This comprehensive guide merges existential philosophy with wellness coaching strategies, equipping coaches with powerful tools to help clients meet their existential challenges and lead lives of authentic purpose, deeper meaning, and sustainable well-being.
Dr. Eric Maisel introduces existential wellness coaching as a holistic approach that recognizes how physical and psychological well-being are intrinsically connected to our sense of purpose, meaning, and authenticity. Grounded in concepts from existential philosophy, this practical guide helps coaches, therapists, and other mental health practitioners deepen their work with clients to address existential challenges, and to help clients develop the resilience to maintain existential well-being in challenging times. Unlike traditional coaching that focuses solely on goals or conventional therapy that treats symptoms, existential wellness coaching empowers clients to confront life's fundamental questions while developing concrete strategies for living with greater intention. Each chapter systematically addresses core existential concerns, including self-relationship, value identification, purpose creation, meaning-making, authenticity, and developing a personal life philosophy.
Offering new ways of thinking about common existential issues, this book contains tools that will help coaches enable their clients to make life-changing shifts and necessary mental reframes.
Table of Contents:
1. From Existential Thought to Existential Wellness 2. The History of a Concept 3. On Existential Wellness Coaching 4. Existential Wellness Coaching Tactics 5. The Weight of Individuality 6. The Story of Life Purposes 7. Coaching Meaning 8. The Pain of Meaning Crises 9. On Existential Sadness 10. On Existential Anxiety 11. Dealing with Ambiguity and Uncertainty 12. The Problem of Work 13. Freedom, Resistance, and Rebellion 14. On Authenticity 15. Creativity’s Place in the Puzzle 16. The Possibility of Existential Joy Postscript
About the Author :
Eric Maisel, PhD, is the author of 60+ books, including The Coach’s Way, Rethinking Depression, Brave New Mind, Night Brilliance, Coaching the Artist Within, and The Van Gogh Blues. He writes the “Rethinking Mental Health” blog for Psychology Today, with 3.5 million views, and is the lead editor for the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry series.
Review :
“As an experienced psychotherapist, couples’ counselor, and existential life coach, I’ve been waiting for a book that moves us beyond the frame of ‘existential coaching’ to the contemporary and highly useful idea of ‘existential wellness coaching.’ In these difficult times, this book is needed now more than ever. Highly recommended!”
Don Laird, Psychotherapist, Adjunct Professor, Carlow University, co-editor, Existential Wellness
“I’ve seen Eric Maisel in action training coaches and the level of professionalism and humanity he brings to the task is unparalleled. We see it again in Existential Wellness Coaching, a breakthrough book that joins his books for coaches (like The Coach’s Way and Coaching the Artist Within) as an essential guide for helpers in all of the healing and helping professions.”
Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC, Director, International Association for Journal Writing
“Eric Maisel created our Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program, which students love. His new book, Existential Wellness Coaching, will become the text for that training; and I highly recommend that if you teach in the areas of existential coaching or existential therapy, that you consider adopting Existential Wellness Coaching as a text for your class. Your students will relish it!”
Gerard O’Donovan, CEO and Founder, Noble Manhattan Coaching
“Existential Wellness Coaching is a stunning work. Besides being a tutorial on a specific kind of coaching, it is also a treatise on how to live in today’s chaotic world. It is a must read, not only for people interested in coaching and/or existentialism, but for everyone. The book, and its author, should be remembered in the history books as the first twenty-first century addition to the earlier works of existentialism and their creators, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, et al.”
Denise Beck-Clark, author, Thirty Years Hence and Concurrent Sentences
“When I first discovered Dr. Eric Maisel’s work several years ago, I was a professional creative seeking to deepen my path. Now, as a creativity coach, educator, and filmmaker, I continue to find his books both inspiring and intellectually rigorous. Existential Wellness Coaching offers profound insights into addressing life’s and clients’ challenges. Not to be missed!”
Nefeli Soteriou, independent filmmaker and creativity coach
“Existential Wellness Coaching is a masterful menu of ideas, tactics, and coaching vignettes to support clients with the ‘project of their life.’ Eric Maisel’s ability to weave existential practices into accessible and powerful coaching tools is evident in every page. His personal vision of existential wellness confronts big topics such as freedom, authenticity, creativity, absurdity, and rebellion, while delivering a compelling coaching model for clients who are struggling with the complexities of human nature and existence. I highly recommend this book as a valuable addition to your coaching toolkit.”
Sharon Stratford, Career and Creativity Coach, New Zealand
“We are grateful to have Eric Maisel, the United States’ most sought-after Master Creativity Coach and Existential Wellness Coach, supporting our international community of coaches with CPD masterclasses. For many years, he’s brought a wealth of practical life and business experience to these sessions; he’s also demonstrated a genuine love, and feel for existential issues. Added to which, he has a pragmatic and a light approach that makes his teachings accessible, which is much appreciated. Existential Wellness Coaching brings these qualities together in a single much-needed volume. Highly recommended for coaches, therapists, and anyone interested in meaning, purpose, and existential well-being.”
Aurora Dawn Campbell, Accredited Fellow Coach and Mentor, Business Director, International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring (IAPC&M)
