We are living in times of great change and fluctuations on our planet. While change is welcomed by some as a wonderful opportunity to build new systems or alter ones that are not working, 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. To help ease the turmoil and provide help during times of transition, Sandra Ingerman has written a book that can become a great resource no matter what situation we find ourselves in.
How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth is a book that really speaks to our human family today and is written precisely for our times.
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.
Today we are going through one of the greatest changes on this Earth. 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: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth is a book by Sandra Ingerman. This is one of two books that Sandra has released 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: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth 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).