Navigating Everyday Life explores the special moments, big and small, that rupture the surface of everyday life and that can help readers adjust to the disrupting effects of major life crises. Peter Adams delves into the two forces, finitude (the aspects that constrain a person to a situation) and transcendence (those aspects that enable movement beyond such constraints). Building on this framework, Adams looks at the processes and circumstances that both facilitate and block the tensions between finitude and transcendence. He then illustrates how these tensions function in the personal and existential challenges faced by five members of a modern suburban family. Their stories traverse life transitions such as separation, depression, chronic illness, injury, violence, addiction, aging, death, and forgiveness. This book is recommended for scholars and others interested in the intersections between psychology and philosophy.

An essential guide to tackling what students, families, and educators can do now to cut through stress and performance pressure, and find a path to purpose. Today’s college-bound kids are stressed, anxious, and navigating demands in their lives unimaginable to a previous generation. They’re performance machines, hitting the benchmarks they’re “supposed” to in order to reach the next tier of a relentless ladder. Then, their mental and physical exhaustion carries over right into first jobs. What have traditionally been considered the best years of life have become the beaten-down years of life. Belle Liang and Timothy Klein devote their careers both to counseling individual students and to cutting through the daily pressures to show a better way, a framework, and set of questions to find kids’ “true north”: what really turns them on in life, and how to harness the core qualities that reveal, allowing them to choose a course of study, a college, and a career. Even the gentlest parents and teachers tend to play into pervasive societal pressure for students to PERFORM. And when we take the foot off the gas, we beg the kids to just figure out what their PASSION is. Neither is a recipe for mental or physical health, or, ironically, for performance or passion. How to Navigate Life shows that successful human beings instead tap into their PURPOSE—the why behind the what and how. Best of all, purpose is a completely translatable quality to every aspect of life, from first jobs to last jobs and everything in between.

The fullest account to date of African American young people in a segregated city Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC offers a complex narrative of the everyday lives of black young people in a racially, spatially, economically, and politically restricted Washington, DC, during the 1930s. In contrast to the ways in which young people have been portrayed by researchers, policy makers, law enforcement, and the media, Paula C. Austin draws on previously unstudied archival material to present black poor and working class young people as thinkers, theorists, critics, and commentators as they reckon with the boundaries imposed on them in a Jim Crow city that was also the American emblem of equality. The narratives at the center of this book provide a different understanding of black urban life in the early twentieth century, showing that ordinary people were expert at navigating around the limitations imposed by the District of Columbia’s racially segregated politics. Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC is a fresh take on the New Negro movement, and a vital contribution to the history of race in America.

From pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller comes a beautifully packaged, yearlong daily devotional based on the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is God’s book of wisdom, teaching us the essence and goal of a Christian life. In this 365-day devotional, Timothy Keller offers readers a fresh, inspiring lesson for every day of the year based on different passages within the Book of Proverbs. With his trademark knowledge, Keller unlocks the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guides us toward a new understanding of what it means to live a moral life. God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life is a book that readers will be able to turn to every day, year after year, to cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with God. This makes a perfect companion to Keller’s devotional on the Psalms, The Songs of Jesus.

Were all asking the same kinds of questions, with the same goal in mind: How do I fit in? How can I navigate life gracefully? How can my life be more satisfying? How can I experience more love, joy, awe, and wonder? By learning, understanding, and applying the inherent wisdom that we find in the natural world, we can connect with people and with our planet, with our own hearts and souls, and create a life that is not only better for us as individuals, but perhaps together, create a world that works for everyone. With simplicity and humor Jeff shows how the wisdom of nature can free us, untangle us from the complexity of our ego-driven lives. This is the wisdom of the ordinary for each of us to treasure. Allow these clear and profound teachings to awaken you, so that you can glimpse the divine that is within you and all around. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee , Ph.D., Sufi teacher and author like a friendly sharing across a backyard fence or an informal exchange of insights across a cup of coffee, Jeff Anderson has written...about the times we live in, the challenges we face, and the kind of life and consciousness that may help us not just survive but prosper." David Spangler, author of Apprenticed to Spirit and Facing the Future A thought-provoking, humorous and touching collection of truly helpful ideas. Dr. Edward Viljoen, author of Practice the Presence and Spirit Is Calling

Young Refugees and Forced Displacement is about young Syrian and Iraqi refugees navigating the complex realities of forced displacement in Beirut. It is based on a British Academy funded two-year project with 51 displaced youths aged 8 to 17 and under the care of three local humanitarian organisations. Focus groups, interviews and innovative arts-based methods were used to learn about their everyday lives. At the end of the project, we coproduced with them a public mural, allowing unexpected epistemological and methodological reflections on researching refugees and the "right to opacity." Families and friendships, humanitarian caregiving, racism, discrimination and everyday decencies and civilities make up the stuff of their ordinary, everyday encounters within refugeedom, defining both its sharper edges and its more inadvertent and quietly political ones. Thus, refugeedom, as we conceive it, includes "the humanitarian condition" but goes a little beyond it, to become also a human condition of political alterity. In navigating refugeedom, the young Syrians and Iraqis become sophisticated political and moral actors, using emotional reflexivity as they engage layered subjectivities to define the terms of their own forced displacement. This book will be of interest to policymakers, humanitarian organisations, social science scholars and students working on refugees, displacement, humanitarianism, intimacies and emotions, racism and discrimination. It may also be of interest to displaced youth.

Psychologists now understand that identity is not fixed, but fluid and highly dependent on environment. In times of stress, conflict, or change, people often adapt by presenting themselves in different ways and emphasizing different social affiliations. With changing demographics creating more complex social groupings, it is important to understand the costs and benefits of the way social groups are categorized, and the way individuals understand, cope with, and employ their varied social identities. Navigating the Future, edited by Geraldine Downey, Jacquelynne Eccles, and Celina Chatman, answers that call with a wealth of empirical data and expert analysis. Navigating the Future focuses on the roles that social identities play in stressful, challenging, and transitional situations. Jason Lawrence, Jennifer Crocker, and Carol Dweck show how the prospect of being negatively stereotyped can affect the educational success of girls and African Americans, making them more cynical about school and less likely to seek help. The authors argue that these issues can be mitigated by challenging these students educationally, expressing optimism in their abilities, and emphasizing that intelligence is not fixed, but can be developed. The book also looks at the ways in which people employ social identity to their advantage. J. Nicole Shelton and her co-authors use extensive research on adolescents and college students to argue that individuals with strong, positive connections to their ethnic group exhibit greater well-being and are better able to cope with the negative impact of discrimination. Navigating the Future also discusses how the importance and value of social identity depends on context. LaRue Allen, Yael Bat-Chava, J. Lawrence Aber, and Edward Seidman find that the emotional benefit of racial pride for black adolescents is higher in predominantly black neighborhoods than in racially mixed environments. Because most people identify with more than one group, they must grapple with varied social identities, using them to make connections with others, overcome adversity, and understand themselves. Navigating the Future brings together leading researchers in social psychology to understand the complexities of identity in a diverse social world.