Books and cats

It was lovely to receive this photograph the other day. This is Mara, one of the people who wrote an endorsement of my forthcoming book, “The Heart’s Awakening,” receiving her advance copy.

The cat in the background is Cleo.

The book doesn’t come out until Oct 14, and I didn’t even know that it existed in physical form!

I’m looking forward to seeing one myself.

“The Heart’s Awakening” has the subtitle, “108 Steps to a Life of Love.” It explores how we can bring more kindness, compassion, and appreciation into our lives. These are things that enrich our lives and make us happier.

It explains how we can overcome anger, hatred, resentment, and contempt — which make us and others unhappy.

One of the things it addresses is the way we undermine ourselves through self-criticism. Lots of people in our lives have criticized us in order to “improve” us. We internalize that strategy to the point where we can’t imagine living without it, even though we hate it!

The teachings in my book show how we can support and encourage ourselves through kindness instead. It makes such a difference to our lives when we do this. We realize that we’ve been going through life traumatizing ourselves with self-criticism. Then we wonder why we procrastinate on doing important things. Well, isn’t it kind of natural to avoid doing things when you’re only going to criticize yourself for not doing them “perfectly”?

There is a better way. And it’s not that hard. It starts with learning to show ourselves a little warmth and encouragement, using soft, kind, eyes (which is something I explain in the book), kinder inner communication, and other methods.

The Heart’s Awakening is available for preorder now. Why not reserve your copy so that you can hit the ground running (or sitting) on October 14?

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon, and os bookshop.org (which allows you to support your local bookstore).