Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life [Paperback]

Fred Mandell (Author), Kathleen Jordan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 3, 2010

The Artist's Way meets What Color is Your Parachute? in an innovative approach to reinventing yourself at any stage of life.

Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, Picasso, and Berthe Morisot are some of the most creative thinkers in history. What do these artists have in common with you? More than you think, if you're looking to tackle a major life transition. The skills these artists used to produce their masterpieces are the same abilities required to make successful shifts-whether it's finding a new career or a new purpose or calling in life.

In Becoming a Life Change Artist, Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan share the groundbreaking approach made popular in their workshops across the country. There are seven key strengths that the most creative minds of history shared, and that anyone rethinking their future can cultivate to change their life effectively:
* Preparing the brain to undertake creative work
* Seeing the world and one's life from new perspectives
* Using context to understand the facets of one's life
* Embracing uncertainty
* Taking risks
* Collaborating
* Applying discipline

* As Mandell and Jordan illuminate, at its heart, making a major life change is a fluid process. But, armed with these seven key skills, anyone can overcome the bumps and obstacles effectively. With targeted exercises throughout, this is a book for all ages and stages-from those looking to transition to a new career to people embarking on retirement. Becoming a Life Change Artist sparks the luminous creativity that lies within each of us.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beautifully and skillfully written, this book manages to warm your heart and inspire the creative genius in us all. Deciding to make changes in your life is never easy, but this book will give you the courage and the creative tools to do so."
-Eva Selhub, M.D., clinical instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of The Love Response: Your Prescription to Turn Off Fear, Anger, and Anxiety to Achieve Vibrant Health and Transform Your Life

"Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan do a masterful job painting a picture of midlife transitions, all too often do-it-yourself projects fraught with as many roadblocks as opportunities. This book helps ease the burden of going solo. It's your map to a successful encore."
-Marc Freedman, Founder and CEO, Civic Ventures

"Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan have created a book that manages to be exceedingly smart and enormously hopeful at the same time. With personal stories that will stir your heart and exercises that will strengthen your skills, Becoming a Life Change Artist can help anyone create a more meaningful future."
-Daniel Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

"This is a passionate and compassionate guide to what making art can teach us a about making change, and a navigational chart to what may be the ultimate art project: creating an inspired and purposeful life. This book itself is an inspiration."
-Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life

"Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan bring a fresh idea to the literature of reinvention -- using the skills of successful artists as a model for how to respond to the sparks that tell us it is time for some kind of life shift. ?Anyone with a creative urge will be grateful for this book. "Becoming a Life Change Artist" is a godsend not just for would- be artists, but also for anyone on the path to a more fully realized or authentic life."
-Marci Alboher, author One Person/Multiple Careers and former Shifting Careers columnist/blogger for the New York Times

"Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan's book is a message reminding us that creativity is ageless. An important contribution and an inspiration to us all."
Harry R. Moody, Director of Academic Affairs, AARP

About the Author

Fred Mandell, Ph.D., is an acclaimed personal transformation catalyst, inspiring speaker, and innovative consultant. He conducts Life Change Studio workshops throughout the country. He lives in Needham, Massachusetts.
Kathleen Jordan, Ph.D., is a psychologist who specializes in personal creativity and business innovation. She divides her time between Boston, Colorado Springs, and St. Augustine, Florida. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Avery Trade; 1 Original edition (August 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583334041
• ISBN-13: 978-1583334041
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #420,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Perspectives On Taking Responsibility for Your Life August 26, 2010

By Lisa Wilson

Format:Paperback

I got this book because of knowing one of the authors. I devoured it within 4 days - despite balancing commitments to my vocation and my children - because of the story itself.

I had no idea what to expect when starting this book other than a wide anticipation of some type of wisdom about creativity. The book goes far beyond that. It interlaces stories of "real people" who have struggled and found their own strength to create their lives with fascinating descriptions of well-known artists throughout history to demonstrate how designing one's own life is not limited to the realm of the "other people". Questions posed to the reader truly invite the reader to take the wisdom from being in the realm of "them" to "us" to "me". The authors underline the rewards yet also acknowledge the hardships of creatively designing and taking responsibility for one's own life.

I also will admit that I generally shy away from books offering specific steps - i.e. "10 steps to ...." or "The only 3 Tools You'll Need to....". Fortunately, while this book does indeed pose 7 specific creative skills, it presents them in a fascinating open way that allows the reader to follow the specific skills or simply take the stories offered and incorporate them into a language that speaks to the reader personally.

The book is wonderfully presented, delving first into the process of life change (i.e. what it means, how it applies to those who would call themselves "artists" but also and primarily towards those just feeling the pull of Change in their lives), then offering skills for living creatively (from ideas such as Embracing Uncertainty to Discipline). The final chapter provides an excellent wrap up and inspirational send-off.

While the authors did a fascinating amount of research, speaking to individuals and diving into art history, for me the strength of this book lies in its readability and practical applications. Many times I get too overwhelmed with a book and end up not finishing it. I read through this book, even stopping to take notes, and finished it - with a lingering desire to read through it again.

Summary:
*Applicable to a wide variety of lifestyles
*Very easy to read - practical and entertaining
*7 primary skills, mixed with several other techniques, offered to help readers be an active participant in their own life
*Mix of historical research (primarily of well-known artists) woven with present-day stories of "real people"
*Excellent approach towards encouraging everyone to take responsibility for our individual lives and practical approaches towards creatively forming your days - regardless of obstacles

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books about creativity I've found August 25, 2010

By sandmeistress

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Whether you're somebody who's stuck in a life that doesn't correspond to what you had dreamed for yourself--or are already ready to embark on a path of discovery and risk, this book offers plenty of real-life success stories, exercises to help you cement what it is you really want, and offers new ways of looking at those scary transitional times and coming through them. At a time when so many of us are making huge life transitions, brought about by changes in careers or marriages we thought might last a lifetime but didn't, this book comes as an inspirational look at all the different ways there are to discover how to create a life that YOU want. The authors offer concrete tips for moving forward and the exploration of seven key strengths that other creative minds have shared. Change in life is a constant, and this is a great book for helping us through.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars REGIFTING OLD CHEERLEADING SAWS October 11, 2011

By G. Charles Steiner

Format:Paperback

Have you ever been told by a commercial you are special? Have you been told on tv you can do it? Have you seen pictures in the media of famous actresses, football players, artists and right beside those pictures are ads for supplements telling you you can be like these famous celebrities too? Of course you have, and when you read this book, you will be again cheered on -- to keep a positive attitude, have goals like other successful people do, never give up, take risks and network. It's pure recycled good ol' American self-help hypnosis.

What's unique about the book is its approach to this self-help schlock through the analysis and examination of paintings and the painters who made them. Painters, for this pair of collaborative artists and authors, are the quintessential metaphor for dealing with life in all its changes. Never mind that the only job these painters ever had was painting. The book wants you to view the painters the authors have selected, in particular, as people who were creative. Thus, if you can tap into these so-called seven creative skills these painters demonstrated, you too can be creative and -- become a life change artist. On the way to making this point abundantly clear, the writing duo portray ordinary people like you and me and maybe not so ordinary people in certain crises so that you will see how very like the lives of the painters these ordinary people (and not so ordinary) were and are. In other words, what these pair of Ph.D.s do is make an extended metaphor between their own portraits of regular people and the lives and paintings of exceptional artists to amplify their message that YOU CAN BE ALL YOU CAN BE -- just like the famous artists.

The portraits of ordinary lives are dramatic and involving reading and the examinations and analysis of paintings and painters' lives are sensitively etched out and superbly detailed and insightful -- for what they are. If I wanted to read something about painters and paintings, I'd read this book. I'd even recommend it.

But as a book for getting a job, as a book for finding a new career -- skip it! It's "got nuthin'." "Nuthin'" except the cheerleading and brow-beating lecturing that comes with any generic book on how to hook up with a good job.

In the end, the book encourages you to find a "life change artist coach." It seems evident that these authors have been frozen in their academic ivory towers for quite some time. Professional Ph.D.s with lots of time to write a wispy, watery, Monet-like book that serves more as a decorative lily for your living room than as a guide for real life engagement with work.

Richard J. Leider has written the Foreword to this book. My experience with this author is enough that had I actually noticed his name on the cover at the outset, I would have known this book as some elitist tract of impractical nonsense and not suffered through it. The book is elitist -- but it contains very well-drawn portraits of people in crisis as well as portraits about painters struggling with their paintings. That part of this book was just lovely. I just wish the authors had been honest enough to admit their limitations. It's so relentlessly positive, smiley-faced, and cheerleading, it borders on abusive. As soon as suffering is even hinted at, the authors skip merrily in a more attractive direction. They are wholly reality-avoidant in this respect. They hide the ugly realities of the present job market and the despotic economic system we're tied to with gorgeous metaphors.