Books
Transform your life with the power of authentic intention. Dr. Carla Marie Manly’s award-winning books make her powerful support easily accessible. Available in print and audio versions, Dr. Manly’s uplifting guidance helps you fearlessly love yourself and your life.
Date Smart
by Carla Marie Manly, PhD
We have HUGE expectations for finding the perfect partner but are too-often faced with the reality that dating is complicated! I’ve taken the anxiety and stress out of dating with my life-changing new book, Date Smart. The best-friend-in-a- book you’ve been looking for, Date Smart shows you how to make healthy dating simple and achievable. With a focus on helping you embrace your authentic self, Date Smart is an intelligent guide that includes 33 actionable mindset shifts, journaling prompts, and real-life examples. As you create stronger self-esteem and self-awareness, dating becomes fun and empowering. Based on clinical research, my genuine and uncomplicated approach makes healthy dating and relationship building a breeze.
Date Smart offers actionable tips for addressing common dating issues such as:
- Low self-confidence, commitment-phobia, starting over, and mistrust
- Attachment issues that lead to unhealthy and disastrous relationships
Recognizing and setting healthy boundaries for yourself - Finding authenticity with your sexuality and sexual needs
- Identifying and assertively embracing healthy dating dynamics
- Knowing when not to date and the upside of opting for periods of self-partnering
- Evaluating and responding to relationship red flags
- Addressing toxic dating dynamics including ghosting and sexual manipulation
- Setting realistic expectations and honest relationship goals
Download the Date Smart worksheet here to build your self-esteem.
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Joy from Fear
by Carla Marie Manly, PhD
If you find yourself running away from fear, you’re running in the wrong direction. Fear demands that we move toward it, face it, and hear its messages. When we fail to do this, the price is chronic anxiety, sleeplessness, damaged relationships, skyrocketing pharmaceutical use, and more. In her enlightening book Joy from Fear, clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Marie Manly explains that fear is not the enemy we thought it was; fear, when faced with awareness, is the powerful ally and best friend we all need.
Dr. Manly’s work is firmly based in science but goes far beyond presenting the dry facts. Joy from Fear offers page after page of real-life examples, insights, easy-to-use tools, and life-changing exercises. Coining the term “transformational fear,” Dr. Manly illuminates the importance of embracing fear’s messages for a transformed life filled with freedom and lasting happiness.
Download the Joy from Fear worksheet here to start embracing the power of your emotional world.
Joy from Fear is available anywhere books are sold, including:
Aging Joyfully
by Carla Marie Manly, PhD
How does a woman embrace her maturity with joy and strength when her body and life changes year to year? Clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Marie Manly provides an important and meaningful window into womanhood for those approaching fifty and beyond.
A must-read book for every woman who wants to embrace aging, Aging Joyfully touches the sensitive reality of the transition from a life filled with new beginnings to a graceful process filled with freedom, beauty, and joy. With a focus on making each day matter, Aging Joyfully guides the reader into creating a beautiful awareness and appreciation of the aging process. Aging Joyfully is a loving, supportive guide for a woman s individual aging journey, yet it also lends itself to communal discovery within women s workshops, book clubs, and support groups.
Aging Joyfully is available anywhere books are sold, including:
The Joy of Imperfect Love
by Carla Marie Manly, PhD
Discover genuine self-love as you find the keys to attracting and keeping the healthy love you deserve! The Joy of Imperfect Love guides you into creating securely attached relationships with mindful, attachment-based paradigm. Focusing on love as an intricate work in progress, Dr. Manly illuminates the power of combining acceptance and intentional transformation. Likening life’s journey to an ongoing polishing of the raw gemstone of oneself, concepts are offered through the lens of devoted self-work.
Dr. Manly introduces the five gifts of imperfect love—feelings, thoughts, mindsets, energy, and actions—to bring conscious attention to the reader’s power to manifest change. Building on these innate gifts, readers explore the six core principles of imperfect love—genuine friendship, relationship ethics, emotional intelligence, connective communication, healthy conflict, and relationship maintenance—as they embrace new patterns and skills to create deeply fulfilling relationships. The concepts work synergistically to bring greater balance, fulfillment, and authenticity into romantic partnerships, friendships, family relationships, and work settings. Your individual journey is supported with chapter-specific exercises that foster genuine, real-life change that you can feel and see. Transformation is both the process and the goal of The Joy of Imperfect Love.