Donald Altman - Clearing Emotional Clutter: Mindfulness Practices for Letting Go of Whats Blocking Your Fulfillment and Transformation

Praise for Clearing Emotional Clutter

You cannot optimize your performance unless you can focus clearly. If negative thoughts or lack of self-esteem is holding you back, Clearing Emotional Clutter can help you unlock the key to yourself. You will see yourself more clearly. Better yet, you will be able to focus your attention and your abilities on your work with newfound clarity. Donald Altman provides simple-to-follow but powerful-to-use techniques that will enable you to optimize your abilities and leave your emotional baggage behind.

John Baldoni, author of Moxie and Lead by Example

Clearing Emotional Clutter shows how to banish old hurts and family pain that can weigh you down and block you from reaching your personal and professional goals. Donald Altmans de-cluttering lifestyle tools have the potential to rewire your brain so you can gain new levels of mental clarity, overcome limiting fears, enhance your relationships, and even untie knots of new emotional clutter in the moment. Clearing Emotional Clutter shows how to break the chains of the past and live in this moment in a more creative, adaptive, and spacious way.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, author of You Are Not Your Brain

Praise for Donald Altmans One-Minute Mindfulness

One-Minute Mindfulness is loaded with wisdom and includes practical exercises for tapping into the power of the here and now. Mindfulness is much more than just a spiritual practice. It awakens us to the joy of life. In the present moment, the whole world sparkles with beauty.

Tobin Blake, author of The Power of Stillness

Too much of the time were running on automatic. In One-Minute Mindfulness, Donald Altman gently guides our focus of attention in directions that wake up the senses, nurture the soul, and uplift the spirit in just sixty seconds! This book helps us make each new minute a potential encounter with life itself; the world very much needs this pragmatic spiritual bookright now.

John Selby, author of Quiet Your Mind and Expand This Moment

Engage your heart. Engage your mind. Engage your spirit. You have heard all this before, but now Donald Altman can show you how in One-Minute Mindfulness. This book is chock-full of insightful nuggets that will stimulate your mind and stir your heart.

John Baldoni, author of Lead with Purpose

Praise for Donald Altmans The Mindfulness Code

The Mindfulness Code can greatly enhance the ability of anyone to live with a greater sense of direction and self-control.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, coauthor of The Mind & the Brain

An antidote to the stress and hurriedness of modern life. In an age where we are pushed to perform ever better, Donald Altman reminds us that kindness, acceptance, and listening just listening are as admirable and transformative as any work or monetary achievement.

Robert Biswas-Diener, coauthor of Happiness

This well-written book addresses the root problems in anybodys life, and Altmans suggestions will certainly prove beneficial to readers who follow them.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, author of Mindfulness in Plain English

The Mindfulness Code is a wonderful mix of warmth, humor, and gentle wisdom. Donald Altman weaves an engrossing blend of insights and personal stories from his many years as a skilled therapist along with illustrative research findings and many helpful mindfulness exercises. This book will hand you the keys for unlocking a life of greater ease and happiness.

Zen Roshi Jan Chozen Bays, MD, author of Mindful Eating and A Year of Mindful Living

ALSO BY DONALD ALTMAN

Art of the Inner Meal

Living Kindness

Meal by Meal

The Mindfulness Code

The Mindfulness Toolbox

One-Minute Mindfulness

Copyright 2016 by Donald Altman

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee as to the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken. The authors experiences used as examples throughout this book are true, although identifying details such as names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Altman, Don, date.

Title: Clearing emotional clutter : mindfulness practices for letting go of whats blocking your fulfillment and transformation / Donald Altman.

Description: Novato, CA : New World Library, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015049053 | ISBN 9781608683642 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Emotions. | Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. | Mind and body. | BISAC: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Meditation. | FAMILY & RE

LATIONSHIPS / Anger (see also SELF-HELP / Anger Management).

Classification: LCC BF511.A48 2016 | DDC 158.1dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049053

First printing, March 2016

ISBN 978-1-60868-364-2

EISBN 978-1-60868-365-9

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to all who courageously walk the compassionate, peaceful, and humble path of mindfulness.
May all beings awaken and heal together.

CONTENTS

that you will

be relieved to see your house catch fire.

Wendell Berry, Farming

I ts no surprise that emotional clutter from our past can stick to us like Super Glue to such an extent that we often consider it inseparable from our sense of self and personal identity. What may surprise you, though, is how easy-to-use daily practices can dissolve away all that toxic, sticky, clinging clutter whether it is old emotional wreckage from your childhood or new emotional clutter that you take on every day.

What is emotional clutter? Emotional clutter could be an old childhood experience of being rejected by others, which may convince us we arent really lovable. It could be an old family wound that still cuts deep. Or it could be an insensitive statement from a high school English teacher who once looked you straight in the eye and told you, You cant make an A student out of a B student. This last instance of unkind emotional clutter happened to me! Thankfully, I had other wonderfully supportive English teachers, and I didnt let this personal emotional clutter stick to me, though I was stunned and saddened by the comment at the time.