Dr. Eric Maisel (author of Redesign Your Mind) helps readers- looking to push through mental roadblocks- improve their emotional well-being.
Eric Maisel. Conari, $18.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-64250-511-5
Applying the metaphor of a complete “home rehab” to the mind, Maisel (The Power of Daily Practice), a psychotherapist and Psychology Today blogger, presents an engaging series of visualization techniques for overcoming emotional roadblocks. Maisel focuses primarily on the struggles creative types have with negativity, boredom, existential sadness, and self-sabotaging behaviors and emotions. Readers are asked to picture their “mindroom”—where they’ve resided with the same thoughts for too long—then to visualize adding windows, opening those windows, letting sad thoughts out, and welcoming in positive thoughts. Continuing in this vein, Maisel also recommends picturing colorful wallpaper to help make one’s interior life beautiful, an easy chair to replace one’s “bed of nails,” and a well-stocked hat drawer to allow one to play many roles. Maisel also includes vague sketches of those his methods have helped, such as a Manhattan waitress and struggling artist who used visualization to take her art ambitions more seriously. While the advice can be repetitive and the personal stories of those aided by visualization are included haphazardly, Maisel’s buoyant tone and thorough explanation of his technique will help readers looking to push through mental roadblocks and improve emotional well-being. Those eager to jump-start their creative spark should take a look. (Sept.)
Redesign Your Mind
The Breakthrough Program for Real Cognitive Change
Your mind is yours to redesign, redecorate and create! The idea that you are what you think has concerned philosophers from Marcus Aurelius to the Buddha. Today, this age-old message is delivered via cognitive-behavioral therapy and CBT techniques. Dr. Maisel moves cognitive change a giant step forward by describing the room that is your mind and how human consciousness is experienced there. Packed with visualization exercises, this accessible guide makes redesigning your mind and changing what you think easy and simple, an upgrade to the CBT method.
Visualization exercises for easy assembly. That room that is your mind is a space that you can decorate, air out, furnish, and turn into a truly congenial place. By practicing these easy-to-understand visualization exercises, you can redesign your mind and change not only what you think but how you think. Each of these techniques address major challenges like depression, anxiety, addiction, procrastination, and loneliness and promote cognitive growth, trauma healing, and fundamental change.