Sports are an amazing environment in which to raise children. The benefits they gain from athletic participation are many, including physical, personal, and social. Yet, there is also a dark side to today's youth sports culture, as an emphasis on winning has made what was once fun become a burden for many young athletes. As a result, parents can't always be certain their children's athletic involvement will be safe and enjoyable. In Raising Young Athletes: Parenting Your Children to Victory in Sports and Life, Dr. Jim Taylor-an internationally-recognized authority on sport psychology, child development, and parenting-offers a guiding hand to help parents ensure their children's sports participation encourages positive attitudes and promotes healthy developments as they move toward adulthood. The role of parents in shaping their children's sports experience has never been more important, and Dr. Taylor shows parents how to send the right messages to their young athletes with clear and practical advice. Whether playing sports just for fun or with aspirations to play professionally, Raising Young Athletes helps parents steer their children toward a healthy, positive experience. As such, their participation will become an impactful part of their lives that will prepare them to be victorious both in sports and in life.

Few of us go through life without experiencing some sort of crisis, whether health, financial, relationship, career, or personal safety. Crises happen and they are often out of our control. But the one thing we can control is how we respond to them. Yet, our natural instincts often hinder us as we confront today's crises that are complex, amorphous, and not readily solvable. Changing our reaction to a crisis is an immense challenge, yet with powerful lessons provided in these pages, anyone can turn crises into opportunities for reflection, positive action, and growth. . A crisis mentality can overwhelm you when bad things happen. Turning crises into opportunities empowers you to overcome the darkness that can engulf you in troubled times and allow you to seek the light that can guide you through hard times. Exploring the essential psychological, emotional, and interpersonal factors that most impact your reaction to a crisis, Jim Taylor provides you with deep insights and practical tools that help you move from a crisis mentality of fear, pessimism, and panic that controls you to an opportunity mindset of calm, confidence, and courage that you control in a crisis. He offers compelling examples, both recent and historical, well-known and unfamiliar, to bring these issues to life. Illustrations from government, large and small business, and ordinary people will highlight who responded well and who did not. Break free from the crisis mentality and embrace an opportunity mindset with nine strategies that will not only help you to survive, but actually thrive, when bad things happen.

Much too often, the mental aspect of sport performance is overlooked. While all top athletes are in outstanding physical condition and technically exceptional, mental preparation is often what separates the best from the rest. This is just as true for young athletes as it is for pros and Olympians. And even though relatively few athletes will ever reach the top of their sport, the attitudes and life lessons learned from mental training-such as motivation, confidence, focus, perseverance, and resilience-will serve them well in all aspects of their lives. In Train Your Mind for Athletic Success: Mental Preparation to Achieve Your Sports Goals, Dr. Jim Taylor uses his own elite athletic experience and decades of working with some of the world's best athletes to provide competitors of every ability with insights, practical exercises, and tools they can use to be mentally prepared when it really counts. His Prime Sport System explores the attitudes that lay the foundation for athletic success, the mental obstacles that can hold athletes back, the preparations they must take, the mental muscles they should strengthen, and the mental tools they need to fine tune their competitive performances. Most importantly, Dr. Taylor shows athletes practical strategies they can use to become mentally strong so they can perform their best when it matters most. Train Your Mind for Athletic Success goes well beyond the typical mental skills that are discussed in other mental training books. Readers will not only learn why mental preparation is so important to athletic success, but also where they personally are in each area thanks to brief mental assessments in each section of the book. In addition, each chapter includes exercises to show athletes how to incorporate mental training directly into their overall sport training regimen. The most comprehensive and in-depth book on mental preparation for athletes available, Train Your Mind for Athletic Success is an essential read for athletes, coaches, and parents.

Sports are an amazing environment in which to raise children. The benefits they gain from athletic participation are many, including physical, personal, and social. Yet, there is also a dark side to today's youth sports culture, as an emphasis on winning has made what was once fun become a burden for many young athletes. As a result, parents can't always be certain their children's athletic involvement will be safe and enjoyable. In Raising Young Athletes: Parenting Your Children to Victory in Sports and Life, Dr. Jim Taylor-an internationally-recognized authority on sport psychology, child development, and parenting-offers a guiding hand to help parents ensure their children's sports participation encourages positive attitudes and promotes healthy developments as they move toward adulthood. The role of parents in shaping their children's sports experience has never been more important, and Dr. Taylor shows parents how to send the right messages to their young athletes with clear and practical advice. Whether playing sports just for fun or with aspirations to play professionally, Raising Young Athletes helps parents steer their children toward a healthy, positive experience. As such, their participation will become an impactful part of their lives that will prepare them to be victorious both in sports and in life.

Jim Taylor explores how to harness the four forces that can control our "life-inertia" and propel our lives in the direction of our OWN choosing: values, self-esteem, ownership, and emotions. Many people think of inertia as an object at rest will stay at rest unless a force is exerted on it, like a boulder in a field. And people can think of their lives in the same way: static and unmoving. But we aren't "stuck" in one place, as so many express when they are dissatisfied with their lives. Rather, our lives are moving swiftly and inexorably along a path driven by powerful forces-both past and present-that is highly resistant to a change in direction. As a result, small forces, such as a modest insight or a brief "aha!" moment, aren't enough to catalyze significant change in how we think, what we feel, or how we act on or react to our world. In fact, meaningful change can only occur when forces are applied that are greater than the forces that are already propelling our lives. Seeing our lives from this dynamic perspective is the foundation for understanding what it takes to bring meaningful and long-lasting positive change to our lives. Jim Taylor explores the four forces (values, self-esteem, ownership, and emotions) that propel our "life-inertia," which shows itself through the lens with which we view the world, the emotional reactions we have, the actions that we take, and the relationships that we create. He then explains how to harness those to our own benefit, so that we may steer our lives in the direction of our own choosing, rather than allowing our past inertia or outside forces to dictate the direction our lives take. By letting our values guide us, building our self-esteem, taking ownership of our decisions and actions, and using our emotions as positive fuel, we can break free from our past inertia, take control of our lives, and chart a future of meaning, happiness, success, and connection with confidence, commitment, and courage.