As Author, Licensed Therapist, Lecturer, Workshop Leader and College Professor, I am passionately committed to giving people quick, practical ways to bring freedom and inner peace into their busy lives. After thirty years of bringing Buddhist wisdom and Body-Centered Therapist to help clients with chronic pain, depression, anxiety, illness and marriage counseling, I watched firsthand as thousands of people, young and old, embraced the ten Heart Choices offered in Shortcuts to Freedom with open hearts.
The ten choices you can make inside ten minutes to cope with tough times. These ten easy choices, emerging from the timeless intelligence of your heart, hand you the keys to unlimited freedom and inner peace. With fear of losing your job, home or savings looming, you need to know who and what you can count on now. NBC News reported last month that one out of every ten Americans take antidepressants—an increase of four hundred per cent since 2008, when this world recession began.
For thirty years, as a therapist, author and workshop leader, I have polished these ten choices into pearls by teaching them to thousands of hard-working parents, clients, students, professionals, therapists and social workers, all short on time. Though distilled from blending ancient Buddhist wisdom with modern psychotherapy, you do not need to take up Buddhism or therapy to reap the rewards. You need only a few minutes daily.
Shortcuts to Freedom: 10 Ways to Inner Peace in 10 Minutes a Day replaces fear with hope, despair with courage, and anxiety with deep trust in yourself and life. Awareness brings choice. Conscious choice brings freedom. Each of these ten choices releases you from unconscious habits into freedom and peace. The instant you notice a fear thought about money, you are free to Consciously Choose: to coax your awareness into the present—or stay overwhelmed by fear. You can choose something unorthodox like love your fear—or stay lost in fear’s story for hours, to bask in the inner peace that lives inside you—or perpetuate suffering. The heart’s unlimited capacity to hold all life experience in loving compassion changes the playing field.
With choice, facing loss and unpredictability feels hopeful and workable again.
Buddha taught that every human heart is born with a hidden reservoir of unlimited joy, love, compassion and inner peace. This gifts the heart with an uncanny ability to remain peaceful and free, despite outer circumstances. Learning how to incorporate these heart choices into day-to-day problems opens our eyes and minds to fresh solutions. It cuts like a sword through old mind habits of staying stuck in anxiety, doubt and despair.
After thirty years of sitting alone in a room with client’s darkest secrets, I saw hundreds release chronic pain by ignoring logic and directing their breath into the pain. I saw hundreds more dissolve fear, anger, anxiety, grief, even depression, by spending ten minutes locating the feeling in their body and breathing into the center of it. In therapy, I helped countless couples overcome affairs, resentment, jealousy and hopelessness by dropping all blame and taking full responsibility to communicate their feelings and needs. I am excited to offer these tools for you to practice on personal issues in your own life.
For six years, while promoting my prior book, JOY, No Matter What (Conari, 2005, which sold over 12,000 copies in the U.S., Canada and abroad), readers kept asking for fresh ways to feel free and peaceful in these tumultuous times. Published in five languages, JOY sold nearly 2,000 copies in Spain, Central and S. America, 2,500 in China, 1,000 in S. Viet Nam and 1,000 in Taiwan. Since 205, I have taught Joy at national and international conferences and on 400 radio shows throughout U.S. cities.
According to Webster, freedom is being free of restraints. In Part I of Shortcuts to Freedom, you practice Freedom from the unconscious prison of habitual thoughts, fears, stories and reactions by replacing them with conscious heart choices. As Presence, Curiosity, Awareness and Compassion bring you closer to freedom, you shift loyalties—from obeying your reactive ego voice to trusting your brilliant Heart (the term used in this book for your core Being), whose fingertips rest on the pulse of universal innate intelligence.
As you consciously choose to let yourself out of prison one thought, one fear, one reaction at a time, you respond to life from your peaceful, loving, compassionate heart. Freedom is the essential truth of conscious awareness. As you wake up, you are free.
Feel Free to contact me with any questions about the books or questions about the therapy of Joy.
Thank You,
Carolyn Hobbs
