Every day modern medicine announces the arrival of yet another “wonder drug” or “miracle procedure” to a world increasingly wary of expensive high-tech cures. Drugs, transplants, and surgery don’t work for 90 percent of our aches and pains and, while we are grateful for life-saving developments, we know that most come with risks that we ignore at our peril. Long hailed as one of the founding fathers of mind-body medicine, Larry Dossey directs our attention to simple sources of healing that have been available for centuries—treasures often hidden in plain sight—from the power of optimism and of tears to speed recovery to the surprising usefulness of dirt and bugs in curing disease and infection to the benefits of doing nothing. Exploring the medical research that validates these simple remedies, Dossey encourages us to align ourselves with the wisdom of nature and allow true healing to take place. The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things can transform our view of what health is all about, whether our concern is cancer or the common cold.

'There's no such thing as an average or old-fashioned business, just average or old-fashioned ways to do business. In fact, the opportunity to reach for extraordinary may be most pronounced in settings that have been far too ordinary for far too long' Far away from Silicon Valley, in familiar, traditional, even unglamorous fields, ordinary people are unleashing extraordinary advances that amaze customers, energize employees, and create huge economic value. Their secret? They understand that inventing the future doesn't just mean designing mobile apps and developing virtual-reality headsets. In Simply Brilliant, the visionary co-founder of Fast Company William C. Taylor goes behind the scenes at some of the unsung organizations that are revolutionizing their otherwise humdrum fields. These unlikely agents of change range from a parking garage that also serves as a wedding venue, to a military insurance company that puts salespeople through simulated overseas deployment. The message is both simple and subversive: in a time of wrenching disruptions and exhilarating leaps, of unrelenting turmoil and unlimited promise, the future is open to everybody. Simply Brilliant illustrates how breakthrough creativity and breakaway performance can be summoned in all industries, if leaders dare to reimagine what's possible in their fields.

Find your life and true calling by losing yourself in the ordinary rhythms of life with the people God has placed around you. Popular blogger, Shannan Martin offers Christians who are longing for a more meaningful life a simple starting point: learn what it is to love and be loved right where God has placed you. What does it look like to live lives of meaning? And how do we do it between loads of laundry and reimagining leftovers? Where do we even begin? For Christ-followers living in an increasingly complicated world, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to live a life of intention and meaning. But in The Ministry of Ordinary Places, speaker and writer Shannan Martin offers a surprisingly simple answer: it’s about being with people, the ones right next door. As she walks you through her own story she challenges you to see your community through a wider lens of love, following in the footsteps of a Savior who came as an everyday man and spent his life circled up with regular folks just like us. Along the way, she shares discoveries about the vital importance of showing up and committing for the long haul, despite the inevitable encounters with brokenness and uncertainty. With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, Martin shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we'll find our very lives. The details will look quiet and ordinary, and the call will both exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure we will ever take and The Ministry of Ordinary Places will help guide you along the path.

Hidden health dangers lurk in many of the seemingly innocent products we encounter every day - a tube of glue in a kitchen drawer, a bottle of bleach in the laundry room, a rayon scarf on a closet shelf, a brass knob on the front door, a wood plank on an out-door deck. It presents a picture not of one exceptional or corrutpt industry but, rather, of how run-of-the mill manufacturing processes and consumer marketing expose workers and the general public alike to toxic hazards.

The book provides a new look at the everyday relationship between psychological processes and extraordinary aspects of ordinary phenomena. Why should we deal with ordinary things? People’s life is made of everyday practical, taken-for-granted things, such as driving a car, using money, listening music, etc. When you drive from home to workplace, you are migrating between contexts. Is this an empty space you are crossing, or the time you spend into the car is something meaningful? In psychological terms, things have, at least, three levels of existence, a material, a symbolic and an affective one. The underlying idea is that the symbolic elaboration of everyday things is characterized by the transcendence of the particular object-sign, leading to the creation of more and more complex sign fields. These fields expand according to an inclusive logic up to dialogically and dialectically incorporate opposites (i.e. clean/dirty, transparent/opaque, hide/ show, join/divide, slow/fast, etc.). Even the meaning of “ordinary” and “extraordinary” follow such an inclusive logic: if you give a positive value to ordinary, extraordinary is rule-breaking; otherwise, if ordinary means trivial, extraordinary assumes a positive value. Besides, things are cultural artifacts mediating the experience of the world, the psychological processes and the construction of mind. Reflecting upon “things” is thus a more meaningful pathway to understand Psyche.

Finding meaning in the mundane is just a matter of knowing where to look. Herewith, the miraculous nature of everyday life is explored. Through vignettes at turns funny and poignant, Rabbi Leder points out those easily overlooked connections between everyday experiences and the teachings of Judaism. God and spirituality can be found in every aspect of our daily routines. Ordinary things--a pet frog, a weekend fishing trip, a roller coaster ride--become extraordinary when reexamined through Jewish eyes. Woven throughout Rabbi Leder's essays are midrashic texts, talmudic excerpts, and passages from the Torah, reflecting thousands of years of Jewish wisdom. Whether recalling a memorable walk along the beach with Dad, teaching a child the commandment of tzedakah, or stepping into the shoes of an anxious father-to-be as he paces the halls of the maternity ward, these stories reveal Judaism's power to illuminate our lives. On child-rearing: Eleven Suggestions for Raising a Mensch On the paradox of modern life: You can't put one tuchus in two chairs. On miracles: The miraculous is the common and the constant: birth, teaching, our breath. Discover The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things.

Every day, we do commonplace things and interact with ordinary people without giving them much thought. This volume offers a theological guide to thinking Christianly about the ordinary nature of everyday life. Leading ethicist Brent Waters shows that the activities and relationships we think of as mundane are actually expressions of love of neighbor that are vitally important to our wellbeing. We live out the Christian gospel in the contexts that define us and in the routine chores, practices, activities, and social settings that give ordinary life meaning. It is in those contexts that we discover what we were created for, to be, and to become.

Cofounder of Fast Company magazine and bestselling author of Mavericks at Work and Practically Radical shows how true business innovation can spring from the unlikeliest places. Far away from Silicon Valley, in familiar, traditional, even unglamorous fields, ordinary people are unleashing extraordinary advances that amaze customers, energize employees, and create huge economic value. Their secret? They understand that the work of inventing the future doesn't just belong to geeks designing mobile apps and virtual-reality headsets, or to social-media entrepreneurs hoping to launch the next Facebook. Some of today's most compelling organizations are doing brilliant things in simple settings such as retail banks, office cleaning companies, department stores, small hospitals, and auto dealerships. William C. Taylor, cofounder of Fast Company and best-selling author of Practically Radical, traveled thousands of miles to visit these hotbeds of simple brilliance and unearth the principles and practices behind their success. He offers fascinating case studies and powerful lessons that you can apply to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways, regardless of your industry or profession. Consider, for instance, how... ·Miami Beach's dazzling 1111 Lincoln Road reimagined the humble parking garage as a high-profile public space that hosts weddings, yoga classes, and celebrity gatherings. ·USAA, the financial-services giant that provides soldiers and their families with insurance and banking products, inspires frontline employees to deliver legendary service by immersing them in military culture. ·Pal's Sudden Service, a fast-food chain with a cult following, serves up burgers and fries with such speed and accuracy that companies from other industries pay to learn from its astonishing discipline. ·Lincoln Electric, a manufacturer based in Euclid, Ohio, dominates its ultracompetitive markets with a fierce devotion to quality and productivity. But the key to its prosperity is a share-the-wealth model that gives everybody a sense of security and a piece of the action. It has maintained a strict no-layoff pledge since 1958. As Taylor writes: “The story of this book, its message for leaders who aim to do something important and build something great, is both simple and subversive: In a time of wrenching disruptions and exhilarating advances, of unrelenting turmoil and unlimited promise, the future is open to everybody. The thrill of breakthrough creativity and breakaway performance . . . can be summoned in all sorts of industries and all walks of life, if leaders can reimagine what’s possible in their fields.” Simply Brilliant shows you how.

What is the 'new economy'? Where is it? How does it differ from the 'old economy'? How does the 'new economy' relate to issues such as the nature of work, social inclusion and exclusion? Geographies of the New Economy explores the meaning of the 'new economy' at the global scale from the perspective of advanced post-socialist and emerging economies. Drawing on evidence from regions around the world, the book debates the efficacy of the widely used concept of the ‘new economy’ and examines its socio-spatial consequences. This book is important reading for policy-makers, academics and students of geography, sociology, urban studies, economics, planning and policy studies.