Our Choices Our Lives

Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion A riveting collection of writings, Our Choices, Our Lives challenges those who reduce abortion to "pro" and "anti," and reveals the many faces of the abortion issue. The anthology explores the people behind the political question: Should abortion be legal? Our Choices, Our Lives takes the abortion issue to a new level. Women's personal testimonies about their abortion experiences reveal the liberating, sometimes poignant, reality that can accompany the choice to end an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. Women's health care workers, from counselors to doctors, compassionately bear witness to women's abortion experiences, and provide patients with medical and educational services in an environment that can be physically and emotionally dangerous to both themselves and their patients. Our Choices, Our Lives concludes with the critical deconstruction of the state of abortion politics by political and religious activists and outlines the political, social, economic and moral imperatives behind protecting a woman's right to choose abortion.

Choices is a truly inspiring book with a very positive tone to it that would inspire and motivate its readers to view life, life's situations and circumstances from a positive angle. This book is a must read for every professional and every individual who wants to better decision makers, better parents and better at everything they do. The book urges us to pay close attention to our choices that determine our future, who we are and who we become. It reveals how our choices affect our lives and the lives of those around us. The Book reveals how everything in life; success, failure, losses, gains and life's issues are all the outcome of our own choices. A true original, the thoughts presented in this book are right on target while encompassing such a wide range of topics.

In a society that pushes conformity, how can you be courageously authentic despite fear of judgment? Award-winning leadership and diversity expert Ritu Bhasin gives you the tools to make this happen. This is more than a call to "be yourself"-it's a rally to disrupt the status quo, bring your differences to the light, and help others do the same.

What are you really missing out on? You're home on a Friday night, scrolling through Instagram, ready to go to bed. You see pictures on your timeline of a party you were invited to, but didn't go to. You were confident when you said no, but now you can't stop thinking about it, and you start feeling worse. You have FOMO, or, Fear of Missing Out. Coined in a Harvard Business School article, FOMO has become a global term to describe the decimating anxiety when thinking other people are having better, more fulfilling, experiences than you are. It's a natural, biological response, but that doesn't make it feel any better. Amplified by the rise of social media, #FOMO has become a cultural crisis—so what's the cure? Patrick McGinnis, creator of the term FOMO, has been thinking about it for seventeen years—and he has a solution: decision-making. Learning to weigh the costs and benefits of your choices, prioritizing your decisions, and listening to your gut are central to silencing FOMO and its lesser-known cousin, FOBO: Fear of a Better Option. After all, don't you want to feel comfortable and confident in your decisions? Written with self-evaluations throughout the book, Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice helps you ascertain and eliminate the parts of your life that are causing more anxiety than happiness. So give this a read, and then go to that party, start that new book, create a new goal—or don't. Make that decision, and be confident in it: it's the first of many of its kind.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

Every day we make choices. These choices impact our lives, our careers, our families, our health, our successes, and our failures. Often we make choices without considering the impact or consequences that may result. We make choices every day in the workplace and in our personal lives that mold and craft our future, and we are not even aware of it. Where we are today is a direct result of the choices we have made. Where we will be tomorrow is directly related to the choices we are going to make. Each of us has been dealt a hand of cards. The cards we have been dealt may have been outside our control. However, how we respond to these cards is 100 percent within our control. The best poker players don’t win because they always have the best cards; they win because they know how to play the cards they are dealt. They know when to fold, when to stay in the game, how to read the other players at the table, and when to bluff. They win because of choices they make with the cards they were dealt. It’s Your Choice will help bring clarity and perspective to the choices you are faced with each day in the workplace and in your personal life. It will bring reason and logic to things that you may not have considered before. It’s Your Choice is designed to challenge you to think differently, more clearly, and with a larger perspective of the choices you make each day. There will be things in It’s Your Choice you don’t want to hear. There will be things shared that will challenge you to think deeper than you have in the past. What you do with what you read in It’s Your Choice is indeed your choice.

Choices matter. And in your teens and twenties, some of the biggest life decisions come about when you feel the least prepared to tackle them. Economist Robert T. Michael won’t tell you what to choose. Instead, he’ll show you how to make smarter choices. Michael focuses on five critical decisions we all face about college, career, partners, health, and parenting. He uses these to demonstrate how the science of scarcity and choice—concepts used to guide major business decisions and shape national legislation—can offer a solid foundation for our own lives. Employing comparative advantage can have a big payoff when picking a job. Knowing how to work the marketplace can minimize uncertainty when choosing a partner. And understanding externalities—the ripple of results from our actions—can clarify the if and when of having children. Michael also brings in data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a scientific sample of 18 million millennials in the United States that tracks more than a decade of young adult choices and consequences. As the survey’s longtime principal investigator and project director, Michael shows that the aggregate decisions can help us understand what might lie ahead along many possible paths—offering readers insights about how their own choices may turn out. There’s no singular formula for always making the right choice. But the adaptable framework and rich data at the heart of The Five Life Decisions will help you feel confident in whatever you decide.

Good Choices Good Life is about the importance of choices, and how our choices define the person we become. The book points out that if we want to improve our lives, we can only do so by improving the choices we make. The book also suggests that our lives have an intended purpose, which is revealed to us by the interests, motivations, and loves that try to enter our lives. However, developing these signals into important components of our lives is dependent on the choices we make.

Hal Urban, author of the much-loved bestsellers Life's Greatest Lessons and Positive Words, Powerful Results, gives us his third book of inspirational and practical wisdom on leading a more meaningful and more joyful life. With Choices That Change Lives, Hal reminds us that our lives are the result of our choices and the most important choices we make become our character traits, the ones that lead to fulfillment and peace of mind. He illuminates fifteen character traits that help us more fully develop our capacity to live rich and rewarding lives. He assures us that it's never too late to change, to break the chains of self-defeating attitudes and habits, and challenges us to dig a little deeper -- to grow in such qualities as humility, patience, empathy, and courage -- and to renew ourselves daily.

See "Lesbian and gay Jews" in the index.