BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Mind is the Map: Awareness is the Compass, and Emotional Intelligence is the Key to Living Mindfully from the Heart,’ by Christina Reeves and Dimitrios Spanos
We all want to live our best lives and reach our potential. Some of us dream of starting a business, writing a blockbuster, making a name for ourselves as a leader, becoming a star. But whatever form of greatness of joy we dream of achieving, too often, there’s a catch: our dreams tend to be dashed — not by others, but by ourselves. In The Mind is the Map: Awareness is the Compass, and Emotional Intelligence is the Key to Living Mindfully From the Heart (Eudaimonia Center LLC, October 2018), authors Christina Reeves and Dimitrios Spanos offer the tools to overcome our own self-defeating obstacles, and live the lives we dream of.
Reeves and Spanos have decades of experience between them: Reeves is a holistic life coach, energy psychologist and frequent speaker; Spanos is an expert on personal development. They’re also the cofounders of the Eudaimonia Center, a learning center for transformational change that offers seminars in core healing, personal growth, and other life-changing subjects.
Drawing on discoveries in brain science — such as neuropathology — the authors have created an approach as grounded as it is inspirational: there are neurological reasons we get stuck in our patterns, but there’s also no reason we can’t break those patterns and replace them. Connecting self-transformation to the biological reality that we can, in fact, control our minds is powerful motivation. You can’t say “I can’t” when you know that saying those very words is just reinforcing the very conditioning you’re trying to undo.
The book is set up as a conversation between the two authors, and that dialogue continues chapter after chapter, so the reader has the sense of being nestled between two very compassionate and distinct coaches who share a common sensibility but express it in their own ways. As to the problem of being stuck in patterns, there is a wonderful chapter, “The Critical Voice: The Writing on Our Wall,” which eloquently explains why our own self-doubts and anxieties are so deeply entrenched. “The mind is a wonderful tool for thinking, but it has a dark side,” the chapter begins. It’s well worth the price of the book for their concept alone, which provides even the most fearful among us with a way to disconnect from what the authors call “false data” and quiet those critical voices.
But there’s so much more in the book as well — it feels like a complete and comprehensive system for self-discovery and tremendous growth, and it’s divided into two parts: The Process (of self-discovery), and the Journey (rebuilding and reshaping our lives). The authors consider their own personal evolutions and share them candidly, making it clear that growth is ongoing, even for them. A colorful circle chart helps the reader track their own progress — moving from “Understanding Our Patterns” through steps like growing “Emotional Intelligence” to “Learning to Live Lightly” and, ultimately, “Creating Our New Story.”
What The Mind is the Map does so well is combine a whole system and a language of self-transformation with the engaging, warm personalities of the authors. These two are natural coaches, and that comes through in the way they suggest exercises — such as an insightful series of questions, and predict the negative reactions that arise from trying to grow as well as the positive results. Ultimately, this is a treasure hunt to our best selves and using this book as a guide, it’s bound to be enriching, enlightening, and ultimately fruitful.
For more on Christina Reeves and Dimitrios Spanos, visit themindisthemap.com
