"No matter what your current achievements or future aspirations, the advice in this book can save you years of hard learning"--Back cover

Coming-of-age is complicated by coming-out in personal essays leavened with humor, generosity, and all the awkward indignities of growing up.

There is strength and promise within these pages to inspire any reader seeking to find quality of life. Join us on our journey as we courageously share our heartfelt stories about what we have learned through life lessons and trial and error. If I Knew Then What I Know Now is a compilation of our experiences, things we have done, observations we have made and what we have discovered. "I am honored to have been chosen to be a part of this amazing quality of life project. This book is a testament to a single radiant Spirit who, years ago, visualized and set a goal to help more than one million people live a better Life. Doreen lives the mantra of "People Helping People," and this book intensifies her vision and her dream. The stories written in If I Knew Then What I Know Now came straight from the souls of people wanting to help other people while, unknowingly, helping themselves in the process. These heartfelt stories will give you courage and inspiration to explore your own life-while loving and accepting others even more.Thank you, Doreen for your vision and for your tenacity. I'm one of your biggest fans " Love, Rebecca L. Norrington, Happiness Specialist P.S. You have already changed the world with this book.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Jann Arden—bestselling author, recording artist and late-blooming TV star—is back with this funny, heartfelt and fierce memoir on becoming a woman of a certain age. The power, gravity and freedom she's found at fifty-seven are superpowers she believes all of us can unleash. Digging deep into her strengths, her failures and her losses, Jann Arden brings us an inspiring account of how she has surprised herself, in her fifties, by at last becoming completely her own person. Like many women, it took Jann a long time to realize that trying to be pleasing and likeable and beautiful in the eyes of others was a loser's game. Letting it rip, and damning the consequences, is not only liberating, it's a hell of a lot of fun: "Being the age I am—that so many women are—is just the best time of my life." Jann weaves her own story together with tales of her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, and the father she came close to hating, to show her younger self—and all of us—that fear and avoidance is no way to live. "What I'm thinking about now aren't all the ways I can try to hang on to my youth or all the seconds ticking by in some kind of morbid countdown to death," she writes, "but rather how I keep becoming someone I always hoped I could be. If I'm lucky one day a very old face will look back at me from the mirror, a face I once shied away from. I will love that old woman ferociously, because she has finally figured out how to live a life of purpose—not in spite of but because of all her mistakes and failures."

This wonderfully whimsical book is a celebration of all the phases and stages it took to get you to who you are today... a bold, confident, incredible woman who is not afraid to stand up, speak out, and rock the boat.

A revised and updated edition of the international bestseller Inspiring readers all over the globe to reimagine their future, this revised and updated edition of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 features new material to complement the classic text. Major life transitions such as leaving the protected environment of school or starting a new career can be daunting. It is scary to face a wall of choices, knowing that no one is going to tell us if we make the right decision. There is no clearly delineated path or recipe for success. Even figuring out how and where to start can be a challenge. As head of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Tina Seelig’s job is to guide her students as they make the difficult transition from the academic environment to the professional world—providing tangible skills and insights that will last a lifetime. Seelig is a wildly popular and award-winning teacher and in What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 she shares with us what she offers her students –provocative stories, inspiring advice, and a big dose of humility and humor. These pages are filled with captivating examples, from the classroom to the boardroom, of individuals defying expectations, challenging assumptions, and achieving unprecedented success. Seelig throws out the old rules and provides a new model for reaching our potential. We discover how to have a healthy disregard for the impossible; how to recover from failure; and how most problems are remarkable opportunities in disguise. What I Wish I Knew When I Was Twenty is a much-needed book for everyone looking to make their mark in the world.

As a thirtyaEUR"yearaEUR"old, reflecting on my adolescent self, I realize there are so many life lessons to be learned. The common phrase "If I knew then what I know now . . ." is the basis of my book. While reading this book, you will get a glimpse into a normal, everyday girl's life growing up. By reading an actual misspelled young girl's diary entry followed by a typed thirtyaEUR"year old's reflection, you will see how life affects us behind closed doors. Growing up, we experience many ups, downs, wishaEUR"IaEUR"dids, gladaEUR"IaEUR"didn'ts, bestaEUR"dayaEUR"ofaEUR"myaEUR"lifes, worstaEUR"dayaEUR"evers, and everything in between. This book shows that people are not alone at this age. Get ready to relive making friends, new schools, fitting in, school dances, boyfriends, and first kisses with a whole lot of bumps along the way. Growing up is tough aEUR" for everyone. We've all made mistakes, and we've all looked back and thought, If I only knew then what I know now . . .

Lots of people go through their entire life and never find answers to the questions they've always wondered about. Wolff shares a guide, a sort of "Here's something you may have forgotten or never even thought about" kind of written friend, whose only purpose is to help readers see their lives and those in it a little differently.

Regret... remorse... anguish. Rose White always believed that one day she would live happily ever after with the man of her dreams, in a house full of their beautiful children. When she finally fell head over heels in love, she thought that those dreams had come true. But when she packed up her belongings and left her parents’ home at eighteen years of age, she soon realized that the man she was running off with wasn’t the one she knew. After their wedding and the birth of their baby, their relationship plummeted into an abyss of lies, abuse, affairs, and manipulation. She desperately wanted to reconnect with her estranged family, but her husband wouldn’t hear of it. Left with no other choice but to sneak out of the house with the baby, she risked what would only be imminent: verbal and physical violence at his hands. Rose holds nothing back as she takes readers on her journey, reminding them that regardless of their circumstances, they’re never alone. She tells it like it is—the good and the bad, the pleasure and the pain—and how she survived.

"Everyone makes mistakes. But why make the same ones that other youth workers have already learned tough lessons through? Whether you’re a youth ministry volunteer or you’ve just stepped into a full-time youth ministry position, chances are that you don’t know everything...not yet anyway. Here you’ll find wisdom from seasoned veterans who have “been there and done that” so you can avoid the pitfalls they’ve found themselves facing.With true stories from real youth workers, you’ll get the truth that you just don’t learn in your seminar classes or volunteer training meetings. With thought-provoking questions, relevant Scripture, and practical applications, you’ll learn from some of the common, but avoidable, blunders of youth ministry veterans such as: • Soul care slip-ups• Team building terrors• Relationship errors• Parent problems (or is it problem parents?!)• Programming pitfalls• Budget blunders• Moral minefields• Authority ailments• Crisis controlWhile most people will cover up their mistakes and hope to never be found out, these brave youth workers are laying it all out there so you don’t have to make the same mistakes. Let their encouragement and wisdom be your most-read training manual."