Title: Mental Space
Authors: Tina Konstant and Norris Taylor
Publisher: Pearson Education Ltd
ISBN: 1-843-04016-6
Price: £15.00

This is a “dip-in” book that aims to give the reader an insight into how to use mental space to help you respond to the world. Some of the ideas will be familiar; others may be new to you as they were to me. The book does not tell you how to live your life. Rather, it provides you with a toolkit that you can use when you have a need. The subjects covered range from controlling your breathing to handling money in addition to the usual subjects to be found in books concerned with managing your life, such as conflict and time. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the reader and his/her perspective. Reading this book is not a passive experience, as there are various tasks to complete. These include physical and paper based exercises. Templates for completing the forms used in some of the exercises can be downloaded from the web (although I did find them quite hard to locate). One exercise requires you to hold a conversation with a part of your anatomy - you’ll have to read the book to learn more!

To emphasise certain points there are summaries of true stories which help the reader understand the concepts. The book also uses imagery to stimulate the imagination.

There are 16 chapters in this 205-page book, none of which are too long, and Chapter 1 has a useful summary of what is covered in each following chapter.

This is a flavour of some of the topics covered in the chapters:

• Chapter 2. Focus and Concentration highlights techniques for maintaining concentration and handling distractions

• Chapter 5. Mental space: past present and future encourages you to look at how things are now and how you want them to be in the future
• Chapter 8. Perception discusses how to handle perceived chaos

If you want to try a different approach to managing your life, it is worth reading this book. However, amongst the excellent ideas there are areas where you may feel that the authors are stating the obvious but that is just my perception!

Further information is available at www.yourmomentum.com

Reviewer: Tanya Cowin FCIPD – ex HR generalist now specialising in HR information - currently employed as a Senior Consultant with Northgate HR.