Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers: A Lighthearted Way to Stress Less and Savor More Each Day - Softcover

Gehart PhD California State University Northridge, Diane R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 153812906X ISBN 13: 9781538129067

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019

Synopsis

An accomplished and honored professor, psychotherapist, author, and chocolate connoisseur, Diane Gehart identifies surprisingly efficient and fun ways to increase your daily dose of joy. Drawing on positive psychology, Eastern wisdom, and three decades of psychotherapist know-how, she outlines a no-nonsense yet good-humored path to get you where you want to go. She will teach you step-by-step how to:

• Identify the essential elements necessary for life-long happiness and add them to your everyday habits.
• Develop an unshakable sense of inner joy that sustains you in good times and bad.
• Engage your most painful life circumstances to dramatically improve your life for the better.
• Navigate common pitfalls and challenges, including skillfully handling the most difficult personalities and relationships.
• Transform how you journey through life—making it a joy ride regardless of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

First, she debunks popular myths that have us looking for happiness in all the wrong places and then offers an accurate map for getting where we want to go. Next, readers will learn the hardest but ultimately most liberating lesson: making friends with life and all that is, including the good, the bad, and the ugly—which includes black widow spiders for some of us. From there, you will learn surprisingly playful and palatable options for maximizing your joy, including mindfulness, crazy wisdom, compassion, and ethical living. Finally, you will learn how to avoid—or at least survive—the common pitfalls and the dangerous snakes that line the path from where you are to where you want to go.

If you have avoided meditation and similar practices for most of your life because they are dull and boring, you may find something that suits your refined and zesty taste for living here. Along the way, you will have numerous opportunities to laugh, to cry, and to reconnect with the best within yourself. You will suddenly discover your most desperate challenges dissolving before you, revealing an easier path and renewing your delight in living and loving. Worst-case scenario: You will have educational excuses to savor some chocolate delights, enjoy a few good laughs, and gain a handful of new insights about your life.

Whether you are reeling from a devastating break-up; feeling adrift professionally; struggling with depression, anxiety, or more severe mental health issues; or simply wanting to feel happier given the numerous blessings in your life, this book will help you make changes that you could never accomplish before because you will now be motivated to do something different.

Ultimately, this book invites you to play. To laugh. To love. To heal old heartbreaks. To overcome what was once impossible. To open your heart to life and all it has to offer: white, milk, and dark. The stresses of modern life often create the illusion that life is hard, painful, and lonely. You are only a few bites away from an entirely different approach to living a sweeter life.

About this title

About the Author:

Diane R. Gehart, Ph.D., is an award-winning professor of Counseling and Family Therapy at California State University, Northridge, and author of numerous best-selling books for professionals, including Mindfulness and Acceptance in Couple and Family Therapy and Mastering Competencies in Family Therapy. She maintains an active psychotherapy practice in the Los Angeles area, working with adults, couples, and families to find effective and meaningful ways to address their greatest life challenges—while having some fun along the way. You can follow her on YouTube. Learn more: www.dianegehart.com and www.mindfulnessforchocolatelovers.com.

Review:

In this interactive study, the author walks readers through meditations, worksheets, and exercises that provide a road map (not a treasure map) to joy. . . . Chocolate is used as a lure and a reward for these activities, enabling readers to understand just what does and doesn’t result in happiness. It’s quickly apparent that happiness lies in the present moment, and Gehart uses a sense of play and years of experience as a counselor to encourage participants to shift their thinking from an outer to an inner focus and to enjoy the journey. Readers willing to put in the effort and dig deeply into their thoughts will be rewarded with both chocolate and inner peace. (Booklist)

Rarely has a work tackled life’s weightier themes with such relaxed confidence and freedom. Gehart faces down subjects fraught with meaning in every reader’s life with a smile rather than a wagging finger and it makes the experience of reading Diane R. Gehart’s Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers a rewarding ride from beginning to end. (Indie Source Magazine)

Freud famously said that the most we could expect from life is ordinary misery. Diane Gehart's Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers refutes this cynical idea. It combines disparate elements (one ancient–Buddhism and one modern–Positive Psychology) to provide a tested roadmap to extraordinary happiness. (Bill O'Hanlon, featured Oprah guest and author of "Do One Thing Different")

A refreshingly fun and sweet take on mindfulness and joyful living. Diane’s gift for translating ancient Eastern philosophies into everyday contexts shines in this approachable yet in-depth contemporary guide. (Bettina Bush, Editor-at-Large, Working Mother Magazine and Host of Working Mother Radio)

Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers is an intelligent and humorous guide for anyone who is seeking greater happiness and fulfillment. The wisdom, techniques, exercises and antidotes each give the reader an opportunity for both education and self discovery. This is a great read for those who are knowledgeable in this subject and those who are just beginning. (Stacy Kaiser, psychotherapist and author, "How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know")

Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers: A Lighthearted Way to Stress Less and Enjoy More Each Day provides scientifically-supported, yet simple, practical tools for helping us along the road to happiness. The concepts are clear and help break though the confusion and inaccuracies disseminated by different sources about what happiness is, how it can be achieved and maintained. I recommend the book as an accessible guide to empirically support principles. (Russell Crane, PhD, LMFT, Editor of Contemporary Family Therapy and Emeritus Professor, Marriage and Family Therapy, Brigham Young University)

An empowering and hopeful book that offers practical ways we can all slow down, exhale, and linger in joy, gratitude, and inner calm. (Stephen Mardell, MFT, Clinical Director, Child and Family Therapy Center)

"Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers" is a delicious and simple guide, to alleviate stress and anxiety. The exercises are fun, the content makes it possible for readers to learn how to be in the moment with ease and intention, as well as learning to be okay when uncomfortable. It's not just about smelling the roses, it's about eating the chocolate too! I will be recommending it to all my patients. (Laura Rhodes-Levin, LMFT, Founder of The Missing Peace-Center for Anxiety)

Readers will find "Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers" to be a therapeutic book that opens the heart, touches the spirit, and expands the mind. Gehart artfully and vulnerably offers her expertise and experience, weaving humor, research, and spiritual teachings to lead readers toward growth and groundedness. A must-read for anyone healing from pain or longing for more. (Jessica ChenFeng, PhD, LMFT, Associate Director of Physician Vitality, Loma Linda University Health)

Dr. Gehart deliciously unwraps the depths of life secrets in this profoundly accessible book that teaches us the golden rule of attaining true happiness. (Gerald Monk, Ph.D, author "Intercultural Counseling: Bridging the Us and Them")

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 153812906X
• ISBN 13: 9781538129067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200