Why Smart People Hurt: A Guide for the Bright, the Sensitive, and the Creative
Eric Maisel
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1573246263
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The challenges smart and creative people encounter--from scientific researchers, genius award winners, to bestselling novelists, Broadway actors, high-powered attorneys, and academics--often include anxiety, over-thinking, mania, sadness, and despair.
Specifically, the challenges that smart people face, including:
- "racing brain syndrome"
- living in an anti-intellectual culture
- finding ideas worth loving
- dealing with boredom and hypersensitivity
- finding meaning in their lives and their work
- struggling to achieve success
In Why Smart People Hurt, psychologist 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.
His thoughtful strategies include using logic and creativity to cope with the problems of having a brain that goes into overdrive at the drop of a hat. With a series of questions at the end of each chapter, he guides the reader to create his or her own roadmap to a calm and meaningful life.
Why Smart People Hurt is a must-read for parents of gifted children as well as the millions of smart and creative people that are searching for a more meaningful life.
For more information please visit: www.whysmartpeoplehurt.com
The primary challenge that smart people must deal with is making sense of meaning. Natural psychology suggests that the best answer to this problem is donning the mantle of meaning-maker and engaging in value-based meaning-making. Your answer may be different, but you must still face this challenge. No smart person is immune to this problem. In fact, it is the most significant emotional issue for our smartest 15 percent. Do you understand what meaning is, what it isn't, and how to create it? Do
talk to your boss about whether something of value can be added to the doodad, and so on. On any given day, you have three choices with respect to your doodad job: you can be easy with it; you can name the concrete steps you intend to take to shore up meaning or make new meaning; or you can feel uncertain about it and start the day gloomy, unmotivated, and a little existentially nauseous. The last of these three is obviously the worst choice. It is much better to opt to reinvest in your current
antidepressants, that we fantasize about taking our revenge—but rather than drawing any logical conclusions from our behaviors, we continue going through the motions. A great many people, and especially our smartest, have come to negative conclusions and evaluations about life but, supposing that it can do them no good to notice or because they are too embarrassed to notice, deny that they have given life a thumbs-down. An adherent of natural psychology believes that it does a person good to
do not come with an on/off switch that allows you to quiet your mind at will. (You will have to deal with that.) You do not come with an immunity to mania, insomnia, or other racing brain ailments. (You will have to deal with that.) You do not come with a foolproof way of dealing with both the unreasonable and the reasonable thoughts that pester you. (You will have to deal with that.) You are not impervious to harsh treatment, cruel messages, ego bruises, false steps, disappointments, and the
dropped out of the theater program and took my seat in law school. I made it through and got my law degree but was then convinced by my older brothers to take the next step, namely take the bar exams. “Once you're a lawyer, they can never take that away from you,” they said. My father impressed upon me that at least I would have something to fall back on. When I completed my training, passed the bar exams, and became a lawyer, I still felt that I was meant to take a different path. I was all set