For Immediate Release Contact: Jana Muntsinger, MMPR jana@mmpublicrelations.com 281-251-0480
WHAT TO DO WHEN LIFE GETS TOUGH: LIVE YOUR JOY
Life sometimes throws curve balls, threatening your job, health or retirement account, perhaps unraveling your most valued relationships. It can be tempting to rely solely on hard work or dogged self-determination to turn things around when challenges arise. Yet Bonnie St. John believes one additional life ingredient can dramatically transform life’s tough situations: joy. As an amputee, Paralympics silver medalist, Rhodes scholar, Harvard and Oxford graduate and single mom, St. John has faced some of life’s toughest challenges—and she doesn’t speak of joy lightly. Her new book, Live Your Joy (April 2009), is a powerfully inspiring collection of real-life, modern-day stories that reveal the power of joy: living it, pursuing it, sharing it, and making it a top priority.
“When you learn how to create joy in your life, you stop being a slave to what is happening in the world, and you become the master of your own destiny and emotions,” writes St. John. “You can always raise the level of your joy reservoir because it’s coming from inside you. And that is an amazing feeling!” Now, more than ever, Americans want to rise above life’s difficult circumstances, to enjoy life in spite of setbacks and challenges.
Bonnie’s life experiences uniquely qualify her to address methods for dealing with tough challenges. She was abused as a child, endured numerous surgeries for the amputation of her right leg, struggled to finance her Harvard studies, organized her own training regimen to become an Olympic ski medalist, and succeeded in the high stakes, high pressure world of Washington politics. Positive thinking and drive led her to more and more professional success, book contracts, and speaking engagements, yet there was still something missing. She discovered that the energizing feeling of joy is more than positive thinking and achievements.
In Live Your Joy, Bonnie shares simple tricks and tools she has learned to increase one’s daily “joy factor.” Her tips include: • Add “to feel” items to your “to do” list. Make it a priority to feel gratitude, feel wonder, feel in love with nature, and feel love for family. The resulting joy is surprising and empowering. • Build a “portfolio of dreams.” Don’t just hope for one thing, or dream of one thing. Draft an entire portfolio of goals -- and a few of them will actually come true. • Beat the “joy stealers.” Notice your tendency to focus on the negative—including the people and situations that trigger negativity—and nip it in the bud. Be intentional about your pursuit of joy.
Live Your Joy includes stories from Bonnie St. John’s own life and from the lives of others who have taught her how to live with joy. She guides readers through a process of steadily increasing their joy, by learning and practicing new habits and behaviors. Chapter titles describe the attitudes and practices St. John encourages, knowing full well these will affect the reader both personally and professionally: Confidence, Hope, Positivity, Authenticity, Humility, and Resilience. While she admits it’s not possible to live your joy every minute of every day, Bonnie encourages people to adopt the attitude that, at a minimum, each day can offer a little more joy than the previous one.
Bonnie St. John has been interviewed on national television programs such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, BET and Lifetime, and has written for or been featured in publications including The New York Times, People, Ebony and Essence. She graduated with honors from Harvard and is a Rhodes Scholar and Oxford University graduate. After winning numerous awards as an IBM sales rep, Bonnie was appointed by the President of the United States to serve as director of the National Economic Council in the White House. Bonnie is a 1984 Paralympics silver and bronze medal winner in ski racing and has touched over half a million people through her speeches over the past ten years. Her popular books include How Strong Women Pray (2007) and Live Your Joy (April 2009). Her website is www.bonniestjohn.com.
Hachette Book Group is a leading trade publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the second-largest publisher in the world. Hachette Book Group USA’s product lines include adult, illustrated, religious, children’s and audio books under the Little, Brown and Company, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Grand Central Publishing, FaithWords, Center Street, Orbit, Yen Press and Hachette Book Group Digital Media imprints. Its bestselling authors include Ansel Adams, Sherman Alexie, Marc Brown, David Baldacci, Jimmy Buffett, Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, Malcolm Gladwell, Lisi Harrison, Robert Kiyosaki, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Meyer, Stephenie Meyer, Walter Mosley, James Patterson, David Sedaris, Anita Shreve, Nicholas Sparks, and Cecily von Ziegesar.
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Live Your Joy By Bonnie St. John
Available April 28, 2009 U.S. $19.99, hardcover, 224 pages, 6” x 9” ISBN-10: 0-446-57925-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-446-57925-4 BISAC category: Self-Help/Motivational & Inspirational Available in eBook
Review copies, reprint permission and interviews are available. Contact Pamela McClure, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations, 615-595-8321 or pamela@mmpublicrelations.com
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