This book uses insights from psychological science along with illuminating anecdotes to present a framework for understanding our inner architecture and helping readers discover how to live their best lives.

Author Noam Shpancer explores humans' fundamental psychological need for connection and need for autonomy and details how the fulfillment of these needs underpins robust mental health. In brief, accessible chapters, he offers ten guiding principles for achieving this fulfillment based on proven psychological findings. These principles--including trusting evidence, honoring your own experiences, being flexible, facing your fears, and trying to love--help readers develop new ways to think about themselves and others and to cope with life's challenges.

Through engaging stories and explanations of human psychology, the book provides a path along which readers can explore their emotions, relationships, and ultimately what a meaningful life means to them.

 This book explores the fundamental psychological motives of both the need for connection and the need for autonomy, detailing how their fulfillment underpins robust mental health. In brief, accessible chapters, it offers 10 guiding principles for achieving this fulfillment based on proven psychological methods.

Prologue
Preface
Introduction. Defining Psychological Health
Principle 1. Knowledge Matters and Competence Counts
Principle 2. Honor (But Do Not Worship) Your Experience
Principle 3. Things Are Not What They Seem
Principle 4. Favor Flexibility
Principle 5. Face Your Fear
Principle 6. Manage Your Emotions
Principle 7. Think (Again) About Your Thinking
Principle 8. Consider Context
Principle 9. Try to Love
Principle 10. Remember Your Death
Postscript
 

These principles that you talk about are really core key important principles to people living their best life… really recommend people grab the book.Noam Shpancer, PhD, is professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, OH, and a practicing clinician with the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology in Columbus, OH. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from Purdue University. He teaches introductory psychology, child development, personality, abnormal psychology, human sexuality, assessment, advanced research, and health psychology. He is the author of the novel The Good Psychologist and writes about psychology for Psychology Today's Insight Therapy blog.

The 10 principles in this penetrating and absorbing book offer distinctive insights for living healthier, happier, and more engaged lives. Research, theory, and examples from clinical practice inform one another in unexpected ways, revealing new (old) knowledge that invites readers to commit to the work of self-understanding. Some passages are breathtaking in the way they artfully integrate a myriad of pertinent studies—from the origins of psychology to the present day. As a bonus, each chapter presents a postscript with valuable suggestions that distill the findings and propel readers forward in the book and in their lives. 

General Adult. Self-Help. College students who will encounter the book through assignment (perhaps in a life skills or stress management course) or recommendation. Undergraduate students considering careers in mental health. The general public (suitable for adult readers) and instructors adopting the work for their courses. This book may also benefit from being marketed to clinicians, psychologists, school and campus counselors, social workers, and others working in the mental health field who are in contact with the audience for the work.

 

In Mental Fitness 101: Principles for Psychological Well-Being, Noam Shpancer delivers a master class in clinical psychology by weaving together the art and science of contemporary psychological therapy. His wonderfully written book incorporates enlightening anecdotes, creative thought experiments, excellent case examples, and delivers fantastic, immediately actionable ideas for seasoned clinicians and laypeople alike. I intend to enthusiastically recommend it to my patients, colleagues, and trainees. Truly, I wish I had this book 40 years ago when I was a training psychologist! 

This book will provide you with the psychological tools you need to thrive by balancing the two fundamental human needs—to belong and to have agency. As a clinical psychologist and university lecturer, Noam Shpancer is your perfect guide, able to mix moving anecdotes with fascinating research. 

I don’t know of a wiser guide to understanding and managing the “psychological turbulence that accompanies living” than Noam Shpancer. If this book—studded as it is with enlightened suggestions—does nothing else, it will shift your perspective on the sources of well-being and release you from the prison of believing that success lies in perpetual self-optimization. 

This book distills 10 thought-provoking principles for living, grounded in scientific research and enriched by Dr. Shpancer’s clinical wisdom. What makes it remarkable is how these ideas resonate beyond theory, offering readers a psychologically healthier, more expansive way of understanding themselves and approaching life with love, connection, and self-compassion. 

I have known Dr. Shpancer for years as a colleague in cognitive and behavioral psychology. He has written an easy-to-understand book on many of the methods that patients strive to master from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). He has done so thoughtfully, using a noncookbook approach. Shpancer’s writing allows the reader to employ the CBT strategies and to grasp them from the standpoint of mental health, rather than mental illness. His capacity of health framework speaks to the essence of resilience and personal agency, rather than simple reactivity to emotional distress. His book supports the notion that we need not pathologize distress; instead, we can employ our strengths to cope with it. Shpancer balances that framework with plain-speaking explanations of cognitive restructuring or exposure therapy. Please, read this book twice to grasp both the how-tos of CBT and the role of personal agency in living a healthy life.