There is nothing like the feeling of a great book – one that really speaks to you and is written precisely for our times. This is how I feel about the latest book I had the pleasure of reading from Sandra Ingerman entitled How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth.
Our times are definitely changing. It doesn’t matter if you look at things from a spiritual, economical or other perspective, change is definitely in the air.
Our environment is changing. Our thinking is changing. Our political and health care systems are changing. Some of us are feeling these changes more than others. Some of us are living the changes, while others yet are standing at the front lines, initiating many of these changes.
And while change is welcomed by some, as a wonderful opportunity to build new systems or upon ones that are working, while we do away with ones that are not, not everyone sees it this way. For some of us change is difficult, change is resisted, as we have a very hard time dealing with anything new.
Well today, we are going through one of the greatest changes on this planet. As more and more of us realize this, it is wonderful to know that there are also many support systems and wonderful people that can help understand these changes. Hence in this review, I will share how this book by Sandra, is one such amazing resource.
Book and Author
How to Thrive in Changing Times is a newly published book by Sandra Ingerman. This is one of two books that Sandra has released thus far in 2010, the second being Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation.
Sandra Ingerman, MA, is an author, teacher and shamanic researcher with a worldwide following. Sandra teaches workshops on shamanic journeying, healing, and reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods. She has trained and founded an international alliance of Medicine for the Earth Teachers and shamanic teachers.
Sandra is recognized for bridging ancient cross-cultural healing methods into our modern culture addressing the needs of our times. She is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist and a professional Mental Health Counselor. She is also a board-certified expert on traumatic stress, and she is certified in acute traumatic stress management.
Sandra has written over half a dozen books on various spiritual and very practical topics, including the popular How to Heal Toxic Thoughts: Simple Tools for Personal Transformation.
Book Format and Structure
How to Thrive in Changing Times is a small book 5″ by 7″ and just over 160 pages. It is makes the perfect pocket book to take anywhere easily and make the most use out of it anytime.
It begins with a beautiful, poetic verse called “Imagine…” where Sandra profoundly shares the purpose and preciousness of life and why being here is a truly wondrous gift.
There is than an “Introduction” where Sandra explains what one can expect from this book. Here she also focuses on why it’s time for spiritual unity and how this book can help in a step-by-step manner to move through both our internal and external changes.
The book then opens up to the following 8 chapters:
Chapter 1: The Foundation of Our Work
Chapter 2: Releasing Our Creative Blocks
Chapter 3: Creating and Manifesting: Aligning Our Thinking to Create a Positive Future
Chapter 4: Blessing and Being Blessed: The Power of Gratefulness
Chapter 5: Supporting our Core Beliefs
Chapter 6: Transforming Disappointment and Grief
Chapter 7: Shining Our Light into the World: The Power of Global Community
Chapter 8: With Peace and Abundance for All: A New World is Born
The book itself is a very quick read that can be easily accomplished within one day. However, the book is filled with valuable exercises that can take as little or as much time as one is willing to invest in them. Hence, to really read and perform all the exercises can take days, weeks or months. It all depends on you and as Sandra also states, should be looked at as an ongoing life process.
Book Content & Personal Commentary
Before this book, I have to tell you that I have not previously heard of Sandra Ingerman’s work, and so I am very grateful today for having been introduced to this amazing being. Sandra’s writing is wonderful and I greatly enjoyed it. She writes in very easy to understand and friendly way, as if she were sitting right across from you having a discussion.
Sandra is very well known as an author and healer, and I don’t know how I missed her to this point, but I am thrilled to get to know more about her work now. Sandra is deeply involved in Shamanism, and as this is a growing area of interest for me, I feel like she and her work have come into my life, at just the right time.
When it came to this book, I was hooked right from the beginning through the “Imagine…” section – how powerful and so beautifully written. Just reading that section alone is so utterly moving and grounding.
When it comes to the rest of this book, as already mentioned it deals with the changing times on this Earth. But instead of getting into any specifics or lecturing about how things will be, this book is all about us taking accountability for shaping the world we want to see – and it all starts within.
“The kind of change we need is not going to happen by practicing a few techniques for minutes a day; it’s a matter of changing the way we think throughout the day.”
Sandra Ingerman, How to Thrive in Changing Times
As with any teacher of high quality and integrity, Sandra does not tell us how to think, but gently guides and nurtures a new way of thinking in each of us. She explains in every section what sorts of consequences the various positive and negative thoughts we use have, on us, each other and our Earth. There are so many powerful lessons in this book, like the idea that we cannot force change in our outer world, but we can change our response, and how your thinking creates and shapes your reality.
Thus, this book is filled with perhaps as much, if not more, practical exercises, as it is with theory. The exercises are meditative, fun and thought provoking, and Sandra offers many variations to make sure they are adaptable to any person and environment one might live in. Some are shorter, some are longer. In many of them she encourages even getting kids involved as they can add that much more to the experience. Some of the exercises you may do once, some you may make a ritual out of and do on some regular basis.
“Unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and lack of freedom all come when we compare ourselves and our lives with others.
Sandra Ingerman, How to Thrive in Changing Times
As far as Sandra’s theory and underlying thoughts, they are brilliant! She brings in a loving and gentle, yet personally accountable tone throughout the book. For anyone who is familiar with Shamanism and its beautiful approach, you will easily see this interwoven into how and what Sandra presents.
I think one of the most powerful sections in this book is chapter 6 as Sandra explains the purpose and ways to understand grief and disappointment. I think this is by far the best and shortest explanation I have ever heard of why loss happens and how to better understand the purpose for not everything working out as we would like, not to mention uplifting and empowering ways to deal with both.
What I think is most valuable about this book, aside from the great exercises to raise our consciousness, is that Sandra ties in all the important aspects of personal creation, manifesting your world, love, forgiveness, gratitude and unity, in such a small and easy to read book. Everything is clear, and to the point, and the reader gets the right dose of each topic to nudge them into a new way of being.
“I saw the Earth evolving from a survival-of-the-fittest mode to creating life forms that only know love and how to live from a place of cooperation and collaboration. We were born to experience the joy of life and to witness spirit in physical form.”
Sandra Ingerman, How to Thrive in Changing Times
Conclusion
There is no doubt that this book could not have come at a better time. As more and more of us awaken, as our consciousness begins to expand, or craves for expansion, it is material like this, that can help move us to the next step of our evolution.
If you enjoy personal growth from a deeper, spiritual perspective; If you are ready to look at this Earth and all of its inhabitants anew; If you are ready to embrace a new way of thinking from your highest state of being; If you know love should be at the core of all that we say and do; If you are ready to be part of the change; Than this is a book for you.
As change continues to take place, we can either try to move against the current with struggle and hardship, or flow with the river of life effortlessly. This book teaches the latter.
To purchase a copy of this book, check out your local book store, or Amazon.com below:
How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth (Paperback)
by Sandra Ingerman
Price: $10.98
50 used & new available from $5.52
(7 customer reviews)
*Photograph 3 provided by EvolvingScenes.com
About the author:Evita Ochel, B.Sc., B.Ed., CHN - is the founder and editor of EvolvingBeings.com – an online publication featuring various topics on spirituality and metaphysics. Evita teaches consciousness expansion and heart-centered living to help people attain deep meaning, peace and happiness in their life. She is also a nutritional science and holistic health expert for optimal health and longevity. Learn more about Evita Ochel or Follow her on Twitter.
17 Comments to “Book Review: How To Thrive In Changing Times”
[...] full book review see my write-up on Evolving [...]
I dislike when people tell me what to do as if I’m a child. I prefer a more gentle approach. This book sounds like this book hits my sweet spot. I know I’m in changing times and it’s a message that I could use. Thanks for letting me know about Sandra.
Hi Karl
Ditto :)
I am weary period of anyone who says this is the way it is and that is it. Life just does not work that way. There isn’t a one way approach for all. We each need to find our own space and gentle guidance or support is always great to have.
Hi Evita – thank you so much for letting us know about this author and I’m glad that her name will come back to me and I’ll get to read her books later on. She sounds so interesting and just what I need – but for the moment I have more pressing decisions to be taken and changes going on. All the best – Hilary
Hi Hilary
You are welcome. My thoughts are with you and I wish you well on any decisions you make – may they come from your highest self for the highest good. Anytime decisions are made from a conscious platform, we benefit from them the most.
Evita, you are such a responsible, comprehensive book reviewer. Every time I read one of your reviews I feel love, integrity and completeness. Thank you for all the time you spend doing these for our benefit.
I’m really interested in the underlying message of Sandra’s book. Shamanism greatly intrigues me, as well, and I find myself more and more drawn to what, in the past, has been called mystical healing. Whether for our minds, our hearts, our bodies, or our earth. Now, though, healing is healing — the lines are blurring between metaphysics and everyday living. I welcome the change!
Sandra sounds like an incredible woman, and I’m so grateful you brought her to our attention.
Have a blessed day!
Hi Megan
You are so kind and thoughtful, thank you so much for sharing how you feel with me. I have to say, I really, really love helping others learn about new material, because I know that thanks to others, I discovered a lot of amazing works, that lead to a huge breakthrough and awakening for me.
And I am so with you about Sandra, I really look forward to learn more about her and her work. She has a blog and you can see it here:
http://sandraingermanblog.com/
Evita,
As I read your review I am smiling, for this book seems like it is written for most of us in within this community; to guide us and helps us expand our thoughts a bit. We *are* in a huge climate of change, and lots of us are at the forefront ushering in such change; for me it’s refreshing to see that one–someone has wisdom to share that helps me to move forward, and two–we may have different approaches but our focus is the same. I love that.
Thank you for sharing:)Your book review is excellent.
Hi Joy
Yes, Joy, that is a great observation and I so agree. So many of us are open to growth and change and can greatly benefit from authors like Sandra and her inspiring work.
Thank you so much for your feedback, I greatly appreciate it and your comment!
I particularly liked the quote about changing our way of being throughout the entire day, as opposed to simply during our meditation or yoga practice, or something along those lines. I knew a great meditation teacher who said that “meditation is practice for the rest of our lives,” and I’ve found this to be true — that we can bring the “attitude of meditation” into any situation.
Hi Chris
Yes!!! You know when I read that, something within clicked, as I get a lot of people lately telling me that they meditate or have a gratitude journal or something similar, but they still don’t see the results they would like. And when I read that passage from Sandra, it is something that instinctively I knew, but I needed to hear it to realize, that that is what it is really about. It is about what thoughts, words and actions do we have in between that meditation or stillness time.
So all this to me is a lifestyle change. Just as with any other change to be long lasting and meaningful, it needs to be embraced wholly, not only when an occasion calls forth.
Now I am not saying that daily meditation or another ritual is not going to help, naturally it most likely is. But I am just inviting people to take the benefits of meditation or whatever it may be, and live them at all times. Naturally it won’t be easy at first, but that is what I think will be highly beneficial as we strive for it, we become the change we want to see in the world.
I shall definitely read this book sometime in the next year Evita. Thank you for pointing out her newest insights in Life and Living.
We can perhaps define adapting to changes as a state of thriving, for thriving produces a feeling of excitation that keeps us fit upon the obstacle course of Life. If one is not thriving, one is not in touch with their feelings that arise in the Moment. We can only find our self when we truly listen to what we say and experience on a momentary basis. How do I feel now. and now. and now. If it is something new…we thrive…because we want to transmit it to the rest of the world…..and this is done with words and without words by just living in a state of Being. We each live in a unique kingdom, but most of us are too concerned about living outside of ourselves. Therefore, we have lost our home. We can find our soul once again, by truly being honest with the Universe and the gifts it presents to us.
Hi, this is Jeremy Johnson and my first time on your website. Thanks for this book review – the meditation side is what interests me most here, as Chris eluded to above. I am looking for ways to meditate more at my full time job. I’m there 8 hours a day, I might as well turn it into more of a fruitful and peaceful experience…
Evita,
First I have to agree with Megan about your book reviews…they’re gold! I don’t know how you do it…I don’t have the gift if that’s what it is.
This struck me:
“this book is all about us taking accountability for shaping the world we want to see – and it all starts within.”
So when people ask me when this will turn around, I say, “when we all work together to do our part in turning it around. No one is coming with a magic wand!
My daughter was talking today about how many teachers are getting pink slipped…thousands in every state is what she read. I replied, well it sounds scary on one level and my heart goes out to those teachers and on the other hand the old has to crumble in order to make room for the new. Now I have no idea what the new is yet. I would hope it would involve honoring teachers on all levels for the work they do.
Now I’m rattling…I also love what you say about chapter 6 and will consider purchasing the book because of it. I love what Chris Edgar says about be the change all day and I’ll add all night to that! Love ya. T.
The new is always right now as we release the old. There are seemingly infinite components that we each personally believe that make up the identity that we hold on to and call our own. As we forgive each association or attachment that we believe is important in our way of living, we enter into a new space of seeing and experiencing. We can also invite or summon new energy, new knowledge, or spirit to fuse with our essence to reinvent the world and our selves with each moment. We can each wait forever for change to happen, when in reality, change and the new comes at our own pace based on the momentary decisions we each make. The world can look upside down with your next breath if one only wishes it to be so.
Hi Evita,
Thank you so much for introducing us to Sandra. I have not heard of her before and it is always nice to discover new writers.
Just as Megan and Tess wrote above, you truly do excellent book reviews. You really get into detail which is wonderful.
I loved the quote you shared about how we are meant to experience life as a joy. That is something that has been on the forefront of my mind for many years. Life is meant to be viewed as a wonderful experience as opposed to being something to endure.
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