Ships from: Richmond, TX
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
"Meaningful living is choosing your passions over your fears. It is accepting what you cannot control and focusing on what is in your power."Too often our meaningful lives and the things we are passionate about are buried under disappointments and lost dreams.Christopher F. Brown, LCSW, MBA, offers a powerful book combining psychological concepts with beautiful, provocative artwork done by John Palmer to help us move beyond the pain in our present lives to something more valuable and joyful. Divided into four stages, Brown has put together this thought-provoking guide to transform a life filled with dissatisfaction to a life filled with true meaning. Open to any page and begin your own journey toward a meaningful life.
This is a really interesting book. I'm at a point in my life where the everyday routine gets to me. Normally having a routine is very soothing but of late, my routine has been running me into the ground a bit. I think that is one of the reasons that I have been turning to non-fiction lately and when this book came along, once again it seemed like it was put into my hands for a reason.
The Art of Meaningful Living is an art book of sorts. Each section (Wisdom, Action, Resilience) contains artwork to emphasize its points. Each section contains topics such as:
Understand the Control Problem
Change is a Process, Not an Event
Spend Your Time on Your Passions
Make Effective Decisions
It's not just an art book though. Each section addresses things that we experience each day of our lives and with each section being only 1-2 pages long, I find them very readable and it doesn't matter which order you read them in. You can read the book from the beginning, or you can jump to a topic of particular interest. I jumped right to the section on Control because I have issues with control. Here is a quote from that section:
Focusing your energy on things you cannot control or influence leads to ineffectiveness, disappointment and frustration.
I think that it's important to mention here that I am not big on self-help books but to me, this one doesn't really fall into that category. It's beautifully done. The artwork is stunning and it doesn't feel like a self-help book. It's not preachy, just very inspirational.
If you'd like to read more about the book and Christopher F. Brown, click here to visit his website.
Source: Thanks to Phenix and Phenix Literary Publicists for sending me this review copy.
Are you living a meaningful life? How would you know if you were or weren't living passionately, fully engaged with people, places and events in your world? Are you just functioning? How have life's circumstances affected who you are? These are just a few of the questions that psychotherapist Christopher F. Brown asks people who want more from life but really don't have a clue about the next step or who don't know they could be living so much more dynamically than teh life they are presently
Within five sections, entitled Start, Wisdom, Action, Resilience and The Art of Meaningful Lives, Brown invites the reader to make choices, answer pivotal questions that are catalysts for exploration one's internal and external thoughts, feelings and experiences. Sub-themes like suffering, control, understanding rather than having to be right or wrong, embracing the decisions that enable one to live passionately, slowly but definitely facing one's own and others' resistance to the evolution one begins to experience during this process and so much more are presented intelligently, wisely and creatively, with significant questions meant to start and assist in each step of the process.
Each section is accompanied by numerous works of abstract art designed to facilitate and evoke thoughts and feelings that add to the inner journey that the words compel one to follow. These may foster thoughts but just gazing at these artistic "collage" pieces is therapeutic whether one loves abstract art or not.
The Art of Meaningful Living can be the beginning of a new life, a series of new experiences that call for a range of change, whether that be minimal or dramatic, which is a natural, healthy aspect of life that will happen without our awareness or perhaps with our casual or even intense engagement. For some this text is a gift that will be complete in itself; for others it may spur on some deeper investigation with other professional or non-professional support.
Brown's book looks like a beautiful coffee-table-style book; however, it definitely could, when picked up, opened and read from your coffee table, provoke so much more than surface conversation and would be a meaningful gift to those about whom we really care.
Very nicely done, Christopher F. Brown!
Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on September 28, 2009
Anonymous
Posted November 11, 2009
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
"Meaningful living is choosing your passions over your fears. It is accepting what you cannot control and focusing on what is in your power."Too often our meaningful lives and the things we are passionate about are buried under disappointments and lost dreams.Christopher F. Brown, LCSW, MBA, offers a powerful book combining psychological concepts with beautiful, provocative artwork done by John Palmer to help us move beyond the pain in our present lives to something more valuable and joyful. Divided into four ...