Jimmy is your typical average Joe. He isnt very good at anything. Everything he does seems to just be average. Nothing he ever touches turns into gold. This is his guide in finding some kind of happiness in this crazy, chaotic world.

“What is happening to my life?” Have you ever honestly asked yourself that question? As young boys, we dreamed of being pilots, firefighters, doctors, and cowboys. Now we’re older, with a wonderful wife and kids, as well as a mortgage, a minivan, and a fulfilling but not-so-glamorous job. What happened? All the dreams that once inspired us have evaporated into traffic jams, computer screens, bills, and deadlines. Why is life so ordinary? If you think your life is nothing special, take a look at it through God’s eyes. The revealing truth is that God chooses “ordinary,” faithful men to do His most important work—regular guys like Peter the fisherman, David the shepherd, Stephen the waiter, Gideon the farmer, Paul the tentmaker, and even Jesus the carpenter. In this engaging book, Troy Meeder blends stories about biblical characters and contemporary men to show that an “average-Joe” life, an “ordinary” existence, shapes a man’s integrity, moral stability, resolve, and strength. The world desperately needs an army of “average Joes.” Like you. “Troy Meeder’s heart-felt accounts from both his own personal experience and those of friends and family touch a raw nerve in your soul…. Average Joe reminds us that living a life focused on faith, family, and friends is what makes a man exceptional.” —Rick Wiggers, average Joe and account manager Includes a study guide for use by men’s groups.

Book Summary (Web Site) Overcoming Depression and Anxiety for the average Joe is about how author Jeff Fredericks did just that. He draws from his personal experiences and insights to identify traits, behaviors, and illusions created in childhood and how they can effect the present. He also then shares the navigation skills he developed to deal with them. He writes a story that starts with his humble beginnings to the dark time in his life, then to the now. Jeff hopes to help others by sharing his story with them. the book opens with the evening of his breakdown. He then flashes back to the past to explain things leading up to that point. From there he takes us through the work he did in therapy and the discoveries he makes along the way to his full recovery.

Do you ever find yourself shouting at the television as you listen to a politician spout ideas you know are unsound? Joe Blankenship has been doing that more and more often over the past several years, and it's his belief that someone needs to step forward and represent sound ideals for the community. Then one day, an idea presents itself: What if that someone was me? Join authors Robert Hickman and Susanna Hickman Bartee as they introduce you to Average Joe's everyman Joe Blankenship—a retired, small-town American rancher who decides to speak up and run for office just to see if the establishment will listen. Joe is no political expert, and not even his own family expects his campaign to last long. But when he begins giving speeches about how the government ought to be held to the same standards as private citizens and businesses, his message resounds with just enough people—and support—to keep him going. He may always be just an Average Joe, but it turns out that might be exactly who his community has been looking for.

The book covers numerous tech entrepreneurial founders and software developers, and the exciting brands or products that they created. It goes deep on a handful of them, narrowly divulging exactly how a few software developers and startup founders created breakthrough tech products like Gmail, Dropbox, Ring, Snapchat, Bitcoin, Groupon, and more. It highlights and unpacks the general hero-worship that the media and our own minds practice about tech founders and tech entrepreneurs. This idealization of tech success can create a paradox, preventing average tech professionals from their own successful journeys. This book provides hard evidence that anyone in tech can create, and anyone on the peripheral of tech can break through to the center where innovation, creativity, and opportunity meet. The anecdotes, stories, evidence, facts, arguments, logic, principles, and techniques provided in this book have helped individuals and businesses engage in slow creation cycles, improve the morale of their development teams, and increased their delivery potential of their technology solutions overall. Average Joe covers: Genius - The systematic deconstruction and debunking of the commonly held assumptions in the tech industry around supreme intelligence, and how that intelligence has been worshipped and sought after, despite the facts. Slow Creation - How to force-manufacture creative ideation. How conscious and subconscious cycles of patterns, details, and secrets can lead to breakthrough innovations, and how those P.D.S. cycles, and systematic mental grappling, can be conjured and repeated on a regular basis. Little-C Creativity - The conscious and miniature moments of epiphany that leak into our active P.D.S. cycles of Slow Creation. Flow - Why it's great, but also - why it's completely unreliable and unnecessary. How to perpetually innovate without relying on a flow state. Team Installation - How teams and companies can engage their employees in Slow Creation to unlock dormant ideas, stir up creative endeavors, and jumpstart fragile ideas into working products. User Manipulation - How tech products are super-charged with tricks, secret techniques, and neural transmitters like Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Cortisol; how those products leverage cognitive mechanisms and psychological techniques to force user adoption and user behaviors. Contrarianism - How oppositional and backward-thinking leaders create brand-new categories and the products which dominate those categories. Showmanship - How tech players have presented their ideas to the world, conjured up magic, manufactured mystique, and presented compelling stories that have captured their audiences. Sustainable Mystique Triad – A simple model for capturing audiences consistently without relying on hype and hustle.

"New Jews'?" is the first comprehensive study of American Jewish identity in Hollywood movies of the new millennium. Despite the argument that we live in a "post-racial" society with supposedly "new" Jewish characters emerging on the big screen, this book details how traditional racial stereotypes of American Jews persist in popular films from the first decade of this century. In clear and readable prose, the book offers an innovative and penetrating look at dozens of American Jewish "meddling matriarchs," "neurotic nebbishes," "pampered princesses," and "scheming scumbags" from 21st century film, whether Hollywood blockbusters like Meet the Fockers and Sex and the City or indie favorites like Garden State and Kissing Jessica Stein. Throughout the book, famous American Jewish characters played by the likes of Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, Anne Hathaway, Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Adam Sandler, and Ben Stiller are discussed, with the ultimate conclusion that movies today are marked less by the emergence of "new Jews" than by the continued - but dynamic and transformed -- presence of the same old stereotypes.

Learn the secrets of happiness. You’re no idiot, of course. You know how difficult to see the bright side of things when life seems to be a rut, much less in the face of adversity. But when you nurture a positive attitude, you also nurture your ability to find happiness in the moment—even if it doesn’t live up to your perfect expectations. The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to the Psychology of Happiness offers insights into human nature and techniques that will help you regain the sense of joy. In this Complete Idiot’s Guide®, you get: • The power of optimism and humor to enhance your outlook. • The blissful benefits of engaging in playful behavior and artistic expression. • The importance of nurturing positive relationships among friends and family. • The power of exercise and meditation to simulate joyful chemical reactions within the body.

Once Upon a Time is a collection of essays in the philosophy of literature with two central themes: the significance of story –telling for us and the question of whether the novel, perhaps the art form most closely associated with story-telling, is a legitimate source of human knowledge. Leading philosopher of art Peter Kivy explores why human beings are so enthralled by being told stories and whether story-telling is a significant source of knowledge. Starting with a study of Aristotle's Poetics, Kivy then undertakes a critical discussion of Noel Carroll’s suggestion that our interaction with the artists of the past is a kind of “conversation.” He goes on to defend the thesis that one of the legitimate artistic pleasures we take in novel-reading is the acquiring of knowledge and, furthermore, that the silent reading of a novel is a kind of performance, making the novel one of the performing arts. The volume concludes with a chapter about jokes, and, in particular, whether it is immoral to tell or be amused by an “immoral” joke. This volume of essays is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in literature and the conceptual problems it may raise for philosophers.

I have toyed and struggled with the thought of compiling this book for a long time; almost 35 years, in fact. Since graduating from West Point in 1974, I have visited over forty countries in my military and business career. Everywhere I've been I have looked for articles or stories that I could include in this book. Many short stories came from friends and sources marked -Unknown.' This book is dedicated to young people everywhere and written for their benefit. I realize that many young people today would rather buy a CD or DVD rather than a guidebook or an owner's manual- a book about how to improve their lives from just an average Joe. Some young people will only get this book if a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or probation officer gives it to them as a gift. I hope it is a gift worth keeping and sharing. Today, young people struggle with finding good examples of role models. My first role model was David Cortez while attending Rhodes Junior High School in San Antonio, Texas. David was a ninth grader and our Student Council President. He helped me with my successful political' campaign to be the next Student Council Secretary. I thought David walked on water.' David came from a strong family. He was smart, athletic, and good-looking. He had a beautiful girlfriend. David's story has a sad ending. He went on to Jefferson High, where he also excelled. He married his girlfriend- the girl of his dreams. A few years later, she tragically died in a car accident. Not much later in life, David, still a widower, died of a mysterious illness, leaving behind two young daughters. Parents should be their own kids' role models, but sometimes we, too, fall short of setting the good example for our kids. Parents lose credibility and respect because, from their kids' perspective, it seems like we were never young and rebellious. HELLO!!! We were. It is hard to believe, but we were and it was tough back then, too. It may actually be harder now in many ways- more distractions, more toys,' more peer pressure, more drugs, more gang violence, more graffiti, more sexual promiscuity, more TV, more video games and cyberspace but less family interaction and influence. Teachers, who genuinely care about their students' future success, are also rare. Teachers can be excellent role models and I applaud anyone who goes into this most honorable profession. In the business world, prudence is ignored and now takes a backseat to personal gain at any cost, recklessness, corruption and greed in some of our largest banks and corporations. In politics, the candidates tell the electorate what's popular rhetoric: who can be against better healthcare for all, better education for our children, and a strong defense. Once elected or defeated they find it difficult to work with the opposition for the benefit of our communities and nation. Today's politicians are no longer statesmen but socialists' bent on ridiculous spending programs and bailouts of mismanaged banks, companies and corrupt governments around the world at an exorbitant cost to American taxpayers. Having said all this, I am still optimistic about our country and about many of our youth and their positive impact on our society and our world. I wish I could say that I am optimistic about all of them, but unfortunately, it will be just a few of them that will make a difference. But these few will be the leaders of tomorrow, the peacemakers, the inventors, the farmers, the space explorers, the scientists, the teachers and the caregivers that will make all the difference in our world. Their answers to our world's problems and challenges will come from within- from a strong sense of leadership, character and responsibility, self-discipline; and respect for self, the unborn, the elderly, religious freedoms, strong families, authority and the environment. This book attempts to inspire & motivate more of to