Leave Your Mind Behind: The Everyday Practice of Finding Stillness Amid Rushing Thoughts

by Matthew McKay and Catharine Sutker

Book Overview

We typically have little control over our thoughts, but we often invest them with a lot of authority--even when they contradict what our experiences tell us to be true. Take a moment right now and think There's a hungry grizzly bear sitting next to me. Chances are you didn't take that thought literally and run screaming from the room. But what if instead you had thought, I'll never get a better job, I'm boring, or No one loves me? Just like that...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572245344
• ISBN13: 9781572245341
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Glad I stumbled on this little book.

*If you are plagued by recurrent thoughts, or if you just feel that you think too much, then this book is for you. *It's based on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a new therapy that enjoys a relatively high success rate, even in very serious cases like post traumatic stress disorder or brain injury. *This book basically teaches you not to fight your thoughts, emotions and feelings (a fight you cannot win) and to let them come and go freely instead, while you get on with what really matters to you. *Very useful stuff: it will spare you a lot of unnecessary misery.

ACT for everyday

"Leave Your Mind Behind" is a great resource for anyone who needs encouragement and help with accepting life as it is and moving on to have a more peaceful thought process. The chapters are short and written like a daily devotional book. The images and concepts are clear and written in a lay person's language yet full of enough complexities that re-reading the chapters can give additional insights as one progresses though acceptance and focusing on thoughts that lead to a goal. Examples of ways to change one's thoughts about a situation to relieve personal suffering are given in different ways to appeal to different needs

Brilliant!!!

I have been reading Eckhart Tolle and recently become very aware that I am not my thoughts but that they are just like popups and are what the mind does. This book really brings clarity to the type of thoughts that one has and at the same time gives humorous and very profound ways to work with the thoughts that come up. I totally love this book!!!

Don't believe everything you think

Five Good Minutes: 100 Morning Practices To Help You Stay Calm & Focused All Day Long The fun (and humorous and playful and practical) exercises in this book make me think of the bumper sticker that reads, "Don't believe everything you think!" This book was especially helpful in reminding me that there's no need to get caught up in my thoughts or to think that they define who I am. "I'm fat, lazy and a bad friend," are just thoughts, not who I am. The authors offer great ways for facing these types of thoughts, such as singing the thought to the tune of "Happy birthday," or "Home on the Range" (Songs and Silly Voices). I liked how so many of the exercises helped me gain a little distance from certain thoughts by helping me recognize what types of thoughts they are (Bossy Thoughts, Pop Up Thoughts, Stale Bread, The Seducer). In a world where we take what we think so seriously, it's great to have this handy little book to help us laugh and even play with the thoughts that normally run us ragged. This is a book with a sense of humor and practical skills to help us accept and just watch thoughts without judging them or ourselves. Bravo!

A great book to free yourself from stress!

This is a fun, little book that will help you free yourself from critical thoughts and judgments. Of course, we can't stop our thoughts, no matter how hard we try, but we can learn to unhook from our thoughts, observe them, and then choose which ones we're going to follow -- if any! "Leave Your Mind Behind" offers fun, practical exercises with titles such as, "What world are your thoughts making?", "The chocolate thought", and "Rainy day acceptance". It was both entertaining and enlightening.