Lifeskills: 8 Simple Ways to Build Stronger Relationships, Communicate More Clearly, and Improve 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.

Virginia Williams, Ph.D., is a historian and author. Redford Williams, M.D., is director of The Behavioral Medical Research Center at Duke University and a professor of psychiatry and an associate professor of medicine. Their last collaboration was Anger Kills: Seventeen Strategies for Controlling the Hostility That Can Harm Your Health.