The Life Audit

The Life Audit
Author: Ximena Vengoechea
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1797229524

A life-changing and empowering guide to discovering your personal and professional passions, goals, and dreams so you can create a life full of joy and purpose. Welcome to the Life Audit, an exercise in self-reflection that helps you clear the cobwebs of noisy, external goals and distractions, and revisit or uncover the real themes and core values that drive and inspire you. Think of it as spring-cleaning for the soul. For anyone looking to find fulfillment in every aspect of life—love, friendship, career, finances, and beyond—this encouraging handbook offers the tools to prioritize your goals and turn personal insights into action to create a beautiful, meaningful future. In this step-by-step guide, made irresistibly and uniquely engaging by insightful and entertaining illustrations throughout, you’ll learn how to use design thinking and creative exercises to: Identify the core values and key themes hidden within your goals. Overcome the internal judgments and outside expectations that stifle your growth. Find the people, skills, and resources you need to nourish your dreams. Design a practical, personal action plan you can follow with confidence and clarity. Whether you’re a recent graduate, contemplating a career change, facing a personal crossroads, or searching for satisfaction, The Life Audit is a safe space for dreaming big, a path to kickstart dreams previously on hold, and a rousing call to design a life that honors your values and desires every day. DESIGN THINKING FOR WELLBEING: Drawing on her expertise as a User Experience researcher, author Ximena Vengoechea skillfully applies design tools and data research skills to the journey of self-discovery. After following the book’s three-part process, you will have a clear sense of your needs and goals and an action plan for making your dreams a reality without feeling overwhelmed. UNIQUE APPROACH TO PERSONAL GROWTH: This charmingly illustrated book offers a distinctive approach to self-discovery, combining step-by-step prompts and engaging anecdotes with colorfully illustrated lists, charts, diagrams, and affirmations. Performing the life audit is an enjoyable and uplifting experience that can help anyone uncover or rediscover their values, passions, and dreams. MEANINGFUL GIFT: Warm and inviting, The Life Audit is a simple and authentic way to connect with someone at a turning point in their lives. It makes a thoughtful, personal gift for new grads, retirees, people considering a career change, or anyone looking for ways to find more joy and fulfillment in their personal or professional lives. Perfect for: Fans of creative self-help and self-improvement People looking for resources on self-care, wellness, and self-discovery Anyone experiencing burnout or considering a career change Fans of self-help books and guided journals like Designing Your Life, Start Where You Are, and Best Year Yet Gift-giving for graduation, retirement, and milestone birthdays

Listen Like You Mean It

Listen Like You Mean It
Author: Ximena Vengoechea
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1529074029

‘Could there be a more relevant book for our times? Vengoechea implores us to truly hear other people (maybe for the first time) and is the perfect author of a book on why we should listen like we mean it’ - Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable Hear me out. Does this sound like you? You end a team meeting and can’t recall a single thing that was said. You leave a conversation with a friend feeling disconnected and unfulfilled. You think you and your boss are on the same page, only to find out you haven’t been meeting expectations. Fortunately, listening, like any communication skill, can be improved, and Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. As a user researcher, she has spent nearly a decade facilitating hundreds of conversations at LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. It’s her job to uncover the truth behind how people use, and really think about, her company’s products. In Listen Like You Mean It, she reveals the tips and tricks of the trade, including: – How to quickly build rapport with strangers – Which questions help people unlock what they need to say – When it’s time to throw out the script entirely – How to recover from listener’s drain

Bessie, Queen of the Sky

Bessie, Queen of the Sky
Author: Andrea Doshi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780998504704

This fairy tale is inspired by the story of Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to hold a pilot's license in the world. 'When Bessie was growing up, no one could have imagined that a girl from a humble family would get out of the cotton fields and become a pilot. But with the help of her best friend Bloony, Bessie uses her courage and determination to make her dream come true!'

The Guardians

The Guardians
Author: Ana Castillo
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-09-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812975715

From American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Eking out a living as a teacher’s aide in a small New Mexican border town, Tía Regina is also raising her teenage nephew, Gabo, a hardworking boy who has entered the country illegally and aspires to the priesthood. When Gabo’s father, Rafa, disappears while crossing over from Mexico, Regina fears the worst. After several days of waiting and with an ominous phone call from a woman who may be connected to a smuggling ring, Regina and Gabo resolve to find Rafa. Help arrives in the form of Miguel, an amorous, recently divorced history teacher; Miguel’s gregarious abuelo Milton; a couple of Gabo’s gangbanger classmates; and a priest of wayward faith. Though their journey is rife with challenges and danger, it will serve as a remarkable testament to family bonds, cultural pride, and the human experience Praise for The Guardians NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE “An always skilled storyteller, [Castillo] grounds her writing in . . . humor, love, suspense and heartache–that draw the reader in.” –Chicago Sunday Sun-Times “A rollicking read, with jokes and suspense and joy rides and hearts breaking . . . This smart, passionate novel deserves a wide audience.” –Los Angeles Times “What drives the novel is its chorus of characters, all, in their own way, witnesses and guardian angels. In the end, Castillo’s unmistakable voice–earthy, impassioned, weaving a ‘hybrid vocabulary for a hybrid people’–is the book’s greatest revelation.” –Time Out New York “A wonderful novel . . . Castillo’s most important accomplishment in The Guardians is to give a unique literary voice to questions about what makes up a ‘family.’ ” –El Paso Times “A moving book that is both intimate and epic in its narrative.” –Oscar Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

A Ballad of Love and Glory

A Ballad of Love and Glory
Author: Reyna Grande
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982165286

Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’s Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Fiction A Long Petal of the Sea meets Cold Mountain in this “epic and exquisitely wrought” (Patricia Engel, New York Times bestselling author) saga following a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier who must fight, at first for their survival and then for their love, amidst the atrocity of the Mexican-American War—from the author of The Distance Between Us. A forgotten war. An unforgettable romance. The year is 1846. After the controversial annexation of Texas, the US Army marches south to provoke war with México over the disputed Río Grande boundary. Ximena Salomé is a gifted Mexican healer who dreams of building a family with the man she loves on the coveted land she calls home. But when Texas Rangers storm her ranch and shoot her husband dead, her dreams are burned to ashes. Vowing to honor her husband’s memory and defend her country, Ximena uses her healing skills as a nurse on the frontlines of the ravaging war. Meanwhile, John Riley, an Irish immigrant in the Yankee army desperate to help his family escape the famine devastating his homeland, is sickened by the unjust war and the unspeakable atrocities against his countrymen by nativist officers. In a bold act of defiance, he swims across the Río Grande and joins the Mexican Army—a desertion punishable by execution. He forms the St. Patrick’s Battalion, a band of Irish soldiers willing to fight to the death for México’s freedom. When Ximena and John meet, a dangerous attraction blooms between them. As the war intensifies, so does their passion. Swept up by forces with the power to change history, they fight not only for the fate of a nation but for their future together. “A grand and soulful novel by a storyteller who has hit her full stride” (Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies), A Ballad of Love and Glory effortlessly illuminates a largely forgotten moment in history that impacts the US–México border to this day.

The Future Is Beautiful

The Future Is Beautiful
Author: Amisha Ghadiali
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016-08-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781367406636

"Imagination is the most precious currency we have. This anthology is a priceless, awe-inspiring companion in a time for new dreams."How will you create beauty in the world?Every one of us has ideas and personal experiences to share that can lead us to a brighter future. In the pages of this book, over two hundred people reveal their vision of the world they want to live in and the ways in which we can think, act and vote to create it. Beautifully illustrated, this is a personal, political exploration of what we value, and how we can live these values our daily life.This book is an invitation to you, wherever you are in the world, to imagine the future of your choice and inspire us to build it with you. Our global future is created by all of us, together. The Future Is Beautiful is the start of a new conversation for making that happen.Let your imagination run wild. We are the Future.

Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals

Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals
Author: Felix Dodds
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2016-11-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315527073

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of seventeen goals and 169 targets, with accompanying indicators, which were agreed by UN member states to frame their policy agendas for the fifteen-year period from 2015 to 2030. Written by three authors who have been engaged in the development of the SDGs from the beginning, this book offers an insider view of the process and a unique entry into what will be seen as one of the most significant negotiations and global policy agendas of the twenty-first century. The book reviews how the SDGs were developed, what happened in key meetings and how this transformational agenda, which took more than three years to negotiate, came together in September 2015. It dissects and analyzes the meetings, organizations and individuals that played key roles in their development. It provides fascinating insights into the subtleties and challenges of high-level negotiation processes of governments and stakeholders, and into how the SDGs were debated, formulated and agreed. It is essential reading for all interested in the UN, sustainable development and the future of the planet and humankind.

Artificial Whiteness

Artificial Whiteness
Author: Yarden Katz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 023155107X

Dramatic statements about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence for humanity abound, as an industry of experts claims that AI is poised to reshape nearly every sphere of life. Who profits from the idea that the age of AI has arrived? Why do ideas of AI’s transformative potential keep reappearing in social and political discourse, and how are they linked to broader political agendas? Yarden Katz reveals the ideology embedded in the concept of artificial intelligence, contending that it both serves and mimics the logic of white supremacy. He demonstrates that understandings of AI, as a field and a technology, have shifted dramatically over time based on the needs of its funders and the professional class that formed around it. From its origins in the Cold War military-industrial complex through its present-day Silicon Valley proselytizers and eager policy analysts, AI has never been simply a technical project enabled by larger data and better computing. Drawing on intimate familiarity with the field and its practices, Katz instead asks us to see how AI reinforces models of knowledge that assume white male superiority and an imperialist worldview. Only by seeing the connection between artificial intelligence and whiteness can we prioritize alternatives to the conception of AI as an all-encompassing technological force. Bringing together theories of whiteness and race in the humanities and social sciences with a deep understanding of the history and practice of science and computing, Artificial Whiteness is an incisive, urgent critique of the uses of AI as a political tool to uphold social hierarchies.

Americans by Heart

Americans by Heart
Author: William Perez
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807771716

Americans by Heart examines the plight of undocumented Latino students as they navigate the educational and legal tightrope presented by their immigration status. Many of these students are accepted to attend some of our best colleges and universities but cannot afford the tuition to do so because they are not eligible for financial aid or employment. For the few that defy the odds and manage to graduate, their status continues to present insurmountable barriers to employment. This timely and compelling account brings to light the hard work and perseverance of these students and their families; their commitment to education and civic participation; and their deep sense of uncertainty and marginality. Offering a rich in-depth analysis, the author presents a new framework for educational policies that recognizes the merit and potential of undocumented Latino students and links their situation to larger social and policy issues of immigration reform and higher education access.

Museums, Exhibitions, and Memories of Violence in Colombia

Museums, Exhibitions, and Memories of Violence in Colombia
Author: Jimena Perry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2023-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000896420

This book explores how recent Colombian historical memories are informed by cultural diversity and how some of the country’s citizens remember the brutalities committed by the Army, guerrillas, and paramilitaries during the internal war (1980-2016). Its chapters delve into four case studies. The first highlights the selections of what not to remember and what not to represent at the National Museum of the country. The second focuses on the well-received memories at the same institution by examining a display made to commemorate the assassination of a demobilized guerrilla fighter. The third discusses how a rural marginal community decided to vividly remember the attacks they experienced by creating a display hall to aid in their collective and individual healing. Lastly, the fourth case study, also about a rural peripheric community, discusses their way of remembering, which emphasizes peasant oral traditions through a traveling venue. By bringing violence, memory, and museum studies together, this text contributes to our understanding of how social groups severely impacted by atrocities recreate and remember their violent experiences. By drawing on displays, newspapers, interviews, catalogs, and oral histories, Jimena Perry shows how museums and exhibitions in Colombia become politically active subjects in the acts of reflection and mourning, and how they foster new relationships between the state and society. This volume is of great use to students and scholars interested in Latin American and public history.