Nonfiction4Life

 In his latest book, Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last, David Edwards unveils elements essential to the creative process employed by the world’s best innovators. As a creator, writer, and educator, Edwards attributes his deep and persistent love affair with creativity to his father who took time to play with him, take his five-year-old world seriously, and believe in his dreams. Consequently, as an adult, Edwards has created breathable insulin, edible food packaging, and digital scents. Edwards is the founder of Le Laboratoire in Paris, France and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts where his culture lab includes the experimental restaurant Café ArtScience.

KEY POINTS

• Creating is highly expressive! It’s a way we learn, discover, and communicate.
• We need to create beautiful solutions to our challenges—solutions that are so compelling that we adopt them.
• Combining art and science is a process.
• Culture labs – a place for experimenting using the creator’s cycle (ideation, experimentation, and exhibition or expression)
• Within the culinary experience, Edwards finds rich opportunities to push the boundaries of serving and eating food, making it not just interesting but truly delicious.
• Healthcare needs to move out of the clinic and into everyday lives for it to be accessible.
• Aesthetics of creation have become essential to things that matter now and to those that will last over the long haul.
• Being mindfully aware of our own environment helps us see things afresh and can lead to surprising expression.
• Major creators tend to be quite generous, such as Danny Hillis, inveterate inventor of the universal “pinch-to-zoom” technology on smartphones.
• Richard Garriott, early game developer who wanted to embed morality into games
• The Grassroots Creators Movement (GCM) is giving all of us the ability to express ourselves.
• Makers and "Maker Faires" have proliferated. 

QUOTES FROM EDWARDS

• “Most things we create will not matter.”
• “Changing the human condition today will be harder than it was in ages past.”
• “Creation stirs within us the profound biological sense that we are not alone, that we are wired for relationships, and that we rely on each other for our mutual well-being.”
• “Making things that matter—not just to you or me—is fundamental to the survival of the human condition. It’s something our biology has programmed us to do.”
• “Creating what matters and has not existed before starts with what matters to us. We don’t create…by coercion. We create because we feel like it.”
• “Creators love frontiers because a frontier has no boundary.”
• “There’s nothing as fun as creating tomorrow.”
• “As creators, we all need a Florence…What we most lack is the oxygen, or culture, which can give people everywhere the confidence that what matters to them can matter to many others, and the guidance that point their aspirations in fruitful directions.”
• “Over the last decade, people have started to make things without being told they should and on a scale never seen before.”

BUY Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Watch David Edwards’s TEDTalk, “Eating Better with Digital Scent.”
• Learn more about the World Frontier Forum here.

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit 

SUMMARY

Historian and memoirist Duncan Barrett, after spending three months on the Channel Islands interviewing more than 100 people directly affected by the WWII Nazi Occupation, layers the islanders’ true stories in his latest book, “Hitler’s British Isles: The Real Story of the Occupied Channel Islands.” Beginning in the summer of 1940, coming perilously close to invasion, the people of Guernsey, Jersey, and Sark endure, instead, a five-year “model occupation” by the Germans. Watching the swastika flag draped on their buildings and being forced to give up their homes, vehicles, and food to the enemy elicits a wide array of reactions (and shenanigans) from the resourceful Brits. Their particular challenges have, until now, been largely forgotten and certainly underappreciated, even with the release of the popular book and movie “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” However, Barrett’s thorough research woven into a compelling memoir captures the complexity of this unique history, engendering new respect for the resilient people of the Channel Islands.

KEY POINTS

• The sudden evacuation of 2K British troops, most of the children, and many adults leaves the economy in dire straits.
• The Germans and British begin as “frenemies,” although aggressions—small and large—become stark reminders the countries are at war.
• The Germans requisition houses, cars, farms, animals, and more for their own use, but some plucky islanders find creative ways to undermine the takeover.
• Monotony (the “mental blackout”)—for many, the hardest part of the Occupation—pervades every day, resulting in poor diet, loneliness, crippling boredom, and depression.
• Fraternizing between the British women and German soldiers leads to some relationships, but most young women demur in order to honor the wishes of their WWI veteran fathers.
• The Germans, many of who had left their own children at home, tended to treat British children kindly.
• Today, some British still worry they’ll be judged unfairly for their friendly intermingling with German soldiers.

QUOTES FROM BARRETT

• “For five years during the Second World War, almost seventy thousand British subjects…feel the full force of the German yoke…show[ing] us what so nearly came to pass for the rest of Britain.”
• “The islands were in an unfortunate position, stuck between two warring countries, neither of which accepted responsibility for their welfare.”
• “In many ways, the occupation of the Channel Islands was seen as a dry run for the eventual administration of a conquered Britain, and those who were in charge were keen to make a positive impression, to prove that they would be fair and measured rulers rather than tyrants.”
• “All over the Channel Islands, those who had witnessed the German attack at close range would bear the scars—both physical and mental—for years to come.”

RECOMMENDATION

READ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

WATCH The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society [DVD] [2018]

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

 SUMMARY

An underdog herself, Krista Beth Driver discovers the surprising history of how Vietnamese women helped American nail salons proliferate. In her first book, Mani/Pedi: A True-Life Rags-to-Riches Story from Boat to Beauty Salon, Driver tells the story through the experiences of Charlie Vo, a Vietnamese salon owner in Los Angeles. Beginning with Charlie escaping from Communism, the tale extends to present-day with Charlie as a mani/pedi mogul and multi-millionaire. “Charlie would end up employing hundreds of technicians in a career that allowed those who wanted to work hard the opportunity to make as much money as they wanted to earn. She also gave many the skills and the opportunity to open their own shops, creating dozens of entrepreneurs throughout Southern California.”

KEY POINTS

• Tippi Hedren, an actress and humanitarian at Camp Hope (a transitional refugee camp in Sacramento), is the first to create mani/pedi employment opportunities for Vietnamese women.
• The mani/pedi tradition dates back 3000 years ago to Egypt and Asian countries where nail color indicated societal status (e.g., red = upper class).
• Men are first to paint their nails, but the practice eventually spreads out among women.
• Vietnamese salons democratize the exorbitant cost of getting a mani/pedi.
• Charlie Vo, a gritty and resourceful Vietnamese refugee, continually looks for opportunities to improve her family circumstances as well as her own skills.
• Olivett Robinson, an exuberant African-American woman whose racial background should have put her at odds with Charlie, moves instead from customer to business partner.
• The number-one driving force among women becoming manicurists is to provide a better life for their children.
• Charlie and Olivett open several mani/pedi salons while overcoming racial tensions, standing up to bullying inspectors, and knocking down language barriers.

QUOTES FROM DRIVER

• “She was making this trip…so that her children could dream. She wanted them to imagine all the dreams she had for them. She wanted them to believe in this new life.”
• “The passengers came from every economic level—rich and poor—it didn’t matter…They all had the desire to escape Communism and build a new life in America. Escape was the great equalizer.”
• “Olivett Robinson…has an infectious soul and being around her let me believe anything was possible.”
• “ManTrap…not only provided good [mani/pedi] service, but they got you in and out. It was a salon that valued a woman’s time.”

BUY Mani/Pedi: A True-Life Rags to Riches Story 

RECOMMENDATION

Watch Charlie and Olivett discussing the documentary about their partnership that led to ManTrap, a nail salon chain based in Los Angeles.

SUMMARY

Josephine Ensign shares her own story in Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net. Even though she’s a nurse trained to keep an emotional distance from her patients “to prevent being so overwhelmed that it cripples the provision of proper health care,” Ensign works tirelessly to treat and keep track of the homeless in the South during the beginning of the homelessness epidemic in the 1980s. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to even her close friends, the well-educated Christian wife and nurse Ensign becomes homeless herself, living on the edge under the noses of the privileged. Now, decades later, Ensign writes this medical memoir “to provide a framework for the empathy necessary to create positive change for people pushed to the margins.”

KEY POINTS

• We need to learn to ask ourselves why people are homeless; most don’t choose that lifestyle.
• Many homeless keep pets (mostly dogs, sometimes cats; some even keep rats snakes, or even crickets) to provide protection and company.
• Foot problems almost universal among the homeless since they often have to walk places. Coupled with unsanitary conditions and inclement weather, socks and shoes wear out quickly and feet contract infections and get frostbite.
• Identifying and dealing with childhood trauma can help prevent mental illness and subsequent homelessness that can often follow.
• “Voluntary poverty” – choosing to live in spartan conditions similar to those of the homeless in an effort to better understand that demographic.

QUOTES FROM ENSIGN

• “Homelessness is exhausting and soul-sucking…[It] is a type of deep illness, a term coined by sociologist Arthur Frank for an illness that leaves you feeling dislocated, an illness that casts a shadow over your life. That shadow never completely goes away.”
• “The business of nursing brings us into the messy swampland of human suffering, illness, and death.”
• “People do not want to have to depend on handouts, on the kindness of strangers.”
• “Sometimes I felt that I was literally and figuratively putting Band-Aids on the problem of homelessness, patching people up, and sending them back out into a life that was breaking them again. I was frustrated that I couldn’t do more to address the bigger issues that were causing homelessness.”
• “Charity care further fragments and separates us as members of society—sorts us into haves and have-nots, into worthy and unworthy citizens. Charity care perpetuates poverty.”
• “Our country’s healthcare safety net is built on the principles of poverty medicine.”
• How to help the homeless: “Respond with a smile and a kind word—even if it is ‘No—sorry’ when you are asked for a handout…There’s nothing worse than for a person to be ignored.”

BUY Catching Homelessness: A Nurse's Story of Falling Through the Safety Net

RECOMMENDATION

Check out the first seminal book about homelessness written by Nels Anderson who, as a boy, was taken in by a family.

BUY The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

In his first book, Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife shares his unique role as The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London. Upholding traditions that have stood for centuries includes keeping and protecting six (or more) ravens on the grounds of the Tower. Each year, millions of tourists come to see these famous corvids. Personally responsible for the corvids, Skaife shares for the very first time an intimate look behind the scenes, describing the ravens’ unique personalities, antics, and escapades at the Tower of London.

KEY MOMENTS

• The ravens “pick” Skaife instead of the other way around. The former Ravenmaster identifies Skaife as one the ravens like, and his attraction and mettle are tested by being invited to enter into the enclosure for the ravens.
• For the first time in history, in 2019 a raven breeding program begins, and four ravens are hatched at the Tower of London.
• Skaife blows up social media when he starts a Twitter account with one picture of the ravens on his Twitter account (@ravenmaster1). And so begins his connection with people all around the world who share his fascination with corvids.
• Skaife is appointed as the only sixth Ravenmaster in modern history.
• Merlin (AKA “Merlina”), a naughty raven, comes to the Tower where she gains the trust of Skaife and builds a special bond with him.
• In 2014 at the Tower of London, England commemorates the beginning of the first world war by putting 88,246 ceramic poppies into the moat, each representing a soldier who died in the war.

QUOTES FROM SKAIFE

• “As the Ravenmaster, I’ve been granted a privileged insight into the life and behavior of some of the world’s most extraordinary nonhuman creatures….They’re surprisingly like us: they are versatile, adaptable, omnivorous; they are capable of great cruelty and great kindness; and on the whole they manage to get along with one another.”
• “Legend says, should the ravens leave the Tower of London, it will crumble to dust, and a great harm will befall the kingdom.”
• “Ravens are some of the most intelligent birds on the planet.”
• “I’ve seen ravens express, joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure. I have seen them learn and remember and solve challenges involving principles of cause and effect, I know them to be capable of self-sacrifice, of caring, chivalry, and great courage.”
• “Ravens are a law unto themselves—and they’re not here for our entertainment.”
• “When people ask what it’s like being the Ravenmaster, I sometimes say that it’s like going to a supermarket with seven young children, all of whom run off up and down the aisles in different directions. You have to be keyed up and switched on the whole time. You have to develop a sixth sense.”
• “Searching for the birds when they go missing is a bit like a game of hide-and-seek. Except you’ve got eighteen acres of the Tower to search. And you’re looking for a creature that can fly. And blends into the shadows.”

BUY "The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London" by Christopher Skaife

RECOMMENDATION

Find Christopher Skaife on social media:

• Twitter: @ravenmaster1
  Facebook: @chrisskaife
  Instagram: @ravenmaster1

Watch the Ravenmaster with six-week-old Poppy, the newest raven at the Tower of London.

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

A self-proclaimed “questionologist,” Warren Berger promotes the power of inquiry in his latest, “The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead.” Having studied some of the world’s best innovators, leaders, and creative thinkers, he presents essential questions for making the best choices and for connecting on a deep level. As Berger himself says, “When we are confronted with almost any demanding situation, in work or in life, simply taking the time and effort to ask questions can help guide us to better decisions and a more productive course of action. But the questions must be the right ones—the ones that cut to the heart of a complex challenge or that enable us to see an old problem in a new light.”

KEY POINTS

• Profile of a master questioner: a typically curious four-year-old girl who fearlessly asks hundreds of questions each day
• Fear = big obstacle to asking questions
• Google is limited to answering mostly close-ended, fact-based questions.
• Asking and answering questions can quickly build a feeling of intimacy, yet we often don’t ask questions of the people close to us.
• W.E. = “And what else?” (the classic follow-up question)
• When we ask ourselves questions we can’t answer, our minds begin to start working on them, setting things in motion, and putting us on the road to finding answers.

QUOTES FROM BERGER

• “Increasingly, we turn to technology as a means of generating more connections. But more is not necessarily deeper—and when it comes to life-enriching connections, deeper is better. In the effort to forge deeper, more meaningful human connections, one of the great, under-appreciated tools available is the low-tech question.”
• “Good interviewers learn that within each answer you receive may be the seeds of the next question you should ask—a follow-up questions that dig a little deeper or tease out a few more critical details.”
• “Listening is not a competitive sport, though we sometimes treat it that way.”
• “The simplest and most powerful thing that happens when we ask ourselves questions is that it forces us to think.”

BUY "The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead"

RECOMMENDATION

Find loads more information about how to ask “A More Beautiful Question" on Warren Berger's website.

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

Harriet Cabelly’s book, Living Well Despite Adversity: Inspiration for Finding Renewed Meaning and Joy in Your Life, began as a blog entitled, “Rebuild Life Now.” Seeking to represent a “diversity of adversity,” the author conducted monthly interviews with the likes of Cheryl Strayed, Temple Grandin, Meredith Viera, and other lesser-known people, all who have adversity in common. Now, collecting her 36 conversations in a book, Cabelly shares stories of heartbreak and grief, pain and persistence. These interviews illustrate how some have managed to transcend grand challenges by choosing to not only live through adversity but to thrive because of it.

KEY POINTS

• When shattered dreams become adversity, we need to rebuild new dreams around our new reality.
• Unloading = painful journey of going into “a dark pit” of heart-wrenching feelings, which you must go through in order to come through; a liberating experience that releases toxicity
• Integrating (vs. overcoming, putting behind) - incorporating a challenge by making it part of your new normal with new dreams and goals
• Asking “Why?” is a waste of energy; instead, ask “How…?”
• Asking for help to get the support you need takes strength and courage.
• Writing can be a coping tool for grief and a mechanism to make sense of hard times.
• Starting an organization to help others who go through similar challenges can be healing.
• Regardless of why people are hit by adversity, their grieving experience is very similar.
• By going deep into the pain and allowing yourself to feel hurt, small openings let you see new possibilities, helping you repurpose yourself.
• Having a newly discovered purpose allows you to go forward living a life with real meaning (Viktor Frankl)
• When we let down our guard and become vulnerable, we morph into genuine human beings with authentic emotions, which connect us on the deepest human level.

QUOTES FROM CABELLY

• "It’s no big deal to live well when all is going well in our lives, but my keen interest has been in those who have a lot of pain and hardship to deal with, yet still manage to—dare I say—thrive. I am in awe of such people."
• “What does it mean then to live well? It means living with a sense of meaning and purpose, with an ability to experience joy and satisfaction. It means to embrace the positive and deal with the negative; to live aligned with one’s values; to live with intention and be an active creator of our life, to put our best self forward so we can positively impact and be of service to others while we occupy a place on this earth.”
• “When adversity knocks us for a loop, living well means taking on the challenge and integrating it into our life. It’s not about succumbing to the problems and becoming a victim, or deciding on some level that our life is over because of them. It’s not about becoming bitter; it’s about becoming better.”
• “Each story is one of success since the people in them have all been able to not just live, but thrive. I offer them as inspiration and as a way for you to see and learn that you too can do it. We are not fixed human beings. We all have the capacity and potential to be more than we are, and to change—even in baby steps.”

RECOMMENDATION

Search Harriet Cabelly's book for many additional books written by the people she interviewed.

BUY Living Well Despite Adversity: Inspiration for Finding Renewed Meaning and Joy in Your Life

Connect with us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

Denis Shackel’s book, Five Seconds at a Time: How Leaders Can Make the Impossible Possible, is a hybrid, combining compelling memoir with applied business practices. Borne out of a harrowing mountain-climbing accident on Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand, the book captures leadership principles Shackel has been teaching for decades. Left alone after his brother-in-law, a much stronger and experienced climber fell to his death, Shackel managed to stay alive by breaking the solitude and long hours into five-second intervals. Taking this same approach to business, executives and corporations now use this same measured approach to success by “eating an elephant one bite at a time.”

LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM SHACKEL

“Today, effective leaders need the ability to anticipate and quickly adapt to change. Perhaps most important, in this new, flattened world, standout leaders are no longer found in the corner office alone. Leadership happens throughout the enterprise, from top to bottom; we are all leaders, no matter what our title.”

“Leaders must be exceptional team players. More than ever, they must be able to influence and persuade those over whom they have no power. They need to build, foster and influence a complex web of relationships across all levels—from employees, partners, and suppliers to customers, citizens, and even competitors.”

“The literature on vision sometimes confuses it with mission. Vision is the future desired state. Mission, on the other hand, is the means by which the vision is realized—for example, the reason a person, department, team or organization exists.”

“Next time you are faced with something difficult, step back and pause before you act. Take at least five seconds to reflect on the issue from a broader view. Use this time to look at the whole forest and not just the trees. This will help you gain a clearer perspective before you step forward to face an overwhelming challenge.”

“We need to strive for excellence, not perfection. Excellence tolerates mistakes, perfection doesn’t.”

"Celebrations should be frequent and involve doing something that gives you pure joy and restores your energy, perhaps going to your favourite class at the gym, picking up a new book, taking a rejuvenating nap, or socializing with friends. Your mind and body need the reward of rest and recharging to function optimally." 

“Morale and productivity are much higher when people see the results of their efforts sooner and use the energy produced from those results to move on to the next project.

“Whereas mountain climbers must focus on the rocks, mountain bikers quickly learn that when on a narrow trail, if they look at the loose rocks, they will likely hit them, so they focus on the spaces between the rocks, and that’s where they ride…It is our imagination that creates the reality—our imagined crash facilitates the real one.”

“It is unrealistic to expect to accomplish the impossible alone, which makes developing leadership skills essential since you will need the support and guidance of people who believe in you, believe in your vision and believe in your ability to accomplish the challenge. They must know that when you make a mistake, you will take personal ownership and act to correct it…People want to be led, not managed. The only person we manage is ourselves—that’s self-discipline.” 

BUY Five Seconds At A Time: How Leaders Can Make the Impossible Possible

RECOMMENDATION

BUY Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors 

Connect with us on social media!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY

In her book Born Survivors, bestselling author Wendy Holden pulls back the curtains on the gripping true story of three young Jewish mothers who manage to conceal their pregnancies as they enter a concentration camp, narrowly escape the knife of Dr. Josef Mengele, and bravely give birth in appalling conditions to babies weighing under three pounds each. Miraculously, all three mothers leave the camp alive and go on to build new lives with their children after World War II. Unlike much Holocaust literature, this is a book with a happy ending—truly an “Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope.” Sixty-five years later, the three “miracle babies,” with the help of Holden, share this inspirational story of their three mothers who defied death at the hands of the Nazis to give their “born survivors” a life filled with love, hope, humor, and happiness. Today, their legacy is to be the voices of the voiceless and the last-ever survivors of the Holocaust.  

KEY POINTS

• Weighing no more than 70 pounds, three young Jewish mothers give birth to “born survivors” while en route from Auschwitz to a gas chamber in Mauthausen.
• When the Nazis discover pregnant women among the prisoners, they typically gas them or take and kill their newborn babies almost immediately.
• Even Dr. Josef Mengele doesn’t detect the pregnancies, allowing the born survivors a chance at life.
• In a small Czechoslovakian town, the people make 3000 loaves of bread and some potato soup, undoubtedly saving the lives of many of the prisoners trapped in the "death train."
• The Nazis run out of gas to use in their gas chambers, making it impossible to exterminate thousands of Jewish prisoners—the greatest miracle of all!
• Compassion among the Allied troops moves them to share their food rations, which ends up unwittingly killing thousands of starving prisoners.
• After the war, the mothers teach their children to nurture a sense of humor, compassion, and forgiveness.
• School children today are gripped by hearing this true story and by being in the presence of someone who should have been murdered as a baby.

QUOTES FROM HOLDEN

• “I can’t help thinking [giving birth] must have been the worst moment for each of [the mothers] because, up until then, they’d been able to keep their babies a secret inside of them….There was nothing they could do to stop it; there was nothing they could do to protect this infant they were about to deliver.”
• “All three ‘babies’ are twinkly-eyed, life-enhancing, joyful people. They’re the kind of people, when you think about them, you smile. When you know you’re going to meet them, you anticipate it with great relish. And everybody feels that way in their company.”
• “They could have so easily grown up bitter and the kind of people who see the glass half empty rather than half full.”
• “We are in a dangerous situation in the world at the moment with the rising global nationalism and hate speech… There needs to be this compassion and understanding and tolerance that emanate from the book.”

BUY Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance, and Hope

RECOMMENDATION

Watch a book & author night with the “babies” and Wendy Holden held at the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit

 SUMMARY

In his book, When There Is No Cure: How to Thrive While Living with the Pain and Suffering of Chronic Illness, author Craig K. Svensson answers the crucial question: “How do you live well when the physical foundation of your life is crumbling?” This is the challenge for millions who live with diseases for which there is no cure. These incurable ailments produce a life of constant pain, fatigue, numbness, dizziness, and other debilitating symptoms that create chronic suffering. In When There Is No Cure, Dr. Svensson guides readers to a path of thriving when life’s journey includes an incurable ailment. Drawing on his expertise as a pharmacist-scientist, as well as a fellow sufferer with several incurable diseases, Svensson helps patients steer through the twists and turns of life with chronic illness.

KEY POINTS

• Living well – even thriving- is possible and important.
• Some estimate that 10 percent of the population suffers from a disability or limitation that’s “invisible” (not obvious) to even the people closest to them.
• Before sharing your condition, ask yourself why someone would want to know and what would happen if they found out from another source.
• Instead of focusing on your level of pain, focus on how your condition affects your function and goals.
• Prepare a summary of your health condition--much like an elevator pitch.
• To avoid developing friction, everyone touched by the chronic illness must communicate openly.
• Pain specialists look at things holistically and help you understand what the pain is limiting in your life, direct you to resources that can help alleviate pain or compensate for challenges.
• Plan ahead to make inevitable shifts in recreational activities or professional pursuits.

QUOTES FROM SVENSSON

• “I have a nice triad of diseases that impacts the way that I live life but also has taught me how you can thrive in the midst of living with a variety of chronic illnesses.”
• “Thriving gets down to the valued relationships that we have…as well as being able to enjoy the diversity of things in life that we can experience.”
• “We’re always faced in life with the things we can and cannot do, so we need to put these things in perspective.”
• “When you’re living with pain, it’s more than just physical; it moves into the relational.”
• “Hope is the seed from which victorious living can grow in the bed of affliction.”

BUY When There Is No Cure: How to Thrive While Living with the Pain and Suffering of Chronic Illness 

RECOMMENDATION

With help from the Mayo Clinic, find a support group that works for you.

Connect with us!

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Website

Special thanks…

• Music Credit
• Sound Editing Credit