Good Living in Hard Times explains how you can get the best from the life you have now and find a peacefulness that no bank or politician or credit card company can take away from you. The goal is for you to live a contented life no matter your present situation.


From the Middle East Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movements, people are demanding changes to economic, social and political systems that have failed them. To succeed, their demands of Dignity! and People before Profits! will mean a change in their society’s moral and ethical values. While vigorously supporting collective efforts, the author believes that the way to sustain such change when it comes is by the way we live our own life.

Good Living in Hard Times discusses those values which have stood the test of time and need once again to be our benchmarks for living. Self-reliance, personal dignity, and economic reality are the major themes. Fresh air, sound sleep, eating real food, sexuality, laughter, hospitality and other values are discussed which make for a stable contentment that raises you above your present circumstances. The author does not offer quick fix solutions or self-development practices which soon fall out of use because they have no attachment to real life.

With practicality, Good Living in Hard Times explains things that make you poor, healthy and rich. With such understanding, Stafford Whiteaker believes we become self-reliant and discover a lasting union with ourselves, our neighbors and our planet. He claims that when we live this way we not only find deep contentment but we contribute to the common good of our society.

The benefits of paying attention to our spiritual life are legendary and bring emotional, psychic, and physical healing which connects us to values that neither money nor power can buy. Stafford Whiteaker, internationally recognized for his writing on spirituality, discusses the part it plays in giving us a vision beyond just the tiny bit of the world we see and touch. He reminds us that “our bodies and minds may be limited by time, but our spirit is an eternal force as strong as the stars and as tender as a mother’s touch.”

Stafford Whiteaker, a former monk, is the author of the world’s bestselling book on spiritual retreats, The Good Retreat Guide and regularly writes and broadcasts on this subject. He has had considerable media coverage from Time magazine to BBC World Television and appeared in the acclaimed Italian-Swiss production The Invisible City, one of the earliest mass media documentaries on ecology and the future of the planet. Among his other critically acclaimed books are Living the Sacred and The Little Book of Inner Space. His essays on religious life and the philosophy of spirituality have appeared in numerous journals. You may contact him at www.thegoodretreatguide.com or on Facebook.