Self Improvement

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's creative collaborative community HITRECORD looks at love from both sides in this ingenious flippable book.

So, you just got dumped, huh? Or did you just dump someone? Doesn't matter who ended it. Either way, you're sleeping alone tonight.

But don't worry, you're not really alone. HITRECORD's global community of over 750,000 active artists is here to help with The Art of Breaking Up, a new book designed to get you through this trying time.

That's over 750,000 people who know the soul-crushing pain of a broken heart. But instead of wallowing forever in vats of unproductive (but delicious) cookie dough, they've channeled all that misery into an insightful, funny, and smart compendium of musings, photography, drawings, collages, puzzles, recipes, games, and more--designed to explore (and distract from) the mind-numbing agony of a romantic breakup. You'll laugh, you'll smile, and you'll probably cry.

Everyone knows there are two sides to every break-up, so this book features a double-sided, flippable structure. One side eases the tortured consciences of the HEARTBREAKERS. Flip the book, and the other side considers the plight of the BROKEN-HEARTED.

Both sides are organized chronologically with chapters that correspond to the emotional trajectory of both the HEARTBREAKER and BROKEN-HEARTED. Chapters include: Early Warning Signs, Exit Strategy, The Break Up, Acceptance, Depression, Bargaining, Anger, and Denial. Where the two sections meet in the middle there is a compelling, heart-wrenching moment where the HEARTBREAKER and BROKEN-HEARTED connect again, but we're not giving that away.

Inside this book you'll find plenty of art, stories, comics, and other amusements, such as a Post-Break-Up Relationship Survey, Denial Yoga, Candy Hearts for Assholes, Breakup Greeting Cards, Hex Your Ex Voodoo Doll, The Free Bird Word Search Game, and a playlist or two, including Right Back at Ya, a collection of songs to stoke the burning rage in your heart.

Everything you'll find in this book was made collaboratively by people from around the world on HITRECORD-an online creative platform for collaborative art and media projects founded and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

With its universal, all-inclusive approach to the subject, The Art of Breaking Up is an acute observation of love and heartbreak in modern times, and maybe-just maybe-a salve for anyone with a broken heart.

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

Do your relationships often feel one-sided or unbalanced? Are you always giving in just so things will go smoothly? Do you wish you could learn to say no--but, like, nicely? Are you depleted, overwhelmed, and tired of putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to establish some boundaries.

Since launching the mega-bestselling wellness program the Whole30, Melissa Urban has taught millions of people how to establish healthy habits and successfully navigate pushback and peer pressure. She knows firsthand that boundaries--clear limits you set to protect your energy, time, and health--are the key to feelings of security, confidence, and freedom in every area of your life.

Now, in The Book of Boundaries, she shows you how boundaries are the key to better mental health, increased energy, improved productivity, and more fulfilling relationships.

In her famously direct and compassionate style, Urban offers:

- 130+ scripts with language you can use to instantly establish boundaries with bosses and co-workers, romantic partners, parents and in-laws, co-parents, friends, family, neighbors, strangers--and yourself
- actionable advice to help you communicate your needs with clarity and compassion
- tips for successfully navigating boundary guilt, pushback, pressure, and oversteps
- techniques to create healthy habits around food, drink, technology, and more

User-friendly and approachable, The Book of Boundaries will give you the tools you need to stop justifying, minimizing, and apologizing, leading you to more rewarding relationships and a life that feels bigger, healthier, and freer.

Covet: The "Disrespectful" Health and Wellness Journal invites you to unapologetically bring sass, attitude, and edge to the world of personal reflection. If the cover and title haven't yet convinced you that this series is untraditional and meant to expand the face and voice of health and wellness, the content will. It is a robust, guided, three-month journal that invites you to check in with your entire self-self-confidence, self-value, goals, habits, and more. Created for women by women, it considers the seasons you travel through, from menstruation to menopause, for example. We live in a beautiful world riddled with tough realities and unjust systems that impact our bodies and influence what happens in them. Covet recognizes this through its respective monthly themes, gratitude prompts, and "dirty word" quotes. In a society that encourages us to be respectable-even at the cost of our self-esteem, mental health, and physical wellbeing-we've carved out a space for you to vent about "daily sh*t." This journal makes room for all of your mess-for you to show up vulnerable, angry, loud, and imperfect-so that your health and wellness experience can be authentically yours, clearing a path that truly honors you.

Dessert connects us heart-to-heart like almost nothing else. It brings us together in good times and bad, celebration and solace. It marks big and small milestones and creates memories of comfort and joy. And Christina Tosi, the founder and CEO of Milk Bar, believes it can save the world.

Does the combination of sugar, flour, and butter have some magical ability to fix all the craziness of our modern existence? Of course not. Tosi knows a cookie is just a cookie--but bringing the joy a cookie holds into every area of your life most definitely can. The spirit of dessert--the relentless, unflinching commitment to finding or creating joy even when joy feels hard to come by--is what can save us. And then we, in turn, can each save the world.

Tosi shares the wisdom she learned growing up surrounded by strong women who showed her baking's ability to harness love and create connection, as well as personal stories about succeeding in the highly competitive food world by unapologetically being her true self. Studded with personal and unorthodox recipes, Dessert Can Save the World reveals the secret ingredients for transforming our outlooks, our relationships, our work, and our entire collective existence into something boldly optimistic and stubbornly joyful.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is more than a data scientist. He is a prophet for how to use the data revolution to reimagine your life. Don't Trust Your Gut is a tour de force--an intoxicating blend of analysis, humor, and humanity." -- Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

Big decisions are hard. We consult friends and family, make sense of confusing "expert" advice online, maybe we read a self-help book to guide us. In the end, we usually just do what feels right, pursuing high stakes self-improvement--such as who we marry, how to date, where to live, what makes us happy--based solely on what our gut instinct tells us. But what if our gut is wrong? Biased, unpredictable, and misinformed, our gut, it turns out, is not all that reliable. And data can prove this.

In Don't Trust Your Gut, economist, former Google data scientist, and New York Times bestselling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz reveals just how wrong we really are when it comes to improving our own lives. In the past decade, scholars have mined enormous datasets to find remarkable new approaches to life's biggest self-help puzzles. Data from hundreds of thousands of dating profiles have revealed surprising successful strategies to get a date; data from hundreds of millions of tax records have uncovered the best places to raise children; data from millions of career trajectories have found previously unknown reasons why some rise to the top.

Telling fascinating, unexpected stories with these numbers and the latest big data research, Stephens-Davidowitz exposes that, while we often think we know how to better ourselves, the numbers disagree. Hard facts and figures consistently contradict our instincts and demonstrate self-help that actually works--whether it involves the best time in life to start a business or how happy it actually makes us to skip a friend's birthday party for a night of Netflix on the couch. From the boring careers that produce the most wealth, to the old-school, data-backed relationship advice so well-worn it's become a literal joke, he unearths the startling conclusions that the right data can teach us about who we are and what will make our lives better.

Lively, engrossing, and provocative, the end result opens up a new world of self-improvement made possible with massive troves of data. Packed with fresh, entertaining insights, Don't Trust Your Gut redefines how to tackle our most consequential choices, one that hacks the market inefficiencies of life and leads us to make smarter decisions about how to improve our lives. Because in the end, the numbers don't lie.

Allie is a young lady with a big and open heart. She connects with others and with nature, and she feels keenly. She sees deeper meaning in the simplicities of life.

Even though Allie was mentally and emotionally abused growing up, that's not all. Allie was also loved and nurtured. Many people came into her life who sculpted the dimensions of her heart. She found deep meaning in the simplicities of life and savored the love she found in these places.

Still, as she matured, Allie found cycles in her life that would not go away. She knew she must face her pains and look inward at the places which did not bloom if she ever were to be free to live the life she always wanted. She needed to accept and honor her truth.

By navigating the complexities of the human heart, Allie works to heal her past and her future. She finds that life blossoms from both love and pain, especially when she decides to honor herself. Can a person co-create their life with faith? Are we truly able to discover ourselves when we seek our own hearts? By considering Allie's story, may you be inspired to look within your own heart and lean on faith. May you consider life and love to the depths of all they are.

Making her debut in 2020 and already followed by more than 3.8 million fans on TikTok, the internet sensation The Folding Lady shows everyone how to use her smart and simple home hacks and tips to fold any household item and organize difficult areas to create extra space and improve functionality in the home.

In this illustrated guide, Sophie Liard brings her expertise together and teaches you how to fold all of your household items, from boxers, leggings, and socks to sheets, towels and even napkins and wrapping paper. The Folding Lady shows you that anything is foldable and shares the inner joy that folding brings and offers extra tips on organizing drawers, desks, snack drawers, cosmetics, and more to make life a little easier and more manageable.

Sophie encourages you to take charge of small, simple, and achievable tasks. Sometimes you have to let go of trying to tackle the big stuff and make the most of the little things that can be controlled. The Folding Lady will bring you comfort and help you find solace amid the daily stress.

It's all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day--moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of thought and perception, surprising us by breaking up our routines and reminding us that there's more to life than the everyday.

In How to Be Weird, Eric G. Wilson offers 99 fun and philosophically rich exercises for embracing all the weird in the world around us--taking aimless walks, creating a reverie nook, exploring the underside of bridges, making tombstone rubbings, finding your own Narnia, and more.

With brief digestible entries on how to make sense of the random, guidelines on how to defamiliarize familiar objects through meditation, and exercises for locating weird states and phenomena for ourselves, How to Be Weird is an invitation to lean into the weird and to live a fuller life.

- 2022 Coalition of Visionary Resources Gold Award

- 2022 Nautilus Gold Award

- Award Winner in the Health: Aging/50+ category of the 2021 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest

- Award Winner in Non-Fiction: Aging and Gerontology category of the 2021 Best Indie Book Award

- Offers shadow-work and many diverse spiritual practices to help you break through denial to awareness, move from self-rejection to self-acceptance, repair the past to be fully present, and allow mortality to be a teacher

- Reveals how to use inner work to uncover and explore the unconscious denial and resistance that erupts around key thresholds of later life

- Includes personal interviews with prominent Elders, including Ken Wilber, Krishna Das, Fr. Thomas Keating, Anna Douglas, James Hollis, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Ashton Applewhite, Roshi Wendy Nakao, Roger Walsh, and Stanislav Grof

With extended longevity comes the opportunity for extended personal growth and spiritual development. You now have the chance to become an Elder, to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are. This book is a guide to help get past the inner obstacles and embrace the hidden spiritual gifts of age.

Offering a radical reimagining of age for all generations, psychotherapist and bestselling author Connie Zweig reveals how to use inner work to uncover and explore the unconscious denial and resistance that erupts around key thresholds of later life, attune to your soul's longing, and emerge renewed as an Elder filled with vitality and purpose. She explores the obstacles encountered in the transition to wise Elder and offers psychological shadow-work and diverse spiritual practices to help you break through denial to awareness, move from self-rejection to self-acceptance, repair the past to be fully present, reclaim your creativity, and allow mortality to be a teacher. Sharing contemplative practices for selfreflection, she also reveals how to discover ways to share your talents and wisdom to become a force for change in the lives of others.

Woven throughout with wisdom from prominent Elders, including Ken Wilber, Krishna Das, Father Thomas Keating, Anna Douglas, James Hollis, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Ashton Applewhite, Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, Roger Walsh, and Stanislav Grof, this book offers tools and guidance to help you let go of past roles, expand your identity, deepen self-knowledge, and move through these life passages to a new stage of awareness, choosing to be fully real, transparent, and free to embrace a fulfilling late life.

"So many of us have this hidden shame floating around our brains with no way to let it out without being judged, and that shit weighs us down."

Every lady has a secret. A secret so humiliating, embarrassing, scandalous, or disgraceful that you haven't told a soul--not your closest friends, family, lovers, or doctors. There is so much shame surrounding hiding secrets, and, frankly, enough is enough.

The truth is, there is power and freedom in releasing those dirty little secrets out into the big, bad universe. It gives you that same sweet relief as taking off an underwire bra at the end of a long, crappy day. That's why Keltie Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jac Vanek--hosts of the LadyGang podcast--set their secrets free: the good, the bad, and the diarrhea. The LadyGang wanted to offer their large and loyal community a chance to join them in exposing the messy truths of their lives, and so, Lady Secrets was born: confessional essays from the trio themselves and an incredible crowdsourced collection of secrets from other ladies around the world. Secrets ranging from silly little white lies to cringey misadventures to soul-baring truths. And as it turns out, exposing your deepest and darkest helps you realize that we are all way more alike than we could have ever imagined.

Everyone seems to have a bizarre body malfunction, a hookup gone terribly wrong, and a soul-crushing experience that haunts them forever. And maybe that elaborate revenge plot you carried out against your cheating ex was actually kind of badass (in spite of being slightly illegal). It's time we stop feeling ashamed of our (un)ladylike habits and own the real, raw, and ridiculous things that make you authentically you.