Learn How to Overcome Introverted Tendencies and Thrive in the Workplace
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To thrive in any industry where success hinges heavily on the ability to build relationships, business professionals must know how to navigate large networking events, start conversations, cultivate connections and grow their reach — all of which can sound overwhelming, if not impossible, for those who are shy or introverted.
Despite struggling with crippling shyness for most of her life, Monica Parkin is a successful entrepreneur and keynote speaker who has a wide circle of friends and business associates. How did a self-described socially awkward introvert become such a people person?
“Well, the answer is that you can evolve,” Parkin says. “I was making myself crazy with all the social cues I did not understand and wondered why this comes so naturally to some people but was so impossibly hard for me. Today, I love the opportunity to go to events, meet people, hear people’s stories and build relationships. I can have the best of both worlds now, and so can you.”
To help others overcome anxiety in both their professional and personal lives, Parkin shares her refreshingly relatable, actionable approach in her ground-breaking new book, Overcoming Awkward: The Introvert’s Guide to Networking, Marketing, and Sales.
Part memoir, part instruction guide, Overcoming Awkward reveals Parkin’s private struggles, shared with candid honesty and vulnerability. Her “one step at a time” approach, punctuated with personal anecdotes and humor, is easy to follow and implement.
In Overcoming Awkward, readers will learn:
How to overcome social fears;
How to build relationships effortlessly;
Effective social media marketing;
How to sow seeds for organic growth;
How to win over angry clients;
How to expand their comfort zone;
The value of expert mentorship;
And so much more.
“This is the definitive guide you’ve been waiting for,” Parkin adds. “Gone is the advice to introverts that they must learn to take on a persona that is light years away from who they really are. You will finally be free to just be you and will discover that your vibe attracts your tribe.”
Monica Parkin is a licensed mortgage broker and successful serial entrepreneur. She is an award-winning international speaker and the host of the Juggling without Balls podcast. She is also a self-professed introvert and crazy goat lady who lives on a small farm with an assortment of furry creatures. She loves to hear feedback from readers and looks forward to opportunities to speak on topics that empower others to feel more connected, confident and successful.
Overcoming Awkward: The Introvert’s Guide to Networking, Marketing, and Sales ISBN-13: 979-8773835998 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com and Goodreads
Trish Stevens Michelle Collins Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
(This press release may be reprinted in part or in its entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
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Being a teenager in today’s “age of anxiety” is scary. Being a parent of a teenager is even scarier. Zoomers may seem more together, more confident and more independent than prior generations, but in fact, they are more anxious, lonely and emotionally fragile, and less resilient to stress, says psychoanalyst, clinical social worker and parenting expert Erica Komisar.
“We are asking children to handle more — more stress, more stimulation, more pressure, more choices and more decisions — without giving them a secure foundation of support, emotional security, and real and meaningful connections,” says Komisar.
Her important new book, Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety, is a comprehensive guide filled with compassionate and practical advice to help parents guide, educate and connect with their children on a range of current topics, including gender and sexual identity, anxiety and depression, disordered eating, ADHD, vaping, social media and bullying, to name a few.
Chicken Little also contains valuable insights intended to help readers prevent, recognize and address mental health disorders, as well as help their teens navigate academic and social pressures, social media and technology usage, increased social isolation and family pressures. With Komisar’s guidance and support, parents will learn how to be beacons of hope and change, as well as how to raise emotionally healthy, resilient adolescents.
About the Author Erica Komisar, LCSW, is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert who has been in private practice in New York City for over 30 years. As a psychological consultant, she brings parenting workshops to schools, clinics, corporations and childcare settings. She is also a contributing editor to the Institute for Family Studies. She is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.
Erica lives in New York City with her husband and is the mother of three adolescent children.
Chicken Little, the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: November 2, 2021 ISBN-10: 0757324002 ISBN-13: 9780757324000 Trade Paperback, 288 pages Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
How to Raise Resilient Children in Our Complex World
(This press release may be reprinted in part or in its entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Being a teenager in today’s “age of anxiety” is scary. Being a parent of a teenager is even scarier. Zoomers may seem more together, more confident and more independent than prior generations, but in fact, they are more anxious, lonely and emotionally fragile, and less resilient to stress, says psychoanalyst, clinical social worker and parenting expert Erica Komisar.
“We are asking children to handle more — more stress, more stimulation, more pressure, more choices and more decisions — without giving them a secure foundation of support, emotional security, and real and meaningful connections,” says Komisar.
Her important new book, Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety, is a comprehensive guide filled with compassionate and practical advice to help parents guide, educate and connect with their children on a range of current topics, including gender and sexual identity, anxiety and depression, disordered eating, ADHD, vaping, social media and bullying, to name a few.
Chicken Little also contains valuable insights intended to help readers prevent, recognize and address mental health disorders, as well as help their teens navigate academic and social pressures, social media and technology usage, increased social isolation and family pressures. With Komisar’s guidance and support, parents will learn how to be beacons of hope and change, as well as how to raise emotionally healthy, resilient adolescents.
About the Author Erica Komisar, LCSW, is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert who has been in private practice in New York City for over 30 years. As a psychological consultant, she brings parenting workshops to schools, clinics, corporations and childcare settings. She is also a contributing editor to the Institute for Family Studies. She is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.
Erica lives in New York City with her husband and is the mother of three adolescent children.
Chicken Little, the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: November 2, 2021 ISBN-10: 0757324002 ISBN-13: 9780757324000 Trade Paperback, 288 pages Available for pre-order on Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
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It seems that every day the news gets worse. Mass killings. Officer-involved shootings. Social upheaval. The pandemic. And everyone just trying their best to adjust to a new normal amid swirling unrest. It’s a lot for the brain to process. Do we react with fear? Anxiety? Anger? Or can we teach our brains to push pause and unpack the facts first, instead of allowing the seemingly endless stream of negative news to impact our mental, emotional and spiritual health?
Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist and highly sought-after speaker who regularly addresses the topic of brain health to both non-medical and medical audiences. His subjects include Major Depression in the Primary Care Setting and the Neurobiology of Depression, Alzheimer’s Dementia, Psychotherapy in Clinical Practice, Spirituality in Medicine, Depression and its Spiritual and Physical Connections — among many others.
A common thread among his discussion topics is how anxiety-inducing news and events can activate the brain’s stress pathways — thereby increasing the body’s inflammatory factors, diminishing immune response and increasing vulnerability to viral infections and cancer. The good news is, we can rewire the way our brains react to negative news and stressful events, and Dr. Jennings can explain how.
As a Christian psychiatrist, Dr. Jennings also speaks to design principles that, when embraced and followed, can lead to a better understanding of the world and bring about more peace.
As the world searches for a clear path toward physical and mental recovery, Dr. Jennings is uniquely poised to address the very serious subject of brain health from both scientific and spiritual perspectives — a much needed and welcomed approach during these extremely distressing times.
Dr. Jennings operates a private practice in Chattanooga and has successfully treated thousands of patients. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Life-Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association.
Trish Stevens Helen Cook Senior Publicist Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 903.654.0938 Direct 281.333.3507 Office [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
The Warrior’s Meditation Shares Best-Kept Secret In Stress Relief And Self-Improvement
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The Warrior’s Meditation by Richard L. Haight, the award-winning author of The Unbound Soul, makes transformative meditation accessible to the masses, with short, daily sessions that don’t require periods of isolation.
“The Warrior’s Meditation is unlike any other meditation. This method is flexible in application, which allows it to blend with whatever your day has in store,” Haight says.
Perfect for people of all backgrounds and skill levels, The Warrior’s Meditation teaches an instinctive, non-religious form of Samurai meditation that is both practical and extremely effective.
Through daily meditation, practitioners can experience the following cognitive and physical benefits, among many others:
Improved immune function; decreased cellular inflammation and pain.
Increased positive emotions; less anxiety, depression and stress.
Increased emotional intelligence and compassion; reduced feelings of insecurity.
Increased gray matter in areas related to paying attention, positive emotions, emotional reg-ulation and self-control.
Improved memory, creativity and abstract thinking.
Life is busy, and few people have time to spend hours a day in meditation. With The Warrior’s Meditation, readers can experience profound clarity and awareness wherever they are and eventually embody meditation as a way of being.
Author Richard L. Haight is a master-level instructor of martial, meditation and healing arts. He began formal martial arts training at age 12 and moved to Japan at the age of 24 to advance his training with masters of the sword, staff and aiki-jujutsu.
During his 15 years in Japan, Haight was awarded masters licenses in four samurai arts as well as a traditional healing art called sotai-ho. He is one of the world’s foremost experts in the traditional Japanese martial arts.
Through his books, his meditation and martial arts seminars, Haight is helping to ignite a worldwide movement for personal transformation that is free of all constraints and open to anyone of any level. He now lives and teaches in southern Oregon.
The Warrior’s Meditation: The Best-Kept Secret in Self-Improvement, Cognitive Enhancement, and Stress Relief, Taught by a Master of Four Samurai Arts Publisher: Shinkaikan Body, Mind, Spirit LLC ISBN-10: 0999210092 ISBN-13: 978-0999210093 Paperback available at all online bookstores.
Trish Stevens Karen Anderson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
Short On Inspiration While Dining In? My Pinewood Kitchen Dishes Out Some Quarantine Cuisine Tips
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With COVID-19 keeping us at home more and shopping less, home chefs need to get creative while cooking tasty, healthy meals for their entire family. Chef and author Mee McCormick is an expert: she healed herself of Crohn’s disease, gut issues, and other immune system challenges with whole food recipes when doctors couldn’t help her.
The mom/rancher/restaurateur can share tips for “quarantine cuisine” when you’re hankering for variety in your meals but you’re short on ingredients and inspiration. Perfect for social distancing, many of her recipes are made with items you probably already have in your pantry (for example, her Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup); she can teach home cooks how to repurpose items to reduce food waste (cilantro pickles, anyone?), and reveal the healthiest foods you need in your pandemic pantry.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure offers more than 100 gluten-free, whole foods recipes that can be customized for Keto, Paleo, or vegans, making it a truly “all-inclusive” eating plan for the entire family. From smoothies, soups and salads, to dinners and desserts, every recipe is gluten-free and gut-friendly. • Curb Your COVID Anxiety with healthy chocolate with Mee’s Chocolate Avocado Mousse & Five-Ingredient Fudge Cups • Soups for Social Distancing – Black Bean Chicken Chili and Immune-Boosting Chicken & Quinoa Soup (nutritious, delicious, and they use what you likely have in your home already!) • Plenty of plant-based offerings • Reduce Waste: Learn how to make cilantro pickles from cucumbers, sweet potato chips from sweet potatoes, a falafel burger from canned chickpeas, and how to make your own healthier ketchup and mayonnaise if you run out • 10 Gut-Friendly Foods for your Pandemic Pantry
Mee McCormick is a rising Southern culinary and wellness innovator, restaurateur, author, TV cooking personality, farmer, rancher, wife and mother. She splits her time between Nashville and nearby Nunnelly, Tennessee; a tiny, unincorporated community in Hickman County, which is also home to her biodynamic farm and restaurant Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile.
Mee authored her first cookbook My Kitchen Cure, which led to wild success and a book deal with HCI for her second cookbook My Pinewood Kitchen, published on April 14, 2020. She frequently appears on Today in Nashville, and she participates in nationally-recognized food festivals and events, spreading the same level of care and hospitality to audiences everywhere that she has become known for throughout the state of Tennessee. Visit: www.meemccormick.com or www.pinewoodkitchenandmercantile.com.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure/130+ Crazy Delicious, Gluten-Free Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Make Your Gut Happy By Mee McCormick HCI BOOKS Released: April 2020/ $26.95 ISBN: 9780757323522 Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Allison Janse Health Communications Inc. The Life Issues Publisher 1700 NW 2nd Ave Boca Raton, FL 33432 800.851.9100 [email protected] www.hcibooks.com
Chocolate: A (Healthy) Anxiety Cure For COVID-19 Stress
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In this virulent climate of self-isolation and serious immune system compromises, author/chef, Mee McCormick is mindful of how a rise in anxiety can find us craving snacks. Instead of a quick fix, she goes straight to her kitchen with the intent to shift her gut bacteria – important for keeping our immune systems strong – as addressed in her new book, My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure. An expert whose personal experience healing her Crohn’s disease, gut issues and immune system challenges makes her well equipped to share the whole food recipes doctors couldn’t prescribe to help her.
Enter one of our favorite snacking foods, chocolate. Says McCormick, “Cocoa is a pre-biotic plant food – this means it feeds the good probiotic bacteria or, as I like to call them, The Good Gut Homies. These Gut Homies live in our intestines.”
McCormick says the consumption of dark chocolate has been found to lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease, protect our DNA and improve gut bacteria. She points to research at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research where they designed a study to test whether eating chocolate could mitigate the stress-related effects on the microbiome. Dividing participants into two groups – high anxiety and low anxiety and testing their urine and blood for stress markers – each participant ate one chocolate bar (containing 74% cocoa) a day for 2 weeks. The study found cortisol and adrenaline decreased as well as their p-cresol and Hippurate; metabolites created from the Good Gut Homies. High anxiety group levels dropped down to the levels of the low anxiety group – all within a 2-week period, thus the importance of cooking with cocoa.
Take, for instance, how combining cocoa with black beans takes our gut health to another level as they also have a profound influence on our microbiome by feeding the probiotic bacteria that support the mucosal lining of the intestines. Bean eaters have been found to have an 81% decrease in the harmful gut bacteria that break down the protective mucosal lining. Supporting our intestinal lining is key in preventing leaky gut. Mee McCormick has a Chocolate and Black Bean Hummus that will surprise you with its nutritiously delicious taste and texture. Shown below is an example of another chocolate -centered dish, a super easy recipe to whip up during COVID cabin fever.
This chocolate recipe is mixed with avocado in a delicious mousse (found on page 277 of Mee’s book, My Pinewood Kitchen):
Chocolate-Avocado Mousse (Makes 4 servings) In the bowl of a food processor, blend 4 ripe avocados until smooth. Add 1/3 cup local honey or coconut nectar*; 1 ripe banana; 1/2 cup raw cacao powder; 2 tbsp. organic coconut milk; 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract and a pinch of sea salt. Blend until the mixture is uniform. Pour into a dish and chill for 2 hours in a refrigerator or 30 minutes in a freezer.
If watching sugar, use an equivalent amount of stevia; however, coconut nectar is low glycemic.
Mee McCormick is a real food maven, community food advocate, a restaurateur, a rancher, a mother, and the author of My Kitchen Cure: How I Cooked My Way Out of Chronic Autoimmune Disease with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes. When Mee isn’t running her restaurant or working on her biodynamic farm, she is touring the country as a speaker and community kitchen organizer. She has appeared on national and local TV, on radio and in print nationwide. She is a regular on-air contributor to Today In Nashville and a vital part of the Nashville restaurant scene. Visit: www.meemccormick.com or www.pinewoodkitchenandmercantile.com.
My Pinewood Kitchen: A Southern Culinary Cure/130+ Crazy Delicious, Gluten-Free Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Make Your Gut Happy HCI BOOKS – April 14, 2020 — $26.95 ISBN: 9780757323522 Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Kim Weiss Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
