Sent To Soar

Among books that discern people's reason for living, this one is exceptional for its interfaith perspective and clear text readily accessible to people of all backgrounds. Reverend Poos-Benson mines the wisdom of the great spiritual heroes — Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Lao Tzu — to reveal a pattern in how God works in the world. He believes that God has sent us to fulfill a unique destiny; in order to find meaning in life, we must understand why we have been sent and then fulfill that purpose. Having been one of the first responders after the Columbine school shootings, he is well qualified for his focus on the thorny issue of great trauma, empowering readers to become aware of how the divine is moving through their lives in spite of tremendous suffering and evil. He also provides questions for individuals and groups to ponder, resulting in a vibrant text that leads to healing and self-transformation.

Captain Bunn founded SOAR to develop effective methods for dealing with flight anxiety. Therapists who have found this phobia difficult to treat will find everything they need to give their clients success. Anxious flyers who have “tried everything” to no avail can look forward to joining the nearly 10,000 graduates of the SOAR program who now have the whole world open to them as they fly anxiety free wherever they want. This approach begins by explaining how anxiety, claustrophobia, and panic are caused when noises, motions—or even the thought of flying—trigger excessive stress hormones. Then, to stop this problem, Captain Bunn takes the reader step-by-step through exercises that permanently and automatically control these feelings. He also explains how flying works, why it is safe, and teaches flyers how to strategically plan their flight, choose the right airlines, meet the captain, and so on. Through this program, Captain Bunn has helped thousands overcome their fear of flying. Now his book arms readers with the information they need to control their anxiety and fly comfortably.

On January 23rd, 1967, Lt. Colonel Barry Bridger and his copilot, Dave Grey, launched a mission over Vietnam in their Phantom F-4 fighter jet in treacherous weather. It was Colonel Bridger’s 75th mission and the only one he had attempted in the daylight hours. Suddenly, his plane was split in half by a ground-to-air missile. He and Grey ejected while the plane was going 600 miles per hour and began their descent into the unknown below. When Bridger finally landed on terra firma, he found the North Vietnamese army waiting for him. They arrested him and Grey and checked them into The Hanoi Hilton: a place designed to break the spirit of all who entered. Lt. Colonel Bridger not only survived this horrific ordeal; he thrived. He says his deeply held values saved him and his fellow prisoners. Are your values compelling enough and ingrained deeply enough to sustain you through a situation in which, like Barry, you are captured by a savage enemy and subjected to years of torture? Are your values such that you can make it through the inevitable tough times we all face periodically that make it hard to continue? The Spirit to Soar is filled with valuable life lessons about how to thrive and how to use every experience to help you successfully face the next one.

Rosa sat so Martin could march. Martin marched so Barack could run.Barack ran so Our children can soar. This is the seed of a unique and inspirational picture book text, that is part historical, part poetry, and entirely inspirational. It symbolically takes the reader through the cumulative story of the US Civil Rights Movement, showing how select pioneers' achievements led up to this landmark moment, when we have elected our first black President. Each historical figure is rendered by a different award-winning African-American children's book illustrator, representing the singular and vibrant contribution that each figure made. Lending historical substance, the back matter includes brief biographies of: George Washington Carver, Jesse Owens, Hattie McDaniel, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama.

“The more the Eagle Academy approach and its successes can be shared, the more opportunities young people will have to find their way to their own triumphs.” —Wes Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Wes Moore From New York City public schools chancellor David Banks—a respected educator who has advised Hillary Clinton and Cory Booker on scholastic issues—comes a “rare book that can bring tears to your eyes while showing the way to deep and meaningful social change” (New York Times bestselling author William Pollack). In this country, the failure of black and Latino men in schools has become the norm. Some go as far to say that young men of color are helpless cases and they are treated as such in school. Though this unfair experience hits brown and black boys the hardest, the underlying causes are shared by boys of many backgrounds. There needs to be a change, and David Banks had some ideas to help at-risk boys. In 2004, he petitioned New York City’s mayor to allow an all-boys public school to open in one of the most troubled districts in the country, the South Bronx. He had a point to prove: when rituals that boys are innately drawn to are combined with college prep-level instruction and community mentorship, even the most challenging students can succeed. The result? The Eagle Academy for Young Men—the first all-boys public high school in New York City in more than thirty years—has flourished and has been successfully replicated in five locations in the city and in Newark, New Jersey. In Soar, Banks shares the experiences of individual kids from the Eagle Academy as well as his own personal story. He reveals the specific approach he and his team use to drive students, from tapping into their natural competitiveness and peer-sensitivity, to providing rituals that mimic their instinctual need for hierarchy and fraternal camaraderie, to finding teachers who know firsthand the obstacles these students face. Results-oriented and clear-eyed about the challenges and promises of educating boys at risk, Soar is “a must-read for those concerned with the welfare of young men” (Kirkus Reviews).

A BREAKTHROUGH FORMULA FOR REACHING TOP DECISION MAKERS AND INFLUENCERS "SOAR Selling is a mission-critical tool for building lasting, profitable relationships. David and Marhnelle go far beyond defining a sales process by rolling up their sleeves to share their secret about what you absolutely must do to get in anywhere." -- Marcus Buckingham, New York Times bestselling author, researcher, motivational speaker, and business consultant "SOAR Selling is essential for any professional organization committed to sales excellence that delivers a superior customer experience." -- Mel Parker, Vice President and General Manager North America, Dell Consumer "SOAR's integrity and efficacy not only help overcome cold-call-phobia; SOAR turns anyone who's motivated to sell into a cold-call-master. SOAR's proven and effective way 'to get through' has achieved unmatched results for Vistage Chairs who are determined to reach and convert CEOs and other executives to Vistage membership. SOAR tips and tools have really propelled our business to SOAR." -- Rafael Pastor, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Vistage International "SOAR Selling teaches salespeople a measurable calling strategy and process that can dramatically improve their ability to reduce their call volume and increase the number of appointments." -- Gerhard Gschwandtner, Publisher, Selling Power "When it comes to driving net new business, SOAR has been at the forefront of the Berlin Company strategy because it works!" -- Andrew T. Berlin, Chairman and CEO, Berlin Packaging, and Limited Partner, Chicago White Sox From the cofounders of the international sales training company, Dialexis, Inc. comes the groundbreaking method for the biggest challenges of every salesperson: getting through to almost anyone, and reaching top decision makers and high influencers. It's time to stop wasting valuable time using the by-the-numbers-plus-luck method--a grueling process that causes attrition and unethical dialing. SOAR Selling presents a solution to this critical problem by revealing by a proven way for any salesperson to make fewer calls, reach more decision makers, and, most important, get more appointments. The authors have tested the SOAR (Surge of Accelerating Revenue) Selling formula on thousands of live sales calls throughout key global markets. The results are staggering. According to the authors' client research, SOAR is astonishingly effective. SOAR provides a combination contact rate with decision makers and influencers of up to 90% on every net dial to a new prospect. Organizations have experienced 200% to 2000% ROI in just 12 weeks from program completion. The mindset component utilized during SOAR enables the individual to be open to a new way of driving net new business. The coaching segment ensures the program consistently demonstrates revenue surge and ROI. SOAR Selling is the best practice for reaching decision makers. Its secret is simple; its approach is based in the mechanics and psychology of call execution with a foundation of a powerful mindset shift. The authors' research reveals that with SOAR, a salesperson can make 12 net dials and reach a combination of 10 top-level decision makers and influencers!

The contributions in Toward Learning Robots address the question of how a robot can be designed to acquire autonomously whatever it needs to realize adequate behavior in a complex environment. In-depth discussions of issues, techniques, and experiments in machine learning focus on improving ease of programming and enhancing robustness in unpredictable and changing environments, given limitations of time and resources available to researchers. The authors show practical progress toward a useful set of abstractions and techniques to describe and automate various aspects of learning in autonomous systems. The close interaction of such a system with the world reveals opportunities for new architectures and learning scenarios and for grounding symbolic representations, though such thorny problems as noise, choice of language, abstraction level of representation, and operationality have to be faced head-on. Contents Introduction: Toward Learning Robots * Learning Reliable Manipulation Strategies without Initial Physical Models * Learning by an Autonomous Agent in the Pushing Domain * A Cost-Sensitive Machine Learning Method for the Approach and Recognize Task * A Robot Exploration and Mapping Strategy Based on a Semantic Hierarchy of Spatial Representations * Understanding Object Motion: Recognition, Learning and Spatiotemporal Reasoning * Learning How to Plan * Robo-Soar: An Integration of External Interaction, Planning, and Learning Using Soar * Foundations of Learning in Autonomous Agents * Prior Knowledge and Autonomous Learning