What do you think?
Rate this book
The Five Hurdles to Happiness
A practical approach to becoming aware of the "five hindrances"--the negative qualities that inhibit living the awakened life--and to breaking free of them in order to live more mindfully, effectively, compassionately.
Five obstacles stand in between you and true happiness. What are they and how can you overcome them? Buddhist traditions teach that there are five negative qualities, or hindrances, that inhibit people from living an awakened life. Here, Mitch Abblett gives this teaching a modern, secular interpretation and helps you identify the hurdles that are blocking your contentment—desire, hostility, sluggishness, worry, and doubt—and how you can take your first steps to overcoming them. Combining traditional wisdom with contemporary psychology and using examples from his psychotherapy practice, Abblett uses the hurdles as a frame for engaging you in a process of contemplating your own life and learning to lean into your experience rather than merely repeating bad habits. By doing this, you can break free from the hurdles and live more mindfully, effectively, and compassionately.
Five obstacles stand in between you and true happiness. What are they and how can you overcome them? Buddhist traditions teach that there are five negative qualities, or hindrances, that inhibit people from living an awakened life. Here, Mitch Abblett gives this teaching a modern, secular interpretation and helps you identify the hurdles that are blocking your contentment—desire, hostility, sluggishness, worry, and doubt—and how you can take your first steps to overcoming them. Combining traditional wisdom with contemporary psychology and using examples from his psychotherapy practice, Abblett uses the hurdles as a frame for engaging you in a process of contemplating your own life and learning to lean into your experience rather than merely repeating bad habits. By doing this, you can break free from the hurdles and live more mindfully, effectively, and compassionately.
272 pages, ebook
Published August 7, 2018
21 people are currently reading
1364 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 19, 2022
Book of the Day – The Five Hurdles to Happiness
Today’s Book of the Day is THE FIVE HURDLES TO HAPPINESS – And the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them, written by Mitch Abblett and published by Shambhala Publications in 2020.
Mitch Abblett, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and consultant. He is an internationally renowned expert in the applications of mindfulness for enhancing professional and personal communication patterns.
He has been the executive director of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and was the clinical director of the Manville School at Judge Baker Children’s Center at Harvard University.
Having been advocating the right to be happy in our personal and professional lives, I chose this book for this review. This book represents a practical approach to help people break free of all the negative things that make our lives unhappy, so as to live more mindfully, with a better understanding and awareness, and practice compassion.
Abblett identifies five obstacles that stay between us and true happiness and, wisely mixes his experience as a psychologist and Buddhist knowledge and practices.
The author shows the readers a practical way to become aware of these five obstacles in our daily activities, giving them the tools needed to overcome them, together with practical exercises, charts, and examples.
The five hurdles are identified as:
desire
hostility
sluggishness
worry
doubt
I appreciated the idea of using the Buddhist five blocks as the pillars of the description, as they represent feelings that everyone can easily experience, become aware of, and understand. Yet, the path and the solutions proposed by the author are grounded in scientific evidence and enriched by his professional experience as a therapist.
The final result of this mixture of psychological and spiritual practices is effective in letting people deal with, and overcome, the five hurdles. The style used by Dr. Abblett is direct and concise, thus offering easy-to-understand suggestions, examples, and exercises to the readers, who are guided into a path of awareness and compassion.
What the book does well is to describe how one can get caught by conditioned reactions to what happens in one’s daily life. These reactions make one person a slave of the events. Every iteration of the automated responses increases suffering and entanglement, limiting one’s growth potential, reducing the quality of life, and leaving a sense of frustration and resentment.
I suggest this book to everyone who wants to start getting free from what limits his/her growth with a nice blend of psychology and Buddhism.
Today’s Book of the Day is THE FIVE HURDLES TO HAPPINESS – And the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them, written by Mitch Abblett and published by Shambhala Publications in 2020.
Mitch Abblett, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and consultant. He is an internationally renowned expert in the applications of mindfulness for enhancing professional and personal communication patterns.
He has been the executive director of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and was the clinical director of the Manville School at Judge Baker Children’s Center at Harvard University.
Having been advocating the right to be happy in our personal and professional lives, I chose this book for this review. This book represents a practical approach to help people break free of all the negative things that make our lives unhappy, so as to live more mindfully, with a better understanding and awareness, and practice compassion.
Abblett identifies five obstacles that stay between us and true happiness and, wisely mixes his experience as a psychologist and Buddhist knowledge and practices.
The author shows the readers a practical way to become aware of these five obstacles in our daily activities, giving them the tools needed to overcome them, together with practical exercises, charts, and examples.
The five hurdles are identified as:
desire
hostility
sluggishness
worry
doubt
I appreciated the idea of using the Buddhist five blocks as the pillars of the description, as they represent feelings that everyone can easily experience, become aware of, and understand. Yet, the path and the solutions proposed by the author are grounded in scientific evidence and enriched by his professional experience as a therapist.
The final result of this mixture of psychological and spiritual practices is effective in letting people deal with, and overcome, the five hurdles. The style used by Dr. Abblett is direct and concise, thus offering easy-to-understand suggestions, examples, and exercises to the readers, who are guided into a path of awareness and compassion.
What the book does well is to describe how one can get caught by conditioned reactions to what happens in one’s daily life. These reactions make one person a slave of the events. Every iteration of the automated responses increases suffering and entanglement, limiting one’s growth potential, reducing the quality of life, and leaving a sense of frustration and resentment.
I suggest this book to everyone who wants to start getting free from what limits his/her growth with a nice blend of psychology and Buddhism.
August 20, 2018
I give this book 3.5 stars. I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. And honestly, I had trouble wading through this book. I'm kind of on a kick of reading books about "happiness" and I even took a free course from Yale on the topic. A lot of the material in this realm tends to be easy-reads, almost dumbed down on times. This book was more cerebral and I had to reread passages a couple times to understand them properly. I would say I'm on average reader- I blog posts and tomes, and everything in between but nothing too scholarly. This book bordered on too smart for me.
At the end of the book, the author says that in writing this book he used "science, Buddhist psychology, clinical observations and the Buddhist three marks of existence", the latter of which we learn about early on. I fared best when reading his personal observations of patients then with the in-depth mindfulness discussions. Full disclosure, I also didn't do any of the exercises in the book, of which there are many. However, I did make note of a few that I would like to put into practice at some point. The exercises were all pretty simple to do and if you are looking for that sort of thing, you may really like this book.
There is a lot of important content in this book, which is why I lean towards the 4 star review instead of 3 stars. Some of the sentences made me pause and think, and I was able to apply what the author was saying to a current problem I am having right now that I'm having trouble resolving. I do appreciate the obvious amount of time that the author put into this work and I took away a lot from it. It's just that, for me, the book didn't flow.
August 17, 2018
#NetGalley #TheFiveHurdlestoHappiness:AndtheMindfulPathtoOvercomingthem
I really enjoyed this book due to the blend of psychology and traditional Buddhist teachings. Personally, I am going through a huge transition in my life and felt that this novel helps you to be thoughtful of the negative people in your life. We absorb this negativity and it reflects in our whole body and mind. In some ways it becomes a sickness for us not being able to let go of negative thoughts. The idea of being mindful isn't something new, but Abblett makes is accessible for even the busiest of us. I would recommend this book to anyone who is really wanting to make a whole life change mentally and physically.
I really enjoyed this book due to the blend of psychology and traditional Buddhist teachings. Personally, I am going through a huge transition in my life and felt that this novel helps you to be thoughtful of the negative people in your life. We absorb this negativity and it reflects in our whole body and mind. In some ways it becomes a sickness for us not being able to let go of negative thoughts. The idea of being mindful isn't something new, but Abblett makes is accessible for even the busiest of us. I would recommend this book to anyone who is really wanting to make a whole life change mentally and physically.
September 13, 2018
A good book if you want to find out more on how to use meditation and mindfulness to improve your life. There are many exercises to do to throughout the book that accompany the information. I found it a little too much at times and sometimes the depth of information provided slowed me down. Still a good book to learn how to let go of negative thoughts and be more mindful and present.
Advanced reading copy provided by NetGalley for an honest review.
Advanced reading copy provided by NetGalley for an honest review.
February 9, 2019
The "hurdles" are Buddhism's five hinderances; desire aversion (he uses anger), sloth, worry, and doubt. Mitch Abblett irritated me. His jokes were childish, he used himself as an example far too often, and his knowledge of Buddhism felt rather shallow. I found little that was new or helpful. The premise of taking each hindrance one-by-one and offering skills to breakthrough delusion using mindfulness was why I read this book. I really wish it had been better...
October 23, 2021
I found Mitch Abblett to be quite manic, which became tedious. There are an enormous amount of suggestions and suggestions within the suggestions. I appreciate his open honesty about his own flaws and growth. I learned that desire, doubt, sloth, restlessness, and anger are our hurdles to happiness. I value his Buddhist teachings. But, I experienced overload and skimming during the last half of the book. Advice on steroids!
June 8, 2018
#FiveHurdlesToHappiness #NetGalley #Mindfulness
Mitch illustrates how focus in happiness with spiritual, scientific and personal touch. I liked the way he introduces the subject and how well documented is the book.
Mitch illustrates how focus in happiness with spiritual, scientific and personal touch. I liked the way he introduces the subject and how well documented is the book.
August 31, 2018
#FiveHurdlesToHappiness #NetGalley #Mindfulness
Mitch illustrates how focus in happiness with spiritual, scientific and personal touch. I liked the way he introduces the subject and how well documented is the book.
Mitch illustrates how focus in happiness with spiritual, scientific and personal touch. I liked the way he introduces the subject and how well documented is the book.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews