Take in the Good: Skills for Staying Positive and Living Your Best Life

Description

Manage strong emotions and stay positive with this self-care activity journal for teens ages 13 and older. When you feel completely stressed out by your crazy life, it often helps to channel your energy into a project or activity to shift your focus from the negative to the positive. This activity journal contains 50 fun and focused art projects, writing prompts, and exercises to help you find ways to feel more calm, confident, resilient and able to take care of yourself and manage your emotions. This journal will also be an invaluable resource for teachers, guidance counselors, and therapists to use with young people in a group or academic setting.

GINA M. BIEGEL, MA, LMFT, is a psychotherapist, researcher, speaker, and author in the San Francisco Bay Area who specializes in mindfulness-based work with adolescents. She is founder of Stressed Teens, which has been offering mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T) to adolescents, families, schools, professionals, and the community for over a decade. She created MBSR-T to help teens in a large HMO's outpatient department of child and adolescent psychiatry whose physical and psychological symptoms were not responding satisfactorily to a multitude of other evidence-based practices. An expert and pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based approaches to youth, she is the author of Be Mindful & Stress Less- 50 Ways to Deal with Your (Crazy) Life, The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens (first and second edition), the Be Mindful Card Deck for Teens and the forthcoming book Mindfulness for Student Athletes- A Workbook to Help Teens Reduce Stress and Enhance Performance. She also has a mindfulness practice audio CD, Mindfulness for Teens, to complement the MBSR-T program; provides worldwide multiday trainings and intensive ten-week online trainings; and works with teens and families individually and in groups. Her work has been featured on the Today Show, CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, and Tricycle. Breanna Chambers is an artist from San Luis Obispo, California. She is in a BA program in Art and Design at Cal Poly University.

"With beautiful illustrations and powerful exercises, Take in the Good is a step-by-step guide to acceptance and loving transformation. A poetic and practical roadmap for awakening to what is, for teenagers, and readers of all ages who seek clarity, courage, and peace."- Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness "This enormously helpful and practical book uses the power of positive neuroplasticity to hardwire confidence, calm, and happiness into the nervous system. The illustrations are gorgeous, and the suggestions and mini-meditations are fabulous. Truly a gem."-Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Resilient "Life in high school is fast-paced, and it can sometimes feel like there's only enough time to go to school, do homework, and sleep. I read this book in the beginning of my junior year, and one idea that really resonated with me was that stress is like waves in the ocean. In order to manage stress, you must notice and ride these waves-and then find a way to "drop anchor." Now, when I find myself in a stressful situation, I visualize each wave coming up and myself floating over it."-Liv Bailey, a student at Maine's Yarmouth High School, and contributing writer for KidSpirit "In this book, Biegel zeroes in on helping teens understand neuroplasticity, the process by which our brain changes in response to our experiences-and how directing our attention to the positive, i.e. "taking in the good," trains our brain to be happy and resilient. There's plenty to read in here, plus lots of prompts to write, move, and try out a variety of skills for emotional health."-Mindful