Dr. Eric Maisel is a long-time colleague and friend. He is the author of more than fifty books including Brave New Mind: The Art of Serene Readiness, which I found to be an extremely relevant and important resource for everyone living in today’s challenging world. I recently had the good fortune to interview Eric for my podcast series.

                In Brave New Mind, he captures what millions of men and women are experiencing today.

                “We’ve all been rushing about with no chance of catching up,” he says. “We desperately need a brave new mind that can take into account our brave new world at once strange and inhuman, awash with material goods and loneliness, orchestrated by feckless billionaires more powerful than governments.”

                I first became acquainted with Eric’s work in 2007 when I read his book, The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression. It spoke deeply to the challenges I had faced in my life dealing with my own depression as well as what my father experienced. I wrote about our own healing journey in my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound and developed an on-line course, “Healing the Family Father Wound” for everyone who has grown up with a father who was distant, absent, or dysfunctional.

                “Creative people will experience depression that’s a given,” he says in The Van Gogh Blues. “It’s a given because they are regularly confronted by doubts about the meaningfulness of their efforts. Theirs is a kind of depression that does not respond to pharmaceutical treatment. What’s required is healing in the realm of meaning.”

                As a psychotherapist who specializes in Gender-Specific Medicine and Men’s Mental, Emotional, and Relational Health, I share Dr. Maisel’s perspective on mental illness and mental health. I agree, too, that things have gotten significantly worse since 2007 when The Van Gogh Blues was first published. In reflecting on today’s world, Eric shares what he is seeing now.

                “Many minds will simply crash. Millions upon millions of minds will not be able to sustain coherence, motivation, hope, or anything. They will descend into pits with names like depression, anxiety, addiction, suicide. We see this happening everywhere and every day.”

Developing the Art of Serene Readiness

                We don’t have to accept the bleak future of mental exhaustion and breakdown. In Brave New Mind, Dr. Maisel offers real solutions including:

• A way to handle our increasingly stressful times in all areas of our lives.
• Joining the powers of serenity and alertness of oneself.
• Creating new ways of coping with depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental illnesses.
• Finding renewed strength and motivation that you may have lost.
• Making new meaning and finding your life purpose.
• Developing a brave new mind equal to this moment in time.

                In a recent article “The Pathway of Personal Code,” Dr. Maisel says,

                “To maintain a personal code is to orient one’s life around principles rather than impulses. It is to live deliberately in a world that often rewards expediency. The act of holding to a code, especially when it costs something, restores depth to one’s experience and coherence to one’s identity. It turns mere existence into moral authorship.”

                In our interview, he talked about the need to become “rebel warriors,” to stand up for what is right and challenge the forces that dehumanize people. In my book, The Warrior’s Journey Home, Healing Men, Healing the Planet, I quoted meditation master Chögyam Trungpa who described warriorship this way:

                “Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word ‘warrior’ is taken from the Tibetan pawo which literally means ‘one who is brave.’ Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness.” Trungpa concludes saying, “Warriorship is not being afraid of who you are.”

                One of the specific practices I found most helpful in Brave New Mind was the use of what Eric Maisel called “Prime Directives.” In addressing the challenges of life and maintaining serene readiness to act when we are called upon to act, Maisel says,

                “Imagine offering a simple instruction to your mind and inviting it to use that instruction all the time.”

                He calls these instructions prime directives. One that I particularly appreciate and use regularly is this: Do the next right thing.

                It reminds me to slow down and before I react emotionally and jump into an action, I ask myself, what is the next right thing to do? Eric says,

                “This suggestive, impressionistic phrase would stand for all of the following: that you want to be ethical, productive, proactive, and that what comes next is a choice that you get to make.”

                Particularly when I’m under stress and prone to react in ways that are not helpful, pausing a moment, taking a deep breath and repeating in my mind to do the next right thing helps me stay present, relaxed, and alert, and to engage actions that serve me, my values, and what is needed in the world.

                If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Eric Maisel and his work, you can visit him at Ericmaisel.com. 

                If you would like to watch my engaging interview with Eric, you may do so here.

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