Intentional

 Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully

by David Amerland

 

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GENRE: Non-fiction/smart book

 

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BLURB:

 

Live your life the way you want to. Manage stress better. Be more resilient and enjoy meaningful relationships and better health. We all want that. Such life leads to better choices, better jobs, loving romantic partners, more rewarding careers and decisions that are fully aligned with our aims.

 

What stops us from getting all that is the complexity of our brain and the complicated way in which the external world comes together. The misalignment between the internal states we experience and the external circumstances we encounter often leads to confusion, a lack of clarity in our thinking and actions that are not consistent with our professed values.

 

Intentional is a gameplan. It helps us connect the pieces of our mind to the pieces of our life. It shows us how to map what we feel to what has caused those feelings, understand what affects us and what effects it has on us and determine what we want, why we want it and what we need to do to get it.

 

When we know what to do, we know how to behave. When we know how to behave we know how to act. When we know how to act, we know how to live. Our actions, each day, become our lives. Drawn from the latest research from the fields of neuroscience, behavioral and social psychology and evolutionary anthropology, Intentional shows you how to add meaning to your actions and lead a meaningful, happier, more fulfilling life on your terms.

 

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EXCERPT

 

Whether we realize it or not, we all feel the need for this kind of guidance that gives us a deep sense of purpose. Because we are born physically helpless we have evolved to latch onto and work hard to understand our immediate environment and the people around us. This makes us, as we grow older, intensely pro-social. At the same time it provides us with a ready-made set of expectations, rules and guidelines to guide our behavior that arise from the collective behavior of those around us.

 

That behavior is the culture we experience and the traditions we abide by. The problem with this is that rather than defining for ourselves what is important to us we accept that which is given to us. That which is given to us is rarely what we want, but it can very easily become what we settle for.

 

Settling is an evolutionary-programmed trait. Let me explain: Life is hard. It really is. Even if we happen to have the extraordinary luck to be born into a very rich family whose legacy gives us everything we need to live comfortably for the rest of our life, maintaining that fortune and navigating through life is going to be fraught with risks, traps and constant upheavals.

 

We need other people. Other people need us. That is a truth. But the reasons for this mutual need are usually contradictory or, at the very least, sufficiently at odds with each other to make trust an issue and turn cooperation into a risk-assessment exercise.

A Word With the Author:

 1.Did you always want to be an author?

 

As far back as I can remember reading (and by direct association, writing) have been part of my experience of the world. I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by books and surrounded by adults who took the time to read to me and then, a little later, when I started reading for myself to help me read better. I was also lucky enough to be surrounded by adults who were too busy to supervise what I read. Working on the safe assumption that a book is not something that can harm a young child they let me loose on a home library that did not contain a single children’s book. 

 

As a result I learnt from very young to think in terms of narrative and adult themes (romance, murder, ambition, revolutions and wars). I think because of that writing has always been the way I best express myself. I have always wanted to be a writer as a result. Because writing was not considered to be a respectable career in my household I also studied Chemical Engineering and graduated with an MSc in quantum mechanical perturbations in laminar flow processes.  

2.Tell us about the publication of your first book.

 

My first non-fiction book came out in 2010 and it was called SEO Help: 20 Steps to Get your Website to Google’s First Page. In keeping with all of my books it takes a complex subject and demystifies it completely. At the time I was working as an SEO consultant for a boutique web design agency and the book was the direct result of a Texas-based client’s SEO needs. Through my advice he made $1 million that first year and the idea for the book was born as a result.

3.Besides yourself, who is your favorite author in the genre you write in?

 

I read both fiction and non-fiction and my tastes are fairly universal so there is no thing for me as a ‘favorite’ author. Authors I do admire are James Gleick and Sebastian Junger on the non-fiction front. Both have the capacity to draw you into their non-fiction world in a way that makes you feel smarter. In fiction, I currently like Brandon Sanderson, his capacity to come up with captivating ideas that work well on the page is amazing, plus I find the stories hugely entertaining. 

4.What's the best part of being an author? The worst?

 

The best part of being an author are the travel, the jets and the parties, obviously. I am really just kidding. There are no jets, travel or parties and being an author is a fairly unglamorous business. I love the fact that I start with an idea, something that doesn’t exist until I dream it up and I then work to put flesh and bones on it and it becomes something very real that has real value in the world. There is a real reason why authoritarian regimes everywhere have problems with books, writers and the dissemination of ideas. This ability to plant thoughts directly into the brain of a reader is a superpower that writers have which I find amazing and humbling at the same time. That, is also the worst part of being a writer. The moment you realize just how much power resides in what you do you also feel the responsibility of it and, at times, it can be crushing. 

5.What are you working on now?

 

Like every experienced writer I work, these days, on more than one idea at a time. I am busy doing the preliminary research, I test some aspects of it to see if the idea appeals, I am checking out to see what other books may be out there on the subject and how they fared. Then, once I have a decent idea of all this I will float it to my agent who will give me her feedback. As a result there is little sense in saying exactly what it is I am working on next because I don’t exactly know. It depends on which of the two-three ideas I am exploring actually takes off, but I can give a hint that regardless which of them gets picked my next book will be epic. 

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

David Amerland is a Chemical Engineer with an MSc. in quantum dynamics in laminar flow processes. He converted his knowledge of science and understanding of mathematics into a business writing career that's helped him demystify, for his readers, the complexity of subjects such as search engine optimization (SEO), search marketing, social media, decision-making, communication and personal development. The diversity of the subjects is held together by the underlying fundamental of human behavior and the way this is expressed online and offline. Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully is the latest addition to a thread that explores what to do in order to thrive. A lifelong martial arts practitioner, David Amerland is found punching and kicking sparring dummies and punch bags when he's not behind his keyboard. 

 

Email & Social Media Accounts

Reach David via email: davidamerland@gmail.com 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidAmerland

Medium: https://davidamerland.medium.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidamerland/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DavidAmerland/about

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david_amerland/

Represented by The Knight Agency

 

 

For Goodreads Reviews and where to buy the book follow this link: https://davidamerland.com/seo-blog/1429-where-you-can-buy-a-copy-of-intentional-how-to-live-love-work-and-play-meaningfully.html

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

David Amerland will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 a Rafflecopter giveaway