Eric Maisel

The Pain and Power of Teenage Idealism

When words like “fairness” and “justice” and “rights” and “equality” begin to percolate in a brain, it is a natural next step to think, “Yes, those are clearly righteous things,” followed by, “And I am for them and want them.” [This post is excerpted…

Travels on the International Bohemian Highway

[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] For thousands of years, outposts of civilization and culture have attracted smart, creative people, have drawn them magnetically to Athens or Constantinople or…

The One Business Skill You Absolutely Must Cultivate

The sales part of life—selling your paintings to buyers, selling your wedding band to wedding planners, selling your coaching services to prospective clients, “selling” your novel to literary agents and publishers—is, well, an unavoidable part of our…

When You Face Nothingness

It is a natural consequence of being smart to feel that life is missing something. [This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] The French existential writer Jean-Paul Sartre, in trying to explain his concept…

Is it Depression … Or Existential Sadness?

[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] Smart teens are in grave danger of succumbing to a particular kind of sadness. It is a sadness that arises out of a too-keen understanding that human beings are…

The Stubbornly Defensive Teen

When a teen is desperately unhappy, sensitive to everything in his environment, bouncing from thought to thought, project to project, and worry to worry, and also adamantly and defensively walled off from help, who and what can help? [This post is…

Why Smart Teens Hurt

The Stubbornly Defensive Teen When a teen is desperately unhappy, sensitive to everything in his environment, bouncing from thought to thought, project to project, and worry to worry, and also adamantly and defensively walled off from help, who and…

Artists and Family Difficulties

Family life, the creative life, and just plain human life all present their challenges. Do they ever!Today I wanted to invite you to take a look at one of my books, Overcoming Your Difficult Family, a book that can help you a lot with the challenges…

Why Teens Indict Themselves

[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] Let’s say that you’re seventeen, love literature, and read Crime and Punishment. Then you write your first novel. Will it read like Crime and Punishment? Will it…

How small criticisms can grow into painful negativity.

Why Teens Indict Themselves How small criticisms can grow into painful negativity.

5 Rules for Marketplace Relating

Make sure to get your hands on Connect with Gallery Owners, Curators, Collectors and Customers: An Eric Maisel Solutions Guide to Getting Better at ALL of Your Art Marketplace Relationships. Available now! Relationships in the arts are complicated.…

How Teens Experience Criticism

Does your teen really need more criticism? Think about it: do you? [This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] When she was five, one of our grandkids came home from kindergarten and told her mother that she…

Bailing at the First Sign of Difficulty

[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!] As a therapist and creativity coach, I’ve worked with countless smart, talented, creative adults who had very little to show for all of their potential. A common…

Why smart teens abandon hard work so easily.

Bailing at the First Sign of Difficulty Why smart teens abandon hard work so easily.

Do You Have a Book In You?

Jacob Norby, who is a pal of mine, just invited me to present a workshop at his Heal & Create Writers’ Retreat weekend conference in Marin (which is just north of San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge) that happens the weekend of October 29-30.…

Why Teens Crave Excellence

Don’t be fooled by the fact that your smart teen may be doing only mediocre work or doesn’t seem to really care about anything. This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look! “Excellence” sounds like a word out…

The Sloppy, Perfectionist Teen

This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look! Many smart teens do sloppy work because nothing less than perfect will do. This sounds upside-down, doesn’t it? But it makes perfect psychological sense. If you know…

Understanding the Teenage Racing Brain

KEY POINTS A smart teen’s brain can start to race dangerously. Practices like meditation and journaling can help smart teens get a grip on a racing brain. This racing brain phenomenon is not a sign or a symptom of a mental disorder but a natural…

3 More Artists on Completing

[Please take a look at my latest book, Why Smart Teens Hurt. Great for smart, sensitive, creative adults too!} Thank you for your comments on why you find it difficult to complete your creative projects. Here are three more comments. Your comments…

Understanding the Teenage Desire for Solitude

Bright teens can benefit from time spent with their thoughts, in moderation. KEY POINTS Smart, sensitive, creative teenagers passionately crave their solitude. This deep-seated need allows for thinking and creating—and also produces dangers. Teens…