Top 10 Inspirational Books – September 2014

Welcome to this month’s Aspire Magazine Top 10 Inspiring Books list! You’ll discover inspirational and empowering books, written by women and for women, each dedicated to sharing a universal message of love, hope and self-empowerment. Through their wisdom-filled books, these visionary female authors are illuminating the path for women on the journey of healing and self-discovery. Add these transformational books to your inspired living resource library.

Forgiveness: 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything
by Iyanla Vanzant

Too many of us feel trapped in stagnant romantic, family, or workplace relationships. Weighed down by toxic thoughts and emotions, we might be quick to judge and slow to pardon, and self-righteous about our feelings as we dwell on memories of what we or others did (or failed to do). With Iyanla’s 21-Day Forgiveness Plan, you’ll explore relationship dynamics with your parents, children, friends, partners, co-workers, bosses, yourself, and even God. With journaling work and Emotional Freedom Techniques (also known as “tapping”), you’ll learn to live with more love; gain new clarity on your life, lessons, and blessings; and discover a new level of personal freedom, peace, and well-being.

 

Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love
by Linda Carroll

In Love Cycles, veteran couples therapist Linda Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — the Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love. Love Cycles helps readers understand where they are in the cycle of their relationship and provides a clear strategy for how to stay happy and committed, even in difficult times.

DailyOM: Learning to Live
by Madisyn Taylor

Wouldn’t it be great if we were born with instruction manuals? Each one would be different based on what we needed to learn, but the basics would be the same: how to create healthy relationships, how to deal with sorrow and pain, how to reach our goals, and how to know what we want to do with our lives when we grow up. We would continue to receive our own unique life lessons, but we would have a manual to refer to when feeling overwhelmed or lost.
In this book, based on the popular website DailyOM, co-founder Madisyn Taylor seamlessly weaves together her award-winning inspirational thoughts with her achingly honest personal story, revealing the inspiration behind many of the DailyOM messages that touch millions of people every day.

 

The Joy of Loving Yourself: 101 Ways to a Happier You
by Michelle Mullady

Women of all ages everywhere can benefit from self-love. A marvelous reality is that when we love ourselves, the more access we have to an effortless flow of love between others and ourselves. It’s neither vain nor self-centered to nurture ourselves because it serves everyone concerned. If you would like to open a door to love and joy in your life, this delightful little book has the key.
Michelle Mullady has expertly crafted this warm and easy to understand book in order to gently guide you through the simple process of breaking through old mistaken beliefs and learning to love yourself just as you are.

Journey to the Heartland: A Spiritual Memoir on Life & the Desire for It
by Dawn Richerson

When the author sets out for a month-long journey to the American Heartland, all she knows for certain is that her desire to live from the affirmation of who she is is stronger than anything that might keep her from it. Part travel log, part spiritual memoir, Journey to the Heartland offers a rare and honest look into a life unfolding and the truth that we are more than what we think we are. From the Tennessee foothills to the North Woods, the author captures the raw, essential beauty of her country and draws on timelines past, present, and future, as well as images from the natural world, to issue an invitation to our life’s unique dance.

 

Seeing Red: A Woman’s Quest for Truth, Power, and the Sacred
by Lone Mørch

Seeing Red is an honest memoir of a women’s quest for truth, power and the sacred. Climbing both inner and outer mountains, it takes you to the holy Mount Kailas in Tibet, through a seven-year marriage in San Francisco, and into the arms of the fierce goddess Kali in Kathmandu, where Lone discovers her authentic sovereign self.
As much a memoir about coming into one’s own as it is a love affair with the Himalayas, Seeing Red is an unforgettable journey of creation and destruction that travels through all shades of red – love, passion, power, rage, danger, fire and the sacred.

Love and the Goddess: One Woman, One Myth, Three Goddesses
by Mary Elizabeth Coen

When cookery teacher Kate Canavan’s perfect life falls apart she moves to Galway City. Kate’s friend James urges her to love and nurture herself, but mischievous Ella persuades her to dust off her unused dating skills. So Kate explores the world of on- line dating using the name of a Greek Goddess. In the midst of a mad dating frenzy, Kate has a traumatic health scare which convinces her to drop everything and go in search of a guru. Travelling with Ella, she visits a spiritual healer in Brazil, only to find Ella is more interested in having fun than seeking enlightenment. Next stop Peru, where a shaman tells her how to harness the energy of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine.

 

Writing Wild: Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature
by Tina Welling

Even if we don’t write about nature, Tina Welling demonstrates, nature triggers our stories. This is because “everything we know about creating, we know intuitively from the natural world.” One can set the stage for creation by following these three steps: consciously naming the information gathered by the senses, describing the sensory details of one particular object, and interacting with the energy system of the universe. Welling shows writers how to make this kind of connection between the everyday and the hidden, worthy-of-attention beauty all around us. She makes the process of developing a fruitful relationship with wildness inside and out accessible to all writers and insight seekers.

Soul on the Run
by Robin Korth

Soul on the Run is the gut-wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s search for herself, and her refusal to continue playing the game of “let’s pretend everything is okay.” What’s more, it reminds us-when we are honest with ourselves-that we can start life over at any age. Korth’s words are pithy and raw, sometimes almost brutal, and often just plain funny. There are commonsense insights into living life and a sometimes mystic questing into the hidden avenues of the human heart. To read this book is to journey into your own heart and spirit. The questions and comments of this woman’s piercing search for joy and meaning will spark your own. You cannot read this book without becoming a participant in your own soul’s journey toward life.

 

E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality
by Pam Grout

E-Squared could best be described as a lab manual with simple experiments to prove once and for all that reality is malleable, that consciousness trumps matter, and that you shape your life with your mind. Rather than take it on faith, you are invited to conduct nine 48-hour experiments to prove there really is a positive, loving, totally hip force in the universe. Yes, you read that right. It says prove.
The experiments, each of which can be conducted with absolutely no money and very little time expenditure, demonstrate that spiritual principles are as dependable as gravity, as consistent as Newton’s laws of motion. For years, you’ve been hoping and praying that spiritual principles are true. Now, you can know.