Your One Wild and Precious Life

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WINNER OF THE AUDIENCE CHOICE IRISH BOOK AWARD 2021

Once you’ve got a few decades on the clock, life can seem sort of cross-roadsy. Once you’re no longer thinking of yourself as ‘young’, you may be looking back, thinking ‘How did I get here?’ And also looking ahead, wondering: ‘What do I do now?’

This realization that neither time nor choices are limitless is both daunting and exciting. This is the moment to take stock and figure out how to make the best of every precious moment of the rest of your life. And to develop the tools to be able to do so again and again.

Your One Wild and Precious Life is an eye-opening account of this surprisingly liberating process. Using the latest ground-breaking research, leading psychologist Maureen Gaffney has written an inspiring and practical guide for getting to grips with time. Taking the key stages of our life – from infancy to old age – she explores what we learn at each stage. And, crucially, she explains how, no matter what has happened in the past, and what age you are, you can find a better route forward.

Your One Wild and Precious Life is both profound and reassuring. It will transform your thinking, connect you with who you truly are and help you to reclaim control over your life. Crucially, it will empower you to face the future with optimism.

It is a book to fundamentally alter your relationship with time and show you that every age can be your best age.

‘A profound, important work; simultaneously wise, instructive and a love letter to humanity’ IRISH TIMES

‘Fascinating and engaging’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A must-read’ IRISH DAILY MAIL

‘[It] will transform your thinking’ IRISH FARMERS JOURNALA profound, important work; simultaneously wise, instructive and a love letter to humanity . . . I recognised entire sections that seemed to have been written just for me . . . I don’t think I’ve ever taken so many notes—Irish Times

A book I will keep by my bedside for ever—Deirdre O’Kane, Sunday Times

Warm, wise and immensely readable . . . peppered with insights and advice about how to become your best self—Irish Mail on Sunday

Solid and practical advice on how to navigate those tricky, hurdle-strewn years that lie between finishing the child-rearing and preparing oneself for dotage—Sunday Independent

A must-read—Irish Daily Mail

Fascinating and engaging—Sunday Times

Your One Wild and Precious Life . . . will transform your thinking—Irish Farmers Journal

It reframed so much for me—Aoibhín Garrihy

The rotund nature of the work makes it feel like a foundational text, accessible to anyone who seeks to know more about themselves and something any trainee psychologist would enjoy. It astutely examines how attachments to people or patterns can speed up, stunt or spark our growth, and, most importantly, what we can do about it.

No matter where you locate yourself in this book there’s an energy to the prose that makes it a fascinating read.

But if every love story is a ghost story, as David Foster Wallace says, then Gaffney’s new book resurrects your original love story and the ghost that it conjures. She provides instructions on how to vanquish the past and understand connection, so a new cycle of living is possible.

This book is a powerful reminder that history does not have to dictate our future if we can, somehow, amid the chaos of life, listen now and again.

—Orla Tinsley, Irish Times

This book is a practical guide to making the most of our lives, within a revised framework, at every stage.—Anne Cunningham, The Anglo-Celt

Gaffney invariably gets to the core of things and always seems to talk to one directly. If she has a recipe for facing the next stage in life, it’s going to be one worth trying—Orna Mulcahy, The Gloss

An expertly organised tour through life—Irish TimesDr Maureen Gaffney is a leading clinical psychologist, writer and broadcaster. She has had a distinguished academic career and continues to work as a consultant, specializing in leadership and organizational change, working with companies around the world to build strong, emotionally intelligent leadership and innovative and resilient work cultures. Among her clients are Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Google. She is the author of two bestselling books Flourishing, about how to achieve a deeper sense of well-being, meaning and purpose, and Your One Wild and Precious Life, a guide to becoming your best self at any age. She lives in Dublin.GB

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