I am still amazed when people love the book

Repeat after me….

By Marian Edmunds

A woman stood up at  a function I attended recently and said she had to recommend this great book to everyone. She was talking about Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World (You’re All Right As You Are If Only You Knew It!)  She said she was passing her copy on to friends and family to read and asking them to write in the back “I am all right as I am”.

Then, yesterday at a public event a woman, a new mother,  told me she had loved the book. It had been given to her by her husband as a birthday gift. I asked why she loved it. She said she had received it at just the right moment. She also had a thing about  perfection and this helped her to be  more accepting. Now she has passed the book on to her sister.

Navigational Tips seems to be the kind of book that people wish to share. Here is a review in the UK’s Sunday Times.  I am still amazed when people love the book and yet I know that between Charles Bentley PhD and myself, Marian Edmunds,  a good little book. Do let us know if it works for you.

You can find it with your preferred bookseller here.

Seeing the good in ourselves

Drawing : Roger Beale

WE OFTEN FOCUS so much on one or two aspects of our personalities or physical being that we no longer see our whole selves. Instead, we see a distorted image in which the qualities or features we don’t like about ourselves dominate.
Really? Can’t they see all the things I want to hide? Don’t they see that I could lose some weight? That my hair’s not right? Don’t they see my big feet?
Quite possibly. However, those things you see as wrong about you are just a part of you, and probably not seen as wrong by others. We may see a monster where others simply see a person. Besides, they are more likely to be pre-occupied by what they feel about themselves!
Of course, you may be able to improve or better maintain the parts of yourself you’re not satisfied with through education or training. If you are overweight or unfit, you may be able to exercise or change your diet to improve your fitness and well-being. But even when you do that, you’ll still be the same person. You’ll simply be a fitter, or slimmer, version of yourself. That may make you feel better, more mobile, and able to wear a smaller clothes size, and perhaps feel happier. But all of that is only a part of what makes up you as a person.

You need to look at yourself in a different way. If you can see yourself as the whole person you will see more clearly what role you are playing in events. You will understand very clearly what you are doing, and what you need to do next. It means that you are taking charge of your own feelings and actions. And you won’t be laying blame on others for how you are. It is not until we accept and understand ourselves that we can hope to accept and love others.

But how?

An excerpt from Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World by Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds

Sunday Times Style reviews Navigational Tips For Living

The UK’s Sunday Times Style section reviewed Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World on December 30, 2012.

The New Years’ relationship resolution that comes first

One of the biggest resolutions of the New Year is to find love again before this time next year.

In making resolutions, as in books, music and the movies, medieval ideals of romance still influence the quest for contemporary relationships. And before you’re eligible to love, or be loved happily ever after, you’re somehow expected to be perfect yourself!

Romantic love is an attachment to projected fantasies based on outdated needs, but real love is different. Real love accepts that our object of desire is a human being and therefore just as fallible and vulnerable as we are.

Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World,
Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, 2012.

But first comes the relationship with the self.

There is no challenge, internal or external, that can’t be successfully navigated by someone who has an integrated understanding of, and relationship with, his or her authentic self.

Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World,
Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, 2012.

Should we put the relationship with the self on our list of resolutions?
All the best for the New Year, and for a joyful year of discovery in 2013.
We’re all right as we are, if only we knew it!

Our book may be found in print and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Expectation of perfection undoes New Years’ resolutions

Who’s perfect?

 This is the biggest week of the year for re-evaluation of the self and resetting our big goals. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring for big goals, and being ambitious for ourselves and our projects but sometimes it’s not the goal but the expectation of perfection that makes it come undone.

One of the main messages of Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World is that you’re all right as you are.  That doesn’t mean  we are not capable of more. The key is to understand our capabilities. If we accept ourselves and develop a deeper understanding of how ourselves and others we are usually capable of achieving much more than we realise. But when we attach the condition of perfection in others, and ourselves, the strains can soon show.

It’s not love itself that’s the problem. It’s when you attach to it the condition of perfection that you find yourself in trouble. You already know, in your heart, that you are not perfect. Yet still you may be expecting others to be perfect, and stop loving them if and when they fail to meet your standards. And in the same way, you fail to love yourself – because you’re not perfect, because you can’t meet a certain standard that you set for yourself.

Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World, Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, 2012

All the best for the New Year, and for a joyful year of discovery in 2013.

Rediscover your authentic self.

Our book may be found in print and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

As you make your resolutions for 2013…

At New Year particularly, we can feel as if we are pushed hard to towards desire to achieve our ‘perfect’ goal by coaches, parents, or figures of authority or by peer pressure. Are these really the goals that will bring fulfilment?

You can say, ‘These are my aims and goals
and I’m going to go hell-for-leather to achieve them.’
This is the unexamined life.
Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World
Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, 2012

Loading ourselves up with huge lists of New Year resolutions can be a defence against allowing the surprises of exploring where our authentic natures may take us.

“The real journey of life is not to a far-away place, but a journey back into your authentic self. There you will find a deep understanding of your attitudes and behaviour that are fixed in the past. You will see your yearning for perfection for what it is, and that you perceive the world differently according to your present mood.
Through acceptance of your mortality and the discovery of the joy of living in the moment, and by re-connecting with your intuition, you’ll tap into a bottomless wellspring of authentic impulses and creativity.

Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World, Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, 2012

All the best for the New Year, and for a joyful year of discovery in 2013.

Rediscover your authentic self.
Our book may be found in print and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

The gift you can give yourself

Can you, just for a change, accept yourself? Drawing: Roger Beale ©

Do you feel pressure to present a shiny, new, perfect version of yourself at Christmas? Does it matter if you don’t order organic turkey? Will you be kicked off the social ladder if you don’t send cards? And why punish yourself with New Year’s resolutions?
The best gift you can give yourself is to know you are all right, as you are, says UK personal development coach, Charles Bentley PhD.
There is no challenge, internal or external that can’t be navigated by someone with an integrated understanding of his or her authentic self, says Bentley. It’s about experiencing each event in your life as a present reality, instead of looking at it through the distorting mirror of the past, says Bentley.
Let go of your fantasies of an unattainable future and learn how to spot limiting attitudes and behaviour.

Marian Edmunds had a job with a leading newspaper, a London home, travel (and sometimes even a white Christmas). But she felt like she was always running – to the train, the office, the shops, and to pick up her child. Then, after attending to her family, she’d settle down for an evening of worrying about the next day at work. She’d worked so hard and all it had added up to was stress.
Through Bentley’s Unitive coaching, Edmunds started to better accept herself, and others, and never gave a damn about office politics again.
With original drawings by well-known Financial Times cartoonist Roger Beale, the book is a succinct guide to coping in the world as it is today. Most of all Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World shows you that you are all right, as you are. It will also help you to accept others as they are. It’s an important thing to know at Christmas.

Stockists: for your human GPS from: navigationaltipsforliving.com/ linking to Amazon.com and Amazon UK. Available for order from good book stores.
Order a pre-Christmas copy to be sent direct to your address (Australia only) $20. Click here. Contact info@navigationaltipsforliving.com
* Review copies are available for verified media and bloggers.

Launching a GPS for life

Here’s where you can find our book. We’ve waited a long time for this but now Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World (We’re all right as we are, if only we knew it!) is widely available. And just in time for Christmas. Tuck it in the Christmas stocking to help resolve festive season arguments. Ever tried a GPS that’s for humans? This is a GPS in a book by Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds, with drawings by Roger Beale, well-known for his cartoons in the Financial Times.

Stuck on old ideas? Want to revel in being your creative self now?

Paperback and Kindle copies from Amazon.com

Paperback and Kindle from Amazon.co.uK

From Book Depository
From Barnes and Noble
Prompt Australian pre-Christmas orders of paperback via ebay

Order from your book store.

Further details at Navigational Tips For Living.

Navigational Tips to put in your pocket

When I saw the first printed proof of Navigational Tips For Living it was a huge moment. If you consider that Charles Bentley and I first talked about this book back in 1999 or 2000. It was big moment and I was thrilled. Yet, I was also disappointed for in the same moment I recognised that the book wasn’t there yet. When I saw the prototype workbook version against the first proof of the smaller edition in June, I knew we had done the right thing. So, some months later, I am about to sign off on the release of the smaller, more pocket-sized version of the book. It will be available on the main online booksellers and it will be available for ordering by booksellers. In the next few days I will post details of that release date which, touchwood, all fingers and toes crossed, will be in place in the next week or two and before the end of the month. My next post here will give that date. Now that is thrilling.

Keep calm and take a life map

Living in the world can be unsettling. There’s a lot to do – figuring out what to do amid economic fluctuations, navigating through emotional minefields and staying on course with the things you really want to do.

Keep calm and carry on reading – I found that message on a bookmark of a holiday novel I am reading. There’s nothing like reading, and being in a story. Each day over the holidays I unfolded a little chair and sat on the beach and read. Utterly engrossed. I looked up occasionally at people frolicking, at the waves that keep coming, all day and all night. One morning I looked up to see riders on brown horses. Behind them was the blue sea with white horses. It was a lovely scene, calm yet lively. I didn’t need to travel to see this. It’s right here, right where I am.

I felt calm when working on the text of Navigational Tips For Living In An Imperfect World (We’re all right as we are, if only we knew it!). 

If some life issue or event or difficult people troubled me during the time of working on this book, I’d turn to the manuscript and work on the text for a while. Soon I would feel calm again. That is one of the  purposes of the book, to set out something of a user-friendly road map to for you to a place of calm.

* Available here in print on Lulu and as e-book on  http://www.amazon.com/Navigational-Living-Imperfect-World-ebook/dp/B007JTG8CY
and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Navigational-Living-Imperfect-World-ebook/dp/B007JTG8CY