Reading has been a hobby and passion of mine since I was young. I can remember, at the age of nine and ten, wanting to stay in my room reading a book than being outside playing with the neighborhood kids. Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten older my reading tastes have changed and I have found it quite hard to find anything that really catches my interest but one thing is certain: self-help books and books that teach you how to do X, Y and Z never get old which is why I love The Next Ten Minutes: 51 Absurdly Simple Ways to Seize the Moment by Andrew Peterson. It must be the psychology major in me!

The Next Ten Minutes is the most recent book written by writer, composer and licensed therapist, Andrew Peterson. “It is a guide to help us discover the seeds of transformation and meaning in even the most ordinary routines. The Next Ten Minutes consists of a collection of exercises originally created for use in Dr. Peterson’s successful counseling practice. Rather than taking readers out of the everyday, Dr. Peterson invites them to move more deeply into the familiar tasks of ordinary life, by turning simple breathing, eating, or throwing out the trash into meditative exercises that can transform your day. Based on both Buddhist philosophy and proven psychological techniques, these succinct and accessible meditations also offer simple and effective methods for therapeutic counseling and personal growth. The power to seize the day is but a few simple steps away.”

I love The Next Ten Minutes because it offers a wide variety of techniques that help elevate stress and make the days pass by faster and much more smoothly. In the line of work I do, social services at an adoption/foster care agency, you can only imagine how stressful it can be; constantly worrying about if a child is going to be placed out of home, when our next referral comes in from SRS, how that child is going to act/react, having to deal with upset parents because their child was removed from their home and the list goes on and on. But with The Next Ten Minutes, I have been able to take a step back from those stressful situations and turn them into something more positive and manageable. The techniques are organized neatly into four parts: “What you’ll need” in order to do the technique, the instructions on how to do the technique, an explanation of how the technique helps, and variations of the technique. Dr. Peterson also provides additional resources after each technique in case you want to do some further research.

One of my favorite techniques from the book, that I can easily do while at work, is technique #3 Go Into Another Room. It goes a little something like this:

What You’ll Need: A building with more than one room

How to Do It: Pick a room, Stay where you are, Listen, Go into a different room, Explore the new room

Variations: Do it in the dark. Go outside. Stay in the room, but change it.

Now of course there is a lot more explanation than the above in the book but due to copyright, I am not going to copy straight out of the book! In essence, when done correctly, this technique helps you realize that “in order to change your behavior, you’ve first got to change your present state of mind,” which is why “forcing yourself to change a random insignificant behavior [or room!] can be so valuable.” This technique shifts your awareness away from the future and allows you to attend to your own behavior in the present moment, allowing for new things to become possible.

The Next Ten Minutes by Andrew Peterson will be available for purchase on October 26th, 2010. You can purchase The Next Ten Minutes by Andrew Peterson at bookstores nationwide including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com!

Disclaimer: I was provided with a galley copy of The Next Ten Minutes in order to write this review. No other compensation was provided. All opinions are 100% mine.

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