Chance Action Therapy: The Playful Way of Changing (Health & Human Development Series)

Throughout history, in times of economic or political uncertainty, people have called on Lady Luck for help. None of the 30,470 self-help books (Amazon.com results) deals with utilising chance for solving problems in living. Features: This book shows how to let chance and chance-inspired action work for us. Thus, the process of changing stops being a chore and becomes a playful experience; The book starts with the "paradox of change": the difficulty of changing things that seem to depend on us (e.g. fulfil "new year resolutions," maintain physical fitness, keep eating right or avoid procrastination). Understanding this paradox is half the way towards its solution; Most methods of therapy and self-help prescribe different variations on willpower, positive thinking and insight. This book raises questions about the value and validity of explanations invented after the fact; it shows that "willpower" is nothing we can count on; and suggests that chance plays an important role in the creation of problems and that we should accordingly use it to solve them; The book consists of three kinds of interwoven chapters: Game chapters tell the story of women, men and couples using chance and luck (by means of dice and self-prepared playing cards) to solve a persistent difficulty. The problems dealt with include, among others, diet, smoking, couple relations and sexuality, shyness and inhibition, sex addictions, posture, panic and anxiety states, obsessions and compulsions. These chapters teach the reader to invent, play and modify her or his unique game; Chance chapters are our consciousness raising campaign. We examine and celebrate chance and luck from the perspectives of personal experience, literature, biology, psychology, economics and philosophy. Readers are turned into chance champions; Change chapters deal with the 'paradox of change' clarifying why change is so evasive, and why chance action and play are what the doctor ordered.