Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide - Hardcover

Butler, Gillian; Hope, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195103793 ISBN 13: 9780195103793

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Self-help and personal development books take one of two approaches: they focus either on private life (how to improve relationships, how to overcome depression) or on work and professional skills (how to manage time effectively, how to cope with the boss). Now two leading clinicians, Gillian Butler and Tony Hope, argue that for real psychological well being, you must combine these approaches--integrating techniques of management with those of psychology, mixing feeling with action and work with play. In Managing Your Mind, they show you how, in a ground-breaking, step-by-step guide to the skills and attitudes that will help you become more effective in your work while you enjoy a more fulfilling personal life.
Just as simple measures--regular exercise, a sensible diet--can make you feel better physically, the simple strategies described in Managing Your Mind will stretch, strengthen, and tune your mind. The authors contend that without the right training, your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can sabotage important goals and cause depression and anxiety. But with the powerful, tested techniques described here, you can cope with the rigors and stresses of everyday life, keep mentally fit, and enjoy your life to the fullest. Butler and Hope show you how to
* Build self-confidence and self-esteem
* Overcome anxiety and depression
* Take positive control of your present and future
* Establish and maintain fulfilling relationships with family,
friends, and colleagues
* Free yourself from persistent fears and worries
* Break bad habits
* Manage your time
* Relieve stress
* Study effectively
* And develop your full potential
In addition, Managing Your Mind includes specific, up-to-date information on how to strengthen your memory, quit smoking, sleep better, recover from alcohol abuse, and more.
Tackling emotional problems piecemeal no more leads to lasting psychological well being than crash dieting leads to a permanent solution to a weight problem. You need techniques that you can practice for the rest of your life. Managing Your Mind gives you these techniques. It will help you develop the positive attitudes and skills that allow you to overcome problems as they arise and to lead a happier, more productive life.

About this title

About the Author:

About the Authors:
Gillian Butler, Ph.D., is Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Warneford Hospital, Headington, Oxford, and is a researcher in the University of Oxford Department of Psychology. She is married with two grown-up children.
Tony Hope, M.D., a clinical psychiatrist, is leader of the Oxford Practice Skills Project at the University of Oxford and co-author, with J.M. Longmore, of The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. He is married to a physician and they have two young children.

From Booklist:

Self-help and personal betterment tomes are often so earnest and so zealous to help everybody have a perfect life that they are off-putting to readers who merely want some advice. Butler and Hope's low-key compendium of mental self-help is refreshingly free of such obsessiveness. Bright, readable, and insightful, it offers modest goals that are bracingly achievable by means of "skills, understanding, and strategies to suit your circumstances and inclinations." This may sound foggy or indefinite, but it is positively precise and reasonable for works in this genre. Butler and Hope present problems in broad contexts, indicated by such chapter titles as "Treating Yourself Right," "Good Eating Habits," and "Making Decisions." Then, drawing on their clinical experience, they dissect and illuminate specific complaints and offer simple advice. Consider the resulting wide-ranging adviser a fitness book for the mind, rather like a Kathy Smith workout video for the sexiest, rather than the bounciest, part of your body. Mike Tribby

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0195103793
• ISBN 13: 9780195103793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 438