Eric Maisel
The Difficult Art
of Being Human
A Life’s Work Devoted to
the Human Experience
How do we create meaning when meaning isn’t given to us? How do we live a creative life in a world that makes creating difficult? How do we understand our own minds without reducing ourselves to labels and diagnoses? How do we help another person without pretending to have all the answers? And how do we find our way when the old maps no longer seem to work?
These questions have occupied me for more than forty years—as an author, family therapist, creativity coach, teacher, trainer, thinker, and advocate for more humane approaches to human difficulty.
I’ve written more than sixty books about creativity, meaning, life purpose, mental health, coaching, and the challenges of being human. I’ve worked with thousands of creative and performing artists, trained coaches around the world, and spent much of my professional life developing practical alternatives to the conventional ways we think about meaning, purpose, identity, creativity, and emotional distress.
I invite you to explore the work I’ve been doing and see what it has to offer you.
Eric
New Book
The Reenchantment of Meaning
New Book
Existential Nomads
Coaching & Trainings
Work with Eric
New Certification
Human Experience Specialist
Meaning & Purpose
Creativity & the Creative Life
Radically Rethinking Meaning & Purpose
Books for Creatives
Bestsellers That Support Your Creative Journey
Creativity Coach Trainings
16-Week Trainings Led by Eric Maisel Personally
Individual Creativity Coaching
Get Unblocked, Create Regularly, Flourish as a Creative
Creativity Coach Certification
An Eric Maisel and Noble Manhattan Collaboration
Eric Maisel
Mental Health Reimagined
Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry: An Overview
Critical psychiatry and critical psychology grew from a long-running uneasiness with the idea that human suffering can be… Read More
The Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series
The Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series presents solicited chapters from international experts on a wide variety… Read More
The Human Experience Specialist Alternative
Critical psychology and critical psychiatry have performed an indispensable task: they have challenged the assumptions… Read More
Being Human
Become a Human Experience Specialist
Learn the Art of Accompaniment
Existential Wellness Coachiing
Learn Journal Coaching
Add Journal Coaching to Your Toolkit
Relationship Coaching
The Helping Relationship
At its best, helping is not something one person does to another. It is a relationship between two human beings, one of whom has agreed to bring attention, experience, wisdom, perspective, and practical help to the challenges the other is facing.
This is the heart of the Human Experience Specialist relationship. An HES does not begin by asking, “What is wrong with you?” or “What disorder might explain this?” Instead, the questions are human ones: What are you going through? What matters here? What is making life difficult? What choices are available? What might help?
The HES accompanies rather than diagnoses, collaborates rather than prescribes, and recognizes that human difficulties may involve meaning, identity, relationships, creativity, work, aging, loss, uncertainty, personality, circumstance, or simply the challenge of being alive.
The helping relationship becomes a place for reflection, truth-telling, experimentation, decision-making, and movement—a place where one human being helps another navigate the difficult art of being human.
Living Without a Map
An existential nomad is someone living without the old maps—without a fixed identity, prescribed path, or reliable sense of where life is supposed to lead.
In a world where roles, institutions, careers, relationships, and certainties have become less stable, more of us must continually decide who we are and what matters. Existential nomadism names both the difficulty and the freedom of that condition: the challenge of creating identity, meaning, and direction as we go.