Lifeskills: 8 Simple Ways to Build Stronger Relationships, Communicate More Clearly, and Imp rove Your Health

Here are the eight skills this book will help you master:

1. Identify your thoughts and feelings: how to tap into your feelings, especially the negative ones????????
2. Evaluate your negative feelings, negative thoughts, and options: how to decide when to take action????????
3. Communicate better: how to be a more effective listener and speaker????????
4. Empathize with others to understand their behavior: how to appreciate a situation from someone else's point of view
5. Do problem-solving: how to define the problem, generate alternatives, and evaluate the outcomes
6. Practice assertion: how to get others to do what you want
7. Practice acceptance: how to back off without feeling like a failure
8. Emphasize the positive: how to build better relationships using a proven ratio of positive to negative interactions

Lifeskills shows how building better relationships is an essential part of preserving health--and offers eight clear steps anyone can use to make that happen.

Psychiatrist Redford Williams and historian Virginia Williams turned their hostility workshop into Anger Kills, and Lifeskills is based on a program for improving relationships that they run at Duke University Medical Center. They emphasize that good relationships have physical as well as emotional benefits, lowering stress and increasing resistance to disease. Then, through scientific studies and a variety of exercises, the authors present ways to understand yourself better, communicate more clearly, and emphasize the positive in your interactions with others. There's nothing mysterious in Lifeskills; recommendations include listening attentively, reflecting on information that someone has told you, and asserting what you want in a given situation. Anyone having trouble getting along with others will find Lifeskills to be a useful guide.