It is not hyperbole to say that Choose Your Life Purposes is a masterpiece. Certainly, it is Eric Maisels magnum opus. I wish this had been around when I was a teenager and a confused, depressed young adult. In his usual empathic, encouraging, insightful way, Maisel puts forth an existential plan for living in a turbulent world. Its amazing how he can approach such heavy subjects in such a readable way. Thank you, Eric!
Denise Beck-Clark, LCSW, MFA
In an uncertain and changing world, Choose Your Life Purposes stands out as a guiding light, illuminating the path towards authentic self-discovery and purposeful living. Through its insightful exploration of the human experience, Dr. Maisel navigates the complexities of existence with clarity and wisdom and celebrates the inherent beauty of the human experience. Whether you're embarking on your first choosing or navigating the complexities of changing circumstances, this book offers invaluable insights and guidance to help you surf the waves of life with grace and intentionality. Prepare to be inspired, challenged, and ultimately transformed by the profound wisdom contained here. This book is not just a read; it's a journeya journey towards a more purposeful, fulfilling, and authentic life.
Elodie Desrumaux, artistic development coach
Choose Your Life Purposes is a thought-provoking and empowering book. With wit and wisdom, Eric Maisel passionately challenges us to confront life's absurdity and embrace our autonomy and personal power in our role as steward of our own existence. He inspires us to live each day intentionally and to consciously choose our own purposes. Its a call to discover or reconnect with our inner existentialist and a reminder that we get to be the pilot of our own journey!
Jo Watson, psychotherapist and founder of www.adisorder4everyone.com
In a time in which people seem to have lost a sense of meaning and purpose, here is a book that is set to embolden and encourage the reader to take the reins back on life in practical, intuitive, and meaningful ways. In typical Maiselian fashion, there is no mucking aboutno sugarcoating the trials and tribulations of life. However, his realistic and pragmatic views are sure to resonate with you. Choose Your Life Purposes is sure to provide a much-needed existential jolt as you work to not only examine your life but also revise and (it is hoped) revamp your own life philosophy.
Arnoldo Cantu, editor of Practical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model
This book offers what it says on the tin with no holds barred. But Eric Maisel does it in the nicest way. There is no recourse to fancy theorizing, no display of erudition, just plain, unequivocal, common sense designed to move a person along in their life. Reading this book will stimulate the right kind of self-questioning. Reading it in a group with others who are in a similar stuck position will help to get the creative juices going. This is a great contribution to the self-help literature!
Richard Hallam, author of Abolishing the Concept of Mental Illness
Dont let Eric Maisels engaging and accessible writing style fool you into thinking this is merely an easy readthere is both deep wisdom and practical advice in these pages. This book challenges you to take ownership of your life in a fresh way. Get it and read it now!
Evan Mazunik, composer, pianist, and creativity coach
I believe that this book is a call to do what will save us emotionally, psychologically and spiritually amidst these overwhelmingly complex times we are living in. Maisel not only tells us why we should live our life purposes but also shows us how to do this. Read this book for inspiration and hopeit will make a difference in your life!
Lynda Monk, director of IAJW.org
Eric Maisel has written another phenomenal book! His compassionate words zapped straight into my complicated, angst-ridden soul and soothed it within the first few paragraphs. I dont know how anything new can come from one author with so many books behind him, but hes done it again! If you seek to understand deeper meaning, you NEED this new guide.
Brenda Schweder, found object artist
In his new book, Choose Your Life Purposes, Eric Maisel describes a multidimensional path towards developing and maintaining a meaningful life. Fortunately for the reader, Maisel continues to live his life purposes as a writer, a philosopher, and a humanist. I recommend this book for people of any agethe young and the young at heart alike.
Susan Raeburn, PhD, Creative Recovery
Maisel rejects the existence of a higher truth than our own, instead supporting individuality, creativity, and personal courage and challenging the reader to assert meaning and to choose to act as if we matter. Lucidly illustrating the many paradoxes inherent in living an examined life, Maisel exhorts his readers to identify and commit to living their life purposes, come what may. A heartfelt, provocative book!
Anne M. Carley, author, coach, and editor
Choose Your Life Purposes by Eric Maisel is a delight. It delineates concepts central to life design: from the forms of personality and our human propensity for entanglement, to the value of excellence, deliberate ways of being, and experimentation. Readers can use Choose Your Life Purposes to become more self-aware, more deliberate, and more alive. Maisels latest book manages to be both profound and practical. Maisel effortlessly explains how an existentialist life philosophy works with contemporary psychology to help people engage with their freedom in order to change. When folks ask me what existentialism is, or better yet, what its for, Ill hand them this book. Reading Eric Maisel is enriching, illuminating and joyous.
Kate Hammer, existential therapist and coaching psychologist
Eric Maisels books have been instrumental in deepening my coaching skills over the years as an executive coach and creativity strategist. His new book Choose Your Life Purposes is one of the most useful books Ive ever encountered on the subject of purpose. Maisel covers not only practical methods and approaches to the topic, but, more importantly, he lays down the foundations of a cognitive and affective framework that can serve as a strategic (and tactical) field manual to find/choose ones path in life. And he does this all in clear prose that is absent of jargon and platitudes that characterize most books in the self-help and self-development genre today. Erics experience, knowledge, and wisdom of the human condition shine through. It's a book worth repeated reads.
Lon Fuentes, executive coach and strategy consultant
Choose Your Life Purposes is a life-changer. Better than that, it offers a new way of living, a new way of approaching life that is both sensible and exciting. Maisel provides a straightforward, accessible, and enlightening look at personality that provides us with a fresh approach to understanding human existence and what it means to be human. I think this cleverly written and understated exploration of meaning and purpose is in fact a movement that sheds light on a great new path forward, away from the darkness of chaos and crisis and into the light of active and meaningful living.
Sarah Clayton, creativity coach, author The Write Wild Method
Eric Maisel has developed an insightful and accessible guide for personal inspection and transformation. Maisel uses real-world examples to bring transformative change into the realm of the possible (and the practical, too). Unlike many seemingly similar books, Choose Your Life Purposes is easily adapted to the readers current state and is rich with effective and engaging practices. The learning curve has been replaced with a reusable learning experience. I highly recommend you use Maisels work to plan, execute, and assess personal transformative change.
Greg Tutunjian, agile performance coach
As a creative, I have struggled most of my life with everything from what landscape to paint, what novel to read, and what music to listen to, to what to have for dinner and everything in between. When choosing my lifes purpose, wellthat was an endeavor too enormous to think about. Or so I thought!
Eric Maisels Choose Your Life Purposes doesn't just provide steps; it offers clear, concrete, and, most importantly, practical steps that affirm I don't have to choose just ONE purpose but can, and maybe should, entertain the multiple purposes I long to pursue. Maisels very accessible writing style and numerous examples and scenarios make Choose Your Life Purposes a useful guidebook for anyone hesitating to take their next step or reaffirming those paths and journeys in their wake.
Positive, powerful, and, yes, purposeful, Maisels newest book fills a gap in the self-help and creativity literature.
B. Morey StockwellM, PhD, author of Do Your ART! 10 Simple Steps to Enhance Your Creativity and Elevate Your Mood
Eric Maisel's latest in a long series of helpful books offers practical and illuminating guidance for all of us who wonder how to discern the purpose and meaning of our lives. Combining a step-by-step process with deep discussions of lifes persistent questions, Maisels wisdom and occasional humor speak to us authentically. You need to read this book, preferably more than once, if you ever ask the question, What was I made for?
Lucy Freedman, author of Smart Work: The Syntax Guide to Influence and developer of the course, Showing Up to Be Who You Choose to Be
How do you intend to live? Isnt that a big, hairy question? And that is the question that Eric Maisel invites and guides you to answer in his book Choose Your Life Purposes. With this inspirational philosophy, Maisel introduces values-driven strategies so that you can craft the project of your life by shifting from the idea that life has a purpose, to the idea that you choose your life purposes. As a career and creativity coach, I have met a diverse range of clients who tell me they are seeking something more meaningful and purposefulbut they dont know what that something is or how to find it. I am recommending this book to all of my clients, especially those who want to intentionally live every day as the authors of their own success.
Sharon Stratford, career and creativity coach
