100 themes (including health, self-care, issues at work, and connection with loved ones and with the planet), this book is a companion for daily life. With the help of questions and wonderings about what may be important for readers, the book gently encourages acceptance of what is. The affirmation for each theme reminds readers of their own strengths and reservoirs of calm, and helps them to remember and reclaim their innate gifts and resources.

This book is meant for everyone, from young to old going through any phase of their lives. It is about a 15-year-old boy, who felt way too much, way too quickly and took to his pen and paper to try and make sense of what's happening around him by writing his experiences and thoughts

The long-awaited memoir by Canada’s most celebrated Olympian and advocate for mental health. From one of Canada’s most decorated Olympians comes a raw but life-affirming story of one woman’s struggle with depression. In 2006, when Clara Hughes stepped onto the Olympic podium in Torino, Italy, she became the first and only athlete ever to win multiple medals in both Summer and Winter Games. Four years later, she was proud to carry the Canadian flag at the head of the Canadian team as they participated in the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. But there’s another story behind her celebrated career as an athlete, behind her signature billboard smile. While most professional athletes devote their entire lives to training, Clara spent her teenage years using drugs and drinking to escape the stifling home life her alcoholic father had created in Elmwood, Winnipeg. She was headed nowhere fast when, at sixteen, she watched transfixed in her living room as gold medal speed skater Gaétan Boucher effortlessly raced in the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Dreaming of one day competing herself, Clara channeled her anger, frustration, and raw ambition into the endurance sports of speed skating and cycling. By 2010, she had become a six-time Olympic medalist. But after more than a decade in the gruelling world of professional sports that stripped away her confidence and bruised her body, Clara began to realize that her physical extremes, her emotional setbacks, and her partying habits were masking a severe depression. After winning bronze in the last speed skating race of her career, she decided to retire from that sport, determined to repair herself. She has emerged as one of our most committed humanitarians, advocating for a variety of social causes both in Canada and around the world. In 2010, she became national spokesperson for Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk campaign in support of mental health awareness, using her Olympic standing to share the positive message of the power of forgiveness. Told with honesty and passion, Open Heart, Open Mind is Clara’s personal journey through physical and mental pain to a life where love and understanding can thrive. This revelatory and inspiring story will touch the hearts of all Canadians.

‘ ‘A riveting read of the difficult and important things of what medics do.’ Matthew Heneghan doesn't see people at their best. Instead, they come to him in desperate need. The experience of needing a medic can be like waking up in a foreign country. You frantically want to know, ‘What is happening with me?’ The ability to reassure people, to give the foreign country a ‘name,' helps people. Author Matthew Heneghan always knew he wanted to be a medic. In this raw new medical memoir, he interweaves the stories of his growing up with the brutal realities of living with life and death each day. With sensitive observation and graceful writing, this book explores the highs and lows of being a paramedic in a world where everything is not always what it seems. Matthew writes that being a paramedic caused his ‘soul to bleed.’ It is not about the practicalities of the job but about the evil of the world that he is forced to see day after day. He calls himself part of the ‘walking wounded.’ In ‘A Medic’s Mind -Love, Loss and All Things in between,’ Matthew Heneghan writes of the life-altering experiences and other struggles he faced in his journey to becoming a good medic – from being a youth in a home where his mom struggled with mental illness, to his medic training in the United States army. He tells of exhausting shifts as a paramedic and coming face-to-face with his own mortality and the socioeconomic dilemmas of his patients. It is a read not to be missed!

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World will help practitioners in any field of change engage more effectively in transformative innovation. Such innovation addresses the paradigm shift needed to meet the diverse unfolding global challenges facing us today, often summed up as the Anthropocene. Fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, we need to reintroduce the human element into our understandings – whether the context is civic or scientific – and strengthen truth-seeking in decision-making. Aided by appropriate concepts and methods, this healing will enable a switch from reaction to anticipation, even in the face of discontinuous change and high uncertainty. The outcome is to privilege the positive human skills for collaborative navigation through uncertainty over the disjointed rationality of mechanism and artificial intelligence, which increasingly alienates us. The reader in search of new ways of thinking will be introduced to concepts new to systems thinking that integrate systems thinking and futures thinking. The concept of anticipatory present moment (APM) serves as a basis for learning the cognitive skills that better enable navigation through turbulent times. A key personal and team practice is participative repatterning, which is the basis for transformative innovation. This practice is aided by new methods of visual facilitation. The reader is guided through the unfolding of the ideas and practices with a narrative based on the metaphor of search portrayed in the tradition of ox herding, found in traditional Far Eastern consciousness practice.