Fortuitous Encounters

We have all experienced fortuitous encounters--those moments in our lives--where a person, place, or thing caused our lives to change in a more positive direction. Our lives are full of what some have called serendipity, strange acts of fortune or causeless miracles. A favorite teacher inspires our choice of career, a chance encounter develops into love, marriage, and a new family. At the time we are most in need of a friend, one appears in our lives. We look at a mountain or the ocean and find meaning and peace, we read a book and an idea is planted in our brains that provides the wisdom we seek. The ability to experience fortuitous encounters is key to learning and growth. The more fortuitous encounters someone has, the better the odds are the person is successful and happy. While fortuitous encounters are by their very nature a product of chance that is beyond our ability to control, Davis and Spears strongly believe, as did Pasteur, that "chance favors only the prepared mind." The intention is not to try to explain chance, or divine intervention in this book, but simply to help the reader, whatever their core beliefs, to understand the power of fortuitous encounters. In this book, you will read firsthand reports of fortuitous encounters of many kinds. These true stories can help you to learn how to prepare yourself to experience your own fortuitous encounters, and experience a lifetime of learning and growth. This wise book will serve as a great companion to help you stay awake to the fortuitous people, places, and things that ultimately shape your days and your life. +

When Lu Yang returned to the world that he lived in for many years, he unexpectedly discovered that the time was fixed at three days before he disappeared. Back then, Lu Yang had tried to learn literature but failed to do so. He could only be mocked by his clansmen as trash if he had no cultivation. He was helpless to do anything about it. In the past, his mother had been neglected because of her birth, so she had to wash her face with tears all day long. Back then, he had suffered all sorts of humiliation and vowed to become stronger. However, under the manipulation of fate, there was nothing he could do about it. Now that he had returned from the Asura Realm, Lu Yang wanted to change everything. He wanted to make heaven and earth submit to him.

This book contains the intimate autobiographies of 13 psychologists who work in academic settings. Their experiences are as diverse as their specializations and the academic institutions from which they come. However, all of the contributors have in common an infectious enthusiasm for their academic experiences and the unique opportunities provided by their careers. Psychology students often have only vague notions about the career experiences and personal lives of academic psychologists. The autobiographies in this book open special windows onto the lives of psychologists in academic settings. The contributions range from a description of experiences at a two-year community college through discussions of the demands at high powered doctoral-level research institutions. The authors offer intimate glimpses of experiences in their lives that paved the way to academia. Although this book is, in a sense, about career planning in academic settings, there is no pretense about it being a career planning guide. The editor's goal was to give readers some sense of what motivates academic psychologists and what their personal as well as professional lives are like. The editor also makes clear his belief that there is no single pathway to a successful academic career in psychology. Although each contributor describes what most would see as a successful career, the academic paths taken and the personal and professional rewards received are often quite different. This book will provide encouragement to students contemplating a career in academia as well as interesting reading for psychologists curious about what makes their academic colleagues tick.

SAGE has been a major force shaping the field of qualitative methods, not just in its specialist methods journals like Qualitative Inquiry but in the ′empirical′ journals such as Social Studies of Science. Delving into SAGE′s deep backlist of qualitative research methods journals, Paul Atkinson and Sara Delmont, editors of Qualitative Research, have selected over 70 articles to represent SAGE′s distinctive contribution to methods publishing in general and qualitative research in particular. This collection includes research from the past four decades and addresses key issues or controversies, such as: explanations and defences of qualitative methods; ethics; research questions and foreshadowed problems; access; first days in the field; field roles and rapport; practicalities of data collection and recording; data analysis; writing and (re) presentation; the rise of auto-ethnography; life history, narrative and autobiography; CA and DA; and alternatives to the logocentric (such as visual methods).

Why do people want to become a psychotherapist? How do they translate this desire into reality? On Becoming a Psychotherapist explores these and related questions. Ten leading therapists write about their profession and their careers, examining how and why they became psychotherapists. The contributors, representing a wide cross-section of their profession, come from both Britain and America, from different theoretical backgrounds, and are at different stages in their careers. They write in a personal and revealing way about their childhoods, families, colleagues, and training. This absorbing and fascinating book offers a fresh perspective on psychotherapy and the people attracted to it. This Classic Edition of the book includes a new introduction written by the authors and will be invaluable for qualified psychotherapists and those in training.

Everything you need to know about Spinoza's Ethics in one volume.The Ethics presents a complete metaphysical, epistemological and ethical world-view that is immensely inspiring. However, it is also an extremely difficult text to read. This book takes readers through the text, stopping at the most perplexing passages to explain key terms, unfold arguments, offer concrete examples and raise questions for further thought. It is designed to be read alongside the Ethics, enabling students to think critically about Spinoza's views and build an understanding of his complex system.

She possessed a superpower that could laugh proudly at the world, yet she was transported to the body of a former genius who had been turned into trash by his loved ones. Broken limbs? It was just a small joke, but it would be even more perfect! Destruction of Profound beads? It doesn't matter. Pick a bigger one! You want to end the engagement? That's easy to say, pay the ransom and get lost! You call me trash? He opened his eyes wide, and the scene shocked the entire continent! Why did you push me? Hey, clear it up. The master and servant contract has already been agreed.

The role of therapy in schools is a topic that has been significantly under-researched and often overlooked. Considering the number of students in full-time education with serious emotional and behavioural difficulties, the skills and tricks used by therapists can be usefully passed on to teachers in the classroom. This book traces a substantial four-year project that applied the principles of therapeutic education in one school setting and exposed how current educational contexts actually contribute to disaffection and disruption of young people's learning. The authors propose a practical model of school and curricular experience, based on therapeutic relationships, that has led to outstanding positive results in school development. With suugestions throughout for tried-and-tested strategies that really work, this book will help professionals turn troubled young people's experience of education from the nightmare it often is, into an adventure with positive results for lifelong learning.

The authors have grouped the theories into three classical "families" which differ in their views relative to the prime motives underlying human nature. They show how theories are specific examples of more general points of view called paradigms. The theories chosen to represent the three paradigms (the Endogenous Paradigm, Exogenous Paradigm, and the Constructivist Paradigm) were selected because they met four criteria: importance, as judged by academic and research psychologists fertility, as judged by the amount of research the theory has generated scope, as judged by the variety of phenomena the various theories explain family resemblance, as judged by how well each theory represents its paradigm The authors present the "paradigm case" in the lead chapter for each paradigm. This paradigm case is the "best example" for the paradigm. The authors explain why paradigm cases are important, and give them more detailed treatment than other theories in the same paradigm.