As a therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel has worked with thousands of creative people. He knows firsthand the struggles that writers musicians artists dancers and actors face and has helped them find balance in their lives while pursuing their artistic endeavors. His new book presents a comprehensive approach to the much-misunderstood life of the artist. Creativity for Life offers practical ideas as well as exercises and inspiration to nurture growth as an artist and as a person exp...

In his decades as a psychotherapist and creativity coach, Eric Maisel has found a common thread behind what often gets labeled “writer’s block,” “procrastination,” or “stage fright.” It’s the particular anxiety that, paradoxically, keeps creators from doing, completing, or sharing the work they are driven toward. This “creative anxiety” can take the form of avoiding the work, declaring it not good enough, or failing to market it — and it can cripple creators for decades, even lifetimes. Bu...

A no-excuses, cut-to-the-chase program for defining, training for, and achieving your goalsAs life gets busier and more complicated we crave something larger and more meaningful than just ticking another item off our to-do list. In the past, we’ve looked to religion or outside guidance for that sense of purpose, but today fewer people are fulfilled by traditional approaches to meaning. Bestselling author, psychotherapist, and creativity coach Eric Maisel offers an ...

Eric Maisel’s prolific, multifaceted career is a testament to his profound understanding of what it takes to live out one’s creative ambitions. A therapist who is also a bestselling author, coach (and coach trainer), columnist for Professional Artist magazine, and featured blogger for Psychology Today and the Huffington Post, Maisel is an expert on all that blocks the creative. In Making Your Creative Mark, Maisel distills his decades of coaching, teaching, listening, and creating into nin...

In this provocative and pathbreaking distillation of a career spent working with individuals seeking help with mood and motivation, Eric Maisel reveals the implications of one of the most dramatic cultural shifts of our time. In recent decades, much of the unhappiness inherent in the human condition has been monetized and labeled as the disease of depression and related disorders. Maisel persuasively critiques this sickness model and prescribes a potent new therapy. The existential cogniti...

Have you ever wished you had a professional coach who could encourage your creative pursuits help structure your efforts and cheer you on? Coaching the Artist Within is the first book to explain the techniques that creativity coaches use to help their clients survive and thrive in the arts. Designed to help any person become more creative this book offers a complete program for developing the habits that make creating an everyday routine. The books twelve lessons and numerous exercises are...

"Applying the metaphor of a complete 'home rehab' to the mind, [ Redesign Your Mind] presents an engaging series of visualization techniques." — Publishers WeeklyYour mind is like a room that is yours to redesign—a space that you can declutter, air out, furnish, decorate, and turn into a truly congenial place. Today, cognitive-behavioral therapy and CBT techniques are the tools that help us do this. In this book, Dr. Eric Maisel, Ph.D. moves cognit...

Creative people will experience depression-that’s a given. It’s a given because they are regularly confronted by doubts about the meaningfulness of their efforts. Theirs is a kind of depression that does not respond to pharmaceutical treatment. What’s required is healing in the realm of meaning.In this groundbreaking book, Eric Maisel teaches creative people how to handle these recurrent crises of meaning and how to successfully manage the anxieties of the creative process. Using e...

In The Atheist’s Way, Eric Maisel teaches you how to make rich personal meaning despite the absence of beneficent gods and the indifference of the universe to human concerns. Exploding the myth that there is any meaning to find or to seek, Dr. Maisel explains why the paradigm shift from seeking meaning to making meaning is this century’s most pressing intellectual goal.

It’s true: a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Yet that’s what we do when we spend our weekend — and neurons — reliving a workplace squabble, spend a family visit chewing over childhood issues, or spend hours beating ourselves up when someone brings one of our own long-held (but never worked on) ideas to fruition. This kind of obsessing gets us, like a hamster on a wheel, nowhere. But as noted creativity expert Eric Maisel asserts, obsessing productively leads to fulfillment rather than f...

When you encounter difficult people in your daily life, the easiest solution is to cut and run. But when the difficult people in question are your parents, siblings, children, or all of the above, you can’t always end the relationships. What happens when you’re stuck with people who don’t respect boundaries or listen to reason? Author Eric Maisel, a licensed family therapist and life coach, tackles this awkward question in his new book Overcoming Your Difficult Family, providing a...

Make Your Gifted Life Meaningful"This book will make a smart person even smarter." ―Dr. Katharine Brooks, You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career#1 Bestseller in Counseling & Psychology, Attention-Deficit Disorder, and Mood DisordersOvercome your unique challenges. The challenges smart and creative people encounter―from scientific researchers and genius award winners t...