Customer Reviews

Your Mind and Body are a Corporation and You are the CEO

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This book presents some ideas that seem radical when they are first presented but come to seem entirely logical and practical when you consider them for a while. The proof of the pudding is when you do the drills in the book. I felt a little foolish in the beginning, communicating with my "corporation", but then as it "answered", I began to realize how much it had been trying to tell me over the years. It was like floodgates opened. I've learned more about my "self" in the week since I bought the book than I had in many, many years. How amazing. The answers were all inside the mind of my corporation and I just wasn't listening. This book has changed how I run my life as well as how I run my business. Life is never gonna look the same!!!

My attitude toward my mind, my body, and every single cell that resides in them has changed so tremendously, I feel like a whole new person (or maybe I should say corporation). I didn't just learn to treat myself better here: I'm a better manager, employer, friend, lover, and person. I really wasn't taking much responsibility for my corporations before (physical and business) and it hurt me and everyone connected to me. I'm having so much more fun now.

You're probably well aware that plants and single cell organisms have thoughts and feelings from having read or heard about books like "The Secret Life of Plants" -- yet do you know that you have a virtual planet full of individuals hanging on your every emotion and mental direction? The average adult is made up of 100 trillion cells, and each and every one of the cells in your body is alive and actively involved in the process of evaluating how to perceive what's happening to you right now and act appropriately.

Janet Buell's excellent book, YOUR MIND & BODY ARE A CORPORATION -- AND YOU ARE THE CEO is based on the metaphor of a company with various departments and a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) -- you! I guarantee that after you've done the exercises in Buell's book, your corporal self will be feeling much healthier, prosperous, and harmonious.

YOUR MIND AND BODY ARE A CORPORATION is packed with fascinating concepts such as the notion that, "... your body has its own sense of closeness to the bodies of your sexual partner, children or parents. The cells recognize and have great affinity for each other. Even a divorce that you welcome may be a loss to the cells of your body who had established an intimate relationship with the body of your soon-to-be ex." Buell then provides exercises for recovering from such losses that have occurred in the past, looking to your body for help.

I was a bit surprised at first to find this book consists of so many blank worksheet pages, but was delighted to discover it is designed to be a workbook you can use as you become a more competent manager in charge of all those trillions of cells. The process of developing your managerial skills involves a great deal of two-way communication between you (the CEO) and all your cells, and Buell provides an excellent starting point. Numerous messages are provided for you to say aloud to your cells, so they will understand your new dedication and commitment to their well-being. You may be surprised at how exciting it feels to begin such a discussion! If you're like me, once you get started with this two-way dialogue, you won't want to quit.

I highly recommend Buell's book as the perfect way to pull yourself together. It's worth doing, if only for the fact that your cells (all 100 trillion of them) will thank you for it!

I checked this book only because I'd read an earlier one by this author (on Burnout) and I was curious whether this one was any good. Boy, was it! It changed the way I view my entire life. Best of all, it made me think. I didn't necessarily agree with everything in there but I started thinking about things in a whole new way and have noticed that the process goes on and on. This book was entertaining, informative, and life changing. Best of all, it had an impact. I read it months ago and I'm still thinking about it. If you like things that go way beyond light weight, this is the book.

A friend recommended this book to me and I first read it to humor him. Was I amazed. This book was incredible!!!!! The company I own had been doing well but my personal life was going down hill fast. With the help of this book, I was able to apply all my management experience to my personal corporation, my mind and body, and the results were quite amazing. Anyone who finds they do better in business than they do in their personal life should read this book now. It literally changed the way I view everything in my life.

A friend recommended this book to me so I had to take a look at it. Wow!! I never read anything like it before and I'm still thinking about it two weeks later. Very practical, very entertaining, but most of all, it has changed the way I view my own little "corporation". What a gem!!!

This is quite an amazing book. It presents ideas that had never crossed my mind before but now that I've heard them, I'm fascinated. I don't know yet if everything in it is true but I do know that I'm having the best time finding out by trying out the exercises it suggests. And I know that my view of myself, my mind, and my body is never going to be quite the same again. Highly recommended if you like a book to be extremely thought provoking and life changing.

I read this book because someone recommended it to me. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I believe that when we set an intention and communicate it to all physical, mental, and emotional parts of ourselves we can effect positive changes in our lives. On the other hand, I find two problems with the author's thesis.

First, the body/mind is not really like a corporation. Corporations are hierarchical structures with a top-down chain of command. Even in the most advanced, enlightened corporations, decisions are not made democratically. You have a board of directors or a CEO who enact policy and see that it is carried out.

In contrast, the body/mind is a non-hierarchical system. Its organization cannot be compared to a pyramid or a ladder, but rather is something more akin to a multi-dimensional globular webwork of relationships. All parts communicate constantly with all others, and decisions evolve out of the exigencies which the whole experiences. All parts are as necessary as others, and thus, you cannot "downsize" it. Many decisions happen simultaneously in the body to maintain physical and psychological homeostasis. "You" as supposed CEO cannot possibly track or act upon all the data that goes into maintaining homeostasis.

Second, the "you" in the title seems to refer to you as your ego-self, your persona. That's the self that wants this or that, the self that sets intentions. It's all very well and good for the ego to have desires and plans for the body/mind to carry out, but I disagree that the ego can be compared at all to a CEO. If anything should be called the CEO, it is what Jung referred to as the Self, or what some other teachings refer to as the Higher Self. All true evolution proceeds from that unseen psychic center, which, when we ignore it, can derail the best made plans of (mice and) men.

If one must keep with the corporate analogy, the ego is more like a middle manager, and must feel-- and create from-- the tension between the demands of the soul and the world in which the body/mind finds itself. How does the ego figure out what the Self requires? There are many good books on connecting to one's own inner wisdom, but this is not one of them. That is a shame, because neglecting that wisdom, and claiming that one's own ego is in charge of the body/mind is not only arrogant, but also counter-productive.