A practical approach to becoming aware of the five hindrances the negative qualities that inhibit living the awakened life and to breaking free of them in order to live more mindfully, effectively, compassionately.

Five obstacles stand in between you and true happiness. What are they and how can you overcome them? Buddhist traditions teach that there are five negative qualities, or hindrances, that inhibit people from living an awakened life. Here, Mitch Abblett gives this teaching a modern, secular interpretation and helps you identify the hurdles that are blocking your contentment desire, hostility, sluggishness, worry, and doubt and how you can take your first steps to overcoming them. Combining traditional wisdom with contemporary psychology and using examples from his psychotherapy practice, Abblett uses the hurdles as a frame for engaging you in a process of contemplating your own life and learning to lean into your experience rather than merely repeating bad habits. By doing this, you can break free from the hurdles and live more mindfully, effectively, and compassionately.

The Five Hurdles to Happines and the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them, Mitch Abblett, Shambala, Hardcover, 2018, 252 pages, $22.95

Mitch Abblett, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and consultant with a private practice. He speaks and trains nationally and internationally on the applications of mindfulness for enhancing professional and personal communication patterns. The author of several previous books, he has been the executive director of the Institution for Meditation and Psychotherapy and was for eleven years the clinical director of the Manville School at Judge Baker Children's Center at Harvard University

Content: The Five Hurdles to Happiness and the Mindful Pa5th to Overcoming Them
Foreword by Christopher K. Germer PhD	vii
Introduction: Brutal Honesty regarding the hindrances to awareness	xi
1. The karma of closing: our emotional inheritance	1
2. Meditation and how the hindrances have us over the barrel of our monkey minds	19
3. Sidestepping cookie monster: learning to dance with desire	36
4. The boiling point: Opening up to turn down the dial of hostility	70
5. Waking the wilting mind: Managing sluggishness and dullness	95
6. Worrywarts: restlessness and leaping forward:	135
7. Becoming a know-(nothing)-it-all: working with doubt	170
8. Karma chameleon: the path of opening up one's patterning	219
The path of opening up one's patterning	219
Notes	231
Index	241
Teaching song (Sera Khandro Kunzang Dekong Wangmo, 1892-1940)
Excerpts from the treatise on desire (Nida Chenagtsand, 1971-)
Yuthok's song	339
Bibliography	347
About the author	353