New book 'Aspire Higher' presents opportunities on how to help everyone around you amid these troubling times

HOUSTON - It's been a rough few years for a lot of people during the pandemic and many people are craving a peace-filled world. 

Ken Lindner is hoping to help us all learn how to "aspire higher" through his new book, which shares the same name. 

"These days we are subjected to so much negativity," states Linder. "When we hear stories about horrific shootings and global warming and COVID and racism and rancor and division and distrust and runaway inflation, it's no wonder that many of us are demoralized, we feel deflated." 

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"We feel psychologically stuck because we don't see a way up or a way out of these troubled times," he continued. "So I wrote Aspire Higher to give everyone the clear and actionable steps that they can take to make life choices that reflect their highest selves, their highest goals, and their highest values. When you make these empowering life choices, you instill positivity, love, peace, and strength, and the highest life purpose in your heart, and you're motivated to live your very best life."

We talked about how self-love can actually help everyone around you. 

"When you love yourself, when you feel great about yourself, you're far more likely to bestow love and kindness and civility and empathy on others, so the key is really to elevate yourself first, and then you can elevate other," Linder adds. 

He went on to say that he really has two goals with this book:

"The take-home message is that you can begin to jumpstart your life today with the life choices that you make," Linder said. "Your life, as it is today, is a reflection of the positive and poor choices that you made. So the key is to start making lots of positive ones and you'll put yourself on the very right track."

"My big mission is to get Aspire Higher read by as many people as I can," he adds. "In fact, I'm paying for all of the copies of the book to be printed and distributed. I'm also talking with organizations in hopes that they will pay for copies of Aspire Higher to be provided free to individuals who can't afford to purchase them, and schools that can't afford to purchase them, because the more people who are making positive life choices, the better the chance we have that we will have a more civil and love-filled and peaceful country."

It's for this reason, Linder says, he wanted this book to be released during the holidays. 

"It's important to feel love, positivity, and peace, and it's also important in the new year to have steps to jumpstart your life in the most positive ways," encourages Lindner. "The way you do that is by starting slowly with small positive life choices and bigger and bigger ones and putting yourself on the right track to elevate your life in the New Year." 

Lindner is the Founder of Positive Life Force Psychology. 

"I have been counseling thousands of individuals to make tens of thousands of positive life choices over the last thirty years," he said. "I truly believe that this is the path to not only elevate ourselves and make our lives great, but to make us feel so good about ourselves that we want to reach out to others. There is a concept in Aspire Higher, which I love." 

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"It's called being a solutionary and that means that you not only make constructive decisions when you're faced with challenges or obstacles, but you also make constructive decisions that benefit and uplift others," he said. "So when you make a great life choice and you feel confident that you are a great problem solver and you've done a great job, you can also feel great if the choice you make benefits others, so you get a double bonus of raising your self-esteem, doing great things for yourself and doing great things for others." 

"If we can all be solutionaries, we can have a far better and more peaceful and civil and respect-filled country and world," adds Lindner. 

He tells us how he's adored lifting up others and the passion stems all the way back to his childhood. 

"I was an overweight, clumsy, late-blooming youngster and that came from the fact that my mom was always home with me and my dad was always working, so I intuited that my mom loved me and my dad didn't," Linder explains. "I had many feelings of feeling unlovable, unloved by my dad." 

"I found out years later that the reason why my dad wasn't there is he wanted me to have the education he never had, so he had to work six days a week and many nights to give me the life he never was able to have himself as a youngster," he continued. "So I wound up loving my dad and feeling compassion for my dad because his dad died very, very young. I had a mom who believed in me and never compared me with other kids in more advanced stage of development. I also had a sociology teacher in high school and a tennis coach who believed in me and they were to quote Bette Midler, ‘the wind beneath my wings’, and I had three people who saw the best in me, and I eventually evolved and fulfilled many of my dreams." 

"Now my mission in life is to believe in others and give them the steps to help them make the life choices so they can live their dreams and attain their highest goals and be their very best selves," smiles Lindner. 

Aspire Higher is available at most book stores. For more information, click here.