Publications
Megan McDonough
BA Pro Advisor
The Inspired Life: A Wholebeing Happiness Workbook
The science behind how we flourish, how we create the conditions for optimal human living, becomes especially powerful when we apply it with support and guidance. That’s what this workbook is all about. Through inspiring, fun, and meaningful reflections and exercises, you look at the many aspects of your life and your self, and discover what whole-person well-being–wholebeing–means for you.
You’ll learn about the happiness set point, the hot air balloon metaphor for our multiple selves, the role of character strengths in your life, and how the Renaissance painters offer a model for growth and collaboration. You’ll be guided through powerful, user-friendly tools like the SPIRE check-in, journal prompts, and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale–and learn more along the way about the research underlying positive psychology and the thought leaders in the field.
One Sunset, One Life
Has the sunset ever hijacked your breath? Brought you to a place where radical red washed words away?
That’s what happened to poet Megan McDonough one August evening on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as she witnessed an extraordinary sunset at Campground Beach in Eastham. The experience, the felt sense of the sun leaving the sky, left an indelible mark.
With a simple iPhone in hand, and a heart full of tremendous gratitude for the beauty the sun so thoroughly threw out, Megan snapped picture after picture. She was mesmerized. Each moment, colors shifted, presenting a new Monet with every blink. She turned left, then right, then 360 degrees. Every part of the sky was different. Megan stood still, opening her peripheral vision and all her senses. She wanted to absorb, know, and be part of that whole before it disappeared.
This book tries to express that full-on, all-out embodied experience. All the pictures are from that one sunset, with no retouching or enhancing. The poem aims to get at the inner experience of seeing such a sight. In reading it, you get a felt sense of the whole that we are all a part of.
The words and pictures are merely shadows of the reality. Maybe, as humans, that’s the best we can do—experience the glorious truth and do our very best to translate it into our lives, each in our own quirky, imperfect way.
This sunset, like all sunsets, is one and done, never to be repeated. By savoring it, we are reminded to see each sunset, each moment of our lives, anew.
A Minute For Me: Learning to Savor Sixty Seconds
The high price for trying to get everything done is letting yourself become undone. A busy life is an easy place to lose you. Even in a busy life, the greatest gift you can give yourself is the gift of your own attention, discovering from within what is true and authentic. For this self-discovery, exotic travel is optional. Inquiry is mandatory. A Minute for Me gives you the tools that encourage inquiry, including: Personal short stories to motivate your own exploration and inquiry; Simple 60-second exercises to build your self-awareness muscle; Ideas for generating new perspectives that can easily fit into your day without changing your schedule or adding another item on your to-do list. You can think about the past, plan for the future, but the only time you experience life is right here, right now-in this very moment. A Minute for Me helps you live this moment to its fullest. Maybe that is the ultimate exotic travel-the exploration of your own heart.
Infinity in a Box: Using Yoga to Live With EaseFind Infinity Within Yourself. Life can feel constricting. With family responsibilities, work demands and daily obligations, there is little time to take a breather. In Infinity in a Box, business yogini Megan McDonough shares a simple yet powerful four-step approach to working and living with ease. Weaving introspective Yogic philosophy into the pragmatic demands of a hectic twenty-first century day, Infinity shows corporate executives and stay-at-home Moms alike the importance of valuing each moment of life. You will discover how to:
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