Why Smart People Hurt: A Guide for the Bright, the Sensitive, and the Creative (Creative Thinking & Positive Thinking Book, Mastering Creative Anxiety)

by Eric Maisel PhD

Overview

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 Disorders

Overcome your unique challenges. The challenges smart and creative people encounter―from scientific researchers and genius award winners to bestselling novelists, Broadway actors, high-powered attorneys, and academics―often include anxiety, overthinking, mania, sadness, and despair. In Why Smart People Hurt, psychology specialist and creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel draws on his many years of work with the best and the brightest to pinpoint these often devastating challenges and offer solutions based on the groundbreaking principles and practices of natural psychology.

Find meaningful success. Do you understand what meaning is, what it isn’t, and how to create it? Do you know how to organize your day around meaning investments and meaning opportunities? Are you still searching for meaning after all these years? Many smart people struggle with reaching for or maintaining success because, after all of the work they put into attaining it, it still seems meaningless. In Why Smart people Hurt, Dr. Maisel teaches you how to stop searching for meaning and create it for yourself.

In Why Smart People Hurt, you will find:

• You are not alone in your struggles with living in a world that wasn't built for you or your intelligence
• Logic- and creativity-based strategies to cope with having a brain that goes into overdrive at the drop of a hat
• Questions that help you create your own personal roadmap to a calm and meaningful life

Readers of true, natural self-help books for gifted people struggling with life, anxiety, and depression, like Living With Intensity, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, or Your Rainforest Mind, will learn how to create meaning in their lives with Why Smart People Hurt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781573246262
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	09/01/2013
Pages:	230
Sales rank:	262,946
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is the author of more than 50 books in the areas of creativity, psychology, coaching, mental health, and cultural trends. He is a psychotherapist and the founder of the creativity coach profession, regularly working with lawyers, doctors, scientists, writers, painters, businesspeople, and folks from every walk of life. They include folks settled in a profession as well as folks struggling to find an outlet for their intelligence and looking for work that will allow them to be as smart as they are. They include individuals who are successful in their careers and those who, because of the realities of the marketplace, struggle to achieve success. And through his books, they could include you.

Sought after as an expert in his field, Dr. Maisel regularly contributes to Mad in America, writes a monthly print column for Professional Artist Magazine, and writes the "Rethinking Mental Health" blog for Psychology Today. He has been the keynote speaker at a many conferences and leads Deep Writing workshops worldwide.

Dr. Maisel currently resides in Walnut Creek, California. Visit him at www.ericmaisel.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Challenges of Smart xiii

Chapter 1 Smartness Disparaged 1

Chapter 2 Smart Work as Oxymoron 13

Chapter 3 Original, Formed, and Available Personalities 25

Chapter 4 Our Experimental Model 37

Chapter 5 The Logic of Mania 47

Chapter 6 Features of a Racing Brain 59

Chapter 7 The Smart Gap 71

Chapter 8 Thinking Anxiety 83

Chapter 9 The Lure of Language and Logic 95

Chapter 10 The Lure of Mysticism 107

Chapter 11 A Firm but Not Proud Conviction 119

Chapter 12 Unreasonable Self-Pestering 131

Chapter 13 The Pain of Appraising 143

Chapter 14 The God-Bug Syndrome 155

Chapter 15 Coming to Grips with Meaning 169

Chapter 16 Making Daily Meaning 181

Chapter 17 Embracing Shifting Meanings 195

Chapter 18 Exercising Your Brain 207

Chapter 19 A Blueprint for Smart 219

Editorial Reviews

In his newest book on creativity, Maisel (Making Your Creative Mark), a psychotherapist, expounds on the idea of natural psychology, which holds that the key to a satisfying existence lies in making meaning, a self-defined, self-manifested psychological experience. Accordingly, he views problems such as mania, depression, insomnia, and the behavior of Kafka’s “hunger artist” not as psychiatric maladies but as natural consequences of the limited human mind interacting with a complex environment. And smart people, Maisel argues, are especially prone to these kinds of issues—their brains are wont to race without an off switch, grind away at difficult problems, create rigorous mental systems to maintain self-control, and become intensely occupied with finding meaning. In other words, smart people are very good at stressing themselves out. To combat the negative effects of these mental exertions, Maisel recommends practicing “brain awareness” (an understanding of the limitations of the mind) and gathering the courage to “stand up,” make decisions about what is meaningful for you, and focus your thinking only on what serves that decision-making process. Of course, the intended audience for this book—smart people—will immediately grasp how reductively simplistic and vague this advice is. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A mustread for parents of gifted children and the 1.5 billion people who find themselves in the top 20% of the world's population, Why Smart People Hurt powerfully explains the struggles of our best and our brightest and provides answers with the potential to change the lives of millions of readers." ―Gail McMeekin author of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

"In this insightful examination of the challenges bright individuals face, Eric Maisel explores how to reclaim your passion and to live a richer and more productive life. It's a smart move to read this wise book." ―John Moir, Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction

"If you're so smart, why are you in so much pain? Dr. Maisel gets to the root of the special mental challenges of bright people, provides a new system for deriving meaning and joy from life, and helps you conquer the special challenges of being smart with compassionate and invaluable advice! This book will make a smart person even smarter." ―Dr. Katharine Brooks, You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career

"Eric Maisel's Why Smart People Hurt is original, provocative and also reassuring. His conceptualization of mania as a thinking disorder and his treatment for this are original ideas that to my knowledge have never before been expressed. I have taken several courses from Eric and I know personally how powerful his methods are. His principles of natural psychology are, as he describes, simple and yet immensely practical and effective." ―Dr. Laurie Jo Moore, MD, ABPN, FRANZCP

From the Publisher

"A mustread for parents of gifted children and the 1.5 billion people who find themselves in the top 20% of the world's population, Why Smart People Suffer powerfully explains the struggles of our best and our brightest and provides answers with the potential to change the lives of millions of readers." -Gail McMeekin author of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

Reviews