50: Donald Altman on Clearing Emotional Clutter, Fulfillment, and Transformation

For Life on Purpose Episode #50, my guest is psychotherapist, award-winning writer, former Buddhist monk, and teacher Donald Altman. Donald joined me for a excellent conversation about his new book Clearing Emotional Clutter: Mindfulness Practices for Letting Go of What’s Blocking Your Fulfillment and Transformation (New World Library). In the book, he offers readers easy-to-use daily practices designed to dissolve emotional clutter, whether it is old emotional wreckage from their childhood or new emotional clutter that they take on every day.“The purpose of Clearing Emotional Clutter is to help you heal and move on from pains, insults, traumas, toxic stressors, and emotional clutter from the past and the present — without blaming, shaming, or punishing yourself,” says Altman. “I like to think of it as a mindful lifestyle reboot — a way of clearing out the old, habitual methods of living and thinking that keep us stuck in emotional clutter to the point that we can’t imagine a way out.”About: Donald Altman is a prolific writer and expert on mindful eating whose career spans more than twenty-five years. He's authored several pioneering books on mindfulness, beginning with his 1998 Art of the Inner Meal. His book The Mindfulness Toolbox is the winner of two 2015 Ben Franklin National Gold Awards, Another book,  The Mindfulness Code, was named as "One of the Best Spiritual Books of 2010." He has also authored Living Kindness, Meal by Meal, The Joy Compass, and a personal guide to developing a mindfulness pratice, A Course in Mindfulness.In addition to his books, he was a staff writer for an EMMY-Award winning children's television show (The Magic Door, CBS Chicago), he won an American Medical Writer's Association Award, he co-created the first interactive comic strip on America Online, and has had articles appear in New Age Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and Independent Business Magazine, among others.Donald is also a practicing psychotherapist and former Buddhist monk who teaches in the neurobiology program at Portland State University.To learn more about Donald and his work, visit: http://www.mindfulpractices.com/.