Change Your Story, Change Your Life

A rich guide to spiritual awakening and emotional balance.

Many self-improvement titles urge meditation, breathing, and journaling to engage readers on their path to wellness. Greer, a clinical psychologist, Jungian analyst, and shamanic practitioner, takes readers much further, introducing less common tools, such as shamanic principles and Jungian archetypes. Shamanism, he insists, aims to free people from habitual responses and inserts a “pause” between stimuli and reactions. Doing so, Greer writes, allows one’s perception to be autonomous and influenced by detached observation. To readers who are unfamiliar with shamanic principles, the book clearly and vividly describes its practices to help readers live more fully and compassionately. For example, Greer explains that holding too tight to one’s personal “story” discourages change, but detachment from divorce, abuse, failure, or heartbreak can allow for re-evaluation of one’s beliefs. The author also fascinatingly asserts that all things have a frequency and an energetic nature and that people can sense vibrations in their physical surroundings. But there’s also an intriguing lesson behind this idea: our bodies carry frequencies as well, he says, reinforcing the idea that the physical body, like the mind, carries energy that affects one’s overall wellness. Greer also thoughtfully explains mindful breathing, journeying through autobiographical exercises, and acknowledging and calling on inner archetypes (“we all have an inner critic and an inner wise person, an inner mother and inner father, and an inner feminine and inner masculine figure or energy”). In a final chapter, the author discusses the use of rituals as a way to create new stories. Overall, Greer successfully offers an entrance into ancient topics that may renew readers’ zest for life and their hope for future progress.

A successful, engaging book about shamanic ideas and psychological archetypes, among other concepts.