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 enlarge | Author: Steven C. Hayes
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $10.85
You Save: $9.10 (46%)
New (41) Used (18) from $9.84
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 2286
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 206
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 1572244259
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.89142
EAN: 9781572244252
ASIN: 1572244259
Publication Date: October 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Not worn, not marked. Plenty in stock for immediate shipment.
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| Customer Reviews:
 You have to be a philosopher to read this February 24, 2006
8 out of 76 found this review helpful
When I got this book I started to turn the pages. One exercise seems kind of strange. It's called 'Attend your own funeral'. Are you ready for this? I am not. You have to be a philosopher to do this, I belive.
 Fresh, Novel, Interesting, Controversial and Potentially Life Changing February 19, 2006
103 out of 107 found this review helpful
Psychological treatments, like most forms of therapy, have been developing and adapting for centuries. In recent years the best treatment for depression, as well as a host of other psychiatric disorders, has being centered on a combination of medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The behavior therapies largely replaced psychoanalytic theory. The transition from psychoanalysis was not smooth, and as an attempt to ridicule psychoanalytic ideas, some notorious behavior therapists used to train people with mental illness to perform simple actions and then they would watch with amusement as psychoanalytically trained colleagues concocted creative but often bizarre symbolic interpretations of behaviors that had just been created.
We may now be on the cusp another revolution in therapy that could ultimately relegate CBT to the history books, rather in the way that CBT did to psychoanalysis. This new approach has sprung directly from the Buddhist traditions, and revolves around "mindfulness and acceptance". In the Buddhist worldview, each moment is complete by itself, and the world is perfect as it is; That being so, the focus is on acceptance, validation and tolerance, instead of change, and experience rather than experiment as the way to understand the world.
For many patients it feels profoundly liberating to be able to see that thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not "you" or "reality." This realization can free an individual from the distorted reality that they often create and allow for more clarity and a greater sense of control in life.
This idea that the solution to suffering is to increase acceptance of the here and now, and to decrease the craving and attachment that inevitably keep one clinging to a past that has already changed, is quite different from behavior therapy's emphasis on developing skills for attaining one's goals.
But the notion that suffering results from things not being the way one strongly wants them to be, or insists they should be, is very compatible with cognitive-behavioral therapies. The work of Albert Ellis, who is still active in his nineties, is arguably the clearest and most consistent presentation of this point of view.
The ideas in this book are fresh, novel, interesting and controversial. Some of the suggestion will be of great help to some people. Yet two problems remain for most people, and these are motivation to change and resistance to change. Without attention to those twin demons, progress can be very difficult.
For anyone interested in personal growth and development and an easy introduction to a whole new approach to therapy, this book is highly recommended.
 HELLOOOOO...this is already a +2500 year old tradition for Chrissakes February 12, 2006
85 out of 139 found this review helpful
...called BUDDHISM!!!
Sigh. The practice of not straining to repress or suppress negative thoughts/emotions/impulses/states but rather simply ALLOWING them to come and go ("like leaves floating by in a stream, or clouds passing across the sky") is *ABSOLUTELY BASIC* Buddhist meditation technique.
Ditto with the simple technique/acquired-habit of mindfulness and conscious breathing is one of the core practices of a wide range of Eastern meditative/spiritual traditions.
Leave it to some enterprising Westerner to repackage, oversimplify, oversweeten and dumb it all down into some slick New-Agey, "Scientific" Psychobabble and Self-Help package and rake in all the cash!
If you want to get a little closer to the real stuff, I would recommend Charlotte Joko Beck's excellent book, "Everyday Zen: Love and Work," and Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart."
Oh well I'll still give it 4 stars because at least it will expose more people to at least a FEW bits and pieces of the true dharma... much more so than most best-selling self-help dreck in any case. Deduction of 1 star for total lack of originality, LOL.
Not just your regular feel good book February 11, 2006
34 out of 37 found this review helpful
I was confused for years by positive thinking books that promote the suppression and judgment of all negative thoughts. I also didn't do well with the fake it until you make it model. After years of searching, I found relief and success when I read Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self because I learned to use the simple optimal roadmaps, especially - Accept, Understand, then Optimize - for negative thoughts and feelings.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life is a fine book that does not cater to the erroneous belief that positive thinking will always save you and negative thinking will always destroy you. The author asks some excellent questions such as "Am I this negative thought or is this just a thought?" etc. These questions provide personal understanding. The concept in this book is not new for me, although I did come across some excellent questions I have not pondered previously.
I certainly recommend this book in conjunction with Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self. I also recommend Learned Optimism, to understand pessimism and optimism. Read all three.
An end to suffering February 2, 2006
42 out of 44 found this review helpful
I'm a layperson, can't afford therapy, so I do it self-help. I've bought many self-help books, and while they have been interesting and true, they've never had any lasting worthwhile effect, except for me to look at myself and say, "Oh, I'm doing that wrong also, again!" This book is really what the other reviewers say it is. It was a total paradigm shift, which is what people need and why the myriad of other self-help books haven't helped your self! It is not an overnight fix, it is a bit heady, but take it step-by-step, do all the exercises, and it will be very worthwhile. I'm still trying to put it into practice into my everyday life, but little by little I'm seeing change, and at least now there's hope where there was hopelessness. Thanks so much to the authors for writing a book for the masses. There are many of us out there who don't have money to spend on therapy sessions that we would like to do.
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