Tag Archives: Self-Improvement

Sometimes, our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths. That’s the lesson from author Malcom Gladwell in David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. But Gladwell doesn’t rest on cliche. He’s known for his originality, surprising his readers with paradox after paradox.

Break the rules, Gladwell tells us, and he follows his own advice. His journalism has always done so supremely successfully.

Read this article collection because you want to experience perspective-shifting intellectual whiplash.

Key Takeaways

• A common personality trait of successful underdogs is disagreeableness.
• In the story of David and Goliath, David succeeded because he broke the rules–not because God intervened. He beat him because rock slinging was the most deadly form of fighting and Goliath wasn’t prepared. David wasn’t strong in the traditional way, so he found a way around the traditional way; he found strength in his weakness.
• Basketball coach Vivek Ranadive succeeded because he broke the rules. He led a novice girls’ basketball team to the national championship for their division by playing full-press–something no other team did.
• Teacher Teresa DeBrito succeeds because she breaks the rules. She actually prefers larger to smaller class sizes, and this perspective is backed by research. The lesson: often, things we see as good (like small class sizes) are bad after a certain point; there is a U-curve. For example, money makes parenting easier, until you have too much and it makes it harder again.
• Caroline Sacks didn’t succeed in her major because she followed the rules. She made the decision to go to Brown instead of her second choice, a lesser-known school. This led her to quitting her preferred major, science, because of the difficulty she experienced at Brown. Had she gone to the second-tier school instead, she believes she would have stayed with it.
• David Bois succeeded because of his weakness. His dyslexia made him an excellent listener and memorizer, and he ended up becoming a highly successful trial lawyer who could detect the slightest weakness in his opponent’s voice, though his mom thought he’d never even graduate high school.
• Emil “Jay” Freireich succeeded because he wasn’t a people pleaser. His father died at a young age and his mom was also absent. He became a doctor who didn’t care what anyone thought, even ignoring orders at times, and pioneered a cure for leukemia.
• Wyatt Walker succeed because he broke the rules. He worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. to incite cops to violence so the media would carry the story and the civil rights movement would gain momentum.
• Rosemary Lawlor succeeded by questioning authority. She participated in a successful riot against unnecessary search, seizure and extended house arrest policies in Northern Ireland against the British army who had come to help keep peace during a civil war. The British army’s mistake: they didn’t establish legitimacy first.
• In Brownsville, a NYC neighborhood, a police officer named Joanne Jaffe succeeded because she established legitimacy. She is leading an effort to help criminal kids turn around by first gaining their trust, bringing turkeys on Thanksgiving and gifts on Christmas and talking with the families.
• Sometimes, reactions aren’t what we expect them to be. During the Blitz in London during WWII, everyone expected mass panic, but instead the remote misses created a sense of aliveness, exhilaration and invincibility.

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is a renowned author, journalist, and public intellectual widely recognized for his captivating storytelling and thought-provoking insights. With a unique ability to dissect complex ideas and phenomena, Gladwell has become a leading voice in contemporary nonfiction. His works, such as “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers,” and “Blink,” have garnered global acclaim, captivating audiences with their innovative perspectives on social sciences, psychology, and human behavior. Gladwell’s writing style seamlessly blends engaging narratives with rigorous research, making his books both accessible and intellectually stimulating. Through his distinctive approach, Gladwell has reshaped the way we perceive and understand the world around us, leaving a lasting impact on popular discourse and inspiring critical thinking.

Beyond his literary contributions, Gladwell’s influence extends to public speaking engagements and podcasting. He has delivered captivating talks at prestigious conferences and universities, captivating audiences with his ability to shed light on intricate social phenomena and challenge conventional wisdom. As the host of the popular podcast “Revisionist History,” Gladwell continues to explore hidden stories and reevaluate historical events, offering fresh perspectives and encouraging listeners to question established narratives. Through his multifaceted body of work, Malcolm Gladwell has emerged as a leading figure in contemporary intellectual discourse, captivating audiences with his unique blend of storytelling, rigorous research, and a deep understanding of human nature.

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Can’t quite get to all the nonfiction and self-help books that interest you? Read Books I Want My Kids to Read Someday here.

I know you’re not going to take all my many book recommendations, but please. Please, take this one. The Art of Learning: A Journey in The Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin recounts the author’s path to becoming an eight-time national chess champion (and the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer), then his journey to several world Tai Chi championships. So you might say he’s had a pretty successful life.

In telling his story, Waitzkin offers in-depth theories about the learning process, drawing parallels between two major areas of knowledge. His main theme is how to become not just good at something, but truly excellent.

Key Takeaways

• Teachers do best not to lecture, but instead to allow for mistakes, then gently question the student about them. Waitzkin’s first chess teacher, Bruce, didn’t speak much. They just played: “Whenever I made a fundamental error, he would mention the principle I had violated. If I refused to judge, he’d proceed to take advantage of the error until my position fell apart.”
• “Much of the time in our lessons was spent in silence, with us both thinking. Bruce did not want to feed me information, but to help my mind carve itself into maturity.”
• Another lesson: Teachers must not squelch the natural style of the student, or their love of the game. “Many teachers have no feel for this balance and try to force their students into cookie-cutter molds. I have run into quite a few ego maniacal instructors like this over the years and have come to believe that their method is profoundly destructive for students in the long run … Teachers should be a guide, not an authority.
• Another lesson: Some people are “entity” learning theorists and some are “incremental” theorists. Some kids are taught that their intelligence is fixed, an entity, part of who they are, while others believe deep down that skill is an incrementally learned thing. The latter do much better in every way, even stuff they start out poor at. Parents, teachers must restate praise and commentary to reinforce this idea. Never say “you’re good at this,” only “you’ve learned this well,” etc. The child labeled “smart” at something won’t want to face a challenge, list he fail to live up to expectations.
• Another lesson: Performing in the “soft zone” is better than in the “hard zone.” In the soft zone, interruptions can come, and you can flex with them, allow them, then get back into your flow thought. In the hard zone, by contrast, you’re tense and rigid and if anything interrupts you, you try to fight against it. The soft zone is when outwardly you look serene, though inside you’re fully focused.
• Waitzkin relates a parable of man who wants to walk across the earth, though it’s covered in thorns. The “Hard Zone” fighter will try to cover all the earth with pavement. The “Soft Zone” performer makes sandals.
• Another lesson: We must learn “numbers to leave numbers” and “form to leave form.” This means that the great performer first fully digests and assimilates all relevant knowledge of their trade, so that it becomes a part of them and can be accessed automatically. Their mind or subconscious does that part of the work for them, with no consciousness of it at all. In this state, they can break the rules well, as an artist who has fully learned her craft before trying something new.
• The excellent performer notes the feeling he has when he does something right, even when he’s not sure exactly why it was so right. Then he seeks to replicate that feeling. In sports, this is when you seek a certain feeling while striking the ball, rather than thinking about the technique. In chess, it’s when you get a feeling about a good move you make, then seek to replicate it later.
• Another lesson: Watch for times when your life outside your trade affects your performance. The author gives an example of when he was struggling with a life transition, then started making mistakes in his chess game, also during transition moments. His subconscious was uncomfortable with the transition moment.
• Another lesson: When possible, use “beginner’s mind.” Beginners and children aren’t afraid to fail. But experts think of every failure as a crisis, which greatly impedes improvement. Be playful.
• Allow “investments in loss”–times when you’re not performing optimally because you’re working on honing a new skill.
• The author describes the art of Tai Chi and the great strength that you have when you don’t the opponent, but instead use their own force against them.
• Another lesson: “Make smaller circles.” When a writing student, for example, is blocked after being told to write about his hometown, the teacher tells her to write about a single brick of a single building. In order to become exceptional, we must break down the art to its very smallest components, then practice and practice those until every single nuance is deeply felt and understood. The author provides an example from his Tai Chi training, saying that he had to perfect the art of the single, straight punch to such a degree that his arm barely had to move in order to deliver a powerful blow.
• Another lesson: Use adversity to your advantage. Great performers see what they can learn from the worst circumstances. His example was that of perfecting his left-dominant fighting when his right hand was broken.
• Another lesson: Don’t neglect the internal or abstract or intuitive angles of the skill. NFL players who use the off-season to review tapes learn to intuitively see patterns in the plays.
• Another lesson: Practice “chunking”–learning whole tactics or sections of knowledge so well that they become intuitive, and don’t need to be broken down in your mind into smaller parts. These sections will then come to you all at once, which saves a lot of time.
• Learn how to induce shock or heightened emotion in order to slow down time. When Waitzkin broke his hand during a fight, his awareness increased and time felt slower. The trick is to learn how to create this heightened awareness when you aren’t experiencing anything unique–to do it at will.
• Another lesson: Be present. “Everyone at a high level has a huge amount of chess understanding, and much of what separates the great from the very good is deep presence, relaxation of the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow unhindered.”
• The Grandmaster chess player looks at (consciously, focuses on) less than the master, but sees more.
• Also, sometimes Grandmasters are able to almost read the minds of their competitors.
• Another lesson: The winner is the one that controls the tone of the game. Examples: Waitzkin’s chess style is erratic; he thrives in the chaos. Others prefer a more methodical game. When he controls the tone of the game, he has a huge advantage.
• Another lesson: It’s a hugely important to take breaks from your skill at times. Waitzkin took two weeks at sea with his family every summer, which felt like a huge sacrifice at the time. He also learned to take short mental breaks during chess matches – to stop studying the board for a few minutes and run up a few flights of stairs – and to tighten his recovery time between Tai Chi rounds to one minute.
• Another lesson: If you want more serenity during your trade of choice, find something in your life that gives you a feeling of flow, peace – then either do that before you go to work or practice… or if that’s not possible, set up a short routine that you can do before your relaxation activity. Program yourself to enter flow during this “pre-flow” routine, then after it’s ingrained, you can switch to doing the “pre-flow” activities before you go to work, and it will create the flow, since your brain associates it with your flow activity. This is called “building your trigger.”
• Another lesson: “Convert your passions into fuel.” Make even negative emotions work for you, not against you. Example: Basketball star Reggie Miller used Spike Lee’s heckling to fire him up before a game.
• Another principle: Seek out competitors who are better than you are, or who work differently.
• Another principle: Learn from moments of great insight, leaps of logic, great inspiration and creativity. Don’t assume you just happened upon something inspired. Review it, break it down, learn why and how it worked. After you do this, you will have gained ground, permanently raising your level. From there, another new height comes within reach. “In that moment, it is as if you are seeing something that is suspended in the sky just above the top of your pyramid. There is a connection between that discovery and what you know–or else you wouldn’t have discovered it–and you can find that connection of you try.”

About the Author

Josh Waitzkin is an American chess player, martial artist, and author. He is best known for his achievements in the world of chess, having become a National Master at the age of 10 and winning multiple national championships. Waitzkin has also excelled in the martial arts, earning multiple black belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and becoming a world champion in Tai Chi Push Hands. In addition to his athletic accomplishments, Waitzkin is a highly regarded author and speaker, having written two books on the topics of learning and performance, “The Art of Learning” and “The Art of Possibility.” Waitzkin is also the founder of the JW Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes the benefits of chess and martial arts to children around the world. His unique blend of expertise in multiple disciplines has made him a sought-after speaker and coach, and his insights into the process of learning and mastery have inspired countless people to achieve their own goals.

John Holt is a from-the-heart writer with a beautiful writing voice. His love of and respect for children is sweet to read, and his perspective on education is revolutionary. I also love the striking examples he uses.

Learning All the Time, Instead of Education and other books by Holt make the same basic argument: the educational system we’re used to is irreversibly flawed. Learning should be a self-guided process that is assisted by caring facilitators.

Read it because you want to homeschool your children, or because you want to remember what we love about learning.

Key Takeaways from Learning All the Time

• Kids are all their own kinds of genius. Just give them a good, positive environment in which to learn and grow, and see what happens.
• The best way to teach a child to read: don’t. Read to him, let him be exposed to books, give him books as gifts, until one day they ask to do the reading. Then read the book together, one word at a time.
• “Anytime that, without being invited, without being asked, we try to teach somebody else something … we convey to that person, whether we know it or not, a double message. The first part of the message is: I am teaching you something important, but you’re not smart enough to see how important it is. Unless I teach it to you, you’d probably never bother to find out. The second message is: What I’m teaching you is so difficult that, if I didn’t teach it to you, you couldn’t learn it.”
• The author’s first elementary school believed in lots of praise. The result: “By the time I came to know them in the fifth grade, all but a few of the children were so totally dependent on continued adult approval that they were terrified of not getting it, terrified of making mistakes.”
• “Babies do not learn in order to please us, but because it’s their instinct and nature to want to find out about the world. If we praise them in everything they do, after a while they are going to start learning, doing things, just to please us … The next step is that they are going to become worried about not pleasing us …”
• For learning times tables, make a 12 x 12 grid and let the child fill it in at her own pace, without correcting it. Keep it on the fridge, and have her do it over and over.
• “What children want and need from us is thoughtful attention. They want us to notice them and pay some kind of attention to what they do, to take them seriously, to trust and respect them as human beings. They want courtesy and politeness, but they don’t need much praise.”

Key Takeaways from Instead of Education

• We learn by doing. Period.
• Carrots and sticks—rewards and punishments—don’t work.
• Learning is not separate from life.
• There are little-s schools and big-s Schools. Big-s Schools are pedantic, threatening, forceful and don’t offer choice. In little-s schools, all students are free at all times to do or not do, participate or not participate, leave or go. There are no attendance records, no tests, no grades. Teachers are not lecturers, but guides.
• Summerhill was a makeshift school furnished with little more than beer crates. Most of what happened there during the day was simply conversation and reading. In the morning there was dancing and drums and other physical activity directed by the kids. The school keep attendance records but there was no punishment when someone didn’t come. Watching was considered an important activity, and teachers admitted what they didn’t know.
• Once at Summerhill, Holt saw a new boy hit a girl. Though the girl was slightly hurt, she didn’t cry to the teacher. The other kids sympathized with her but did not reprimand the boy; instead, they felt sorry for him and acted as if they assumed that he would soon learn to behave better.
• In another example, another new boy “. . . did one thing over and over again. He heated his nail red hot and stuck it into a piece of wood, which charred and smoked . . . I have never sensed more violence and anger in a child . . .” The teachers said nothing, allowing him to work through what he needed to work through. “Two years later, when I next visited the school, he was a peaceful, kind, happy child . . .”
• Pay attention to the stories you tell about your kids and the labels you give them. Use “focused” instead of “stubborn.” This provides an example to others as well.
• Parents who are able to stay calm do so because they understand the child’s unique struggles and reasons for behaving the way they do. They adjust their expectations accordingly and have compassion. Don’t get caught up in an adversarial relationship with your child that will be hard to change later on.
• Sensory activities like cooking, bathing, gardening and holding stuffed animals help children learn and also help their brains develop.
• Kids need physical exercise in order to process thoughts and feelings.
• Humor also works well to calm a child or change their behavior.
• When a child mistreats another child, allow the child space to calm down first. Then talk to the child about the behavior, especially the trigger for it. Ask them what they might do differently in the future. Then ask them to make amends. This process is very different from outright punishment.
• When a child is upset, be present, offer touch, and give the child space. You can tell him, “I will not touch you, but I will stay near you until your body is calm.”

About the Author

John Holt (1923-1985) was an American educator and author, known for his work on education reform and his advocacy for homeschooling. He was a teacher himself for many years, and his experiences in the classroom led him to question the traditional approach to education. He believed that children learn best when they are allowed to explore and discover on their own, rather than being forced to follow a rigid curriculum. Holt’s writings, including “How Children Fail” and “How Children Learn,” had a profound impact on the educational system and inspired many parents and educators to rethink their approach to teaching. He also founded the Holt Associates, an organization dedicated to promoting homeschooling as an alternative to traditional schooling. Today, Holt is remembered as a pioneer in the field of alternative education, and his ideas continue to influence the way we think about teaching and learning.

It’s hard to do justice to Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini in a few words, except to say that is very likely the best book on sales ever written.

Read it to find out how salespeople will try to manipulate you–and how to say no.

Key Takeaways

• Cialdini identifies the six major tools of influence (i.e. sales): reciprocation; commitment/consistency; social proof; liking; authority; and scarcity.
• On reciprocation: Giving gifts—even very small ones—creates a major sense of obligation in the receiver to reciprocate. Often, they will jump at the chance to get rid of that perceived obligation. The takeaway for salespeople: Give small “free gifts” before making the big sale. Or, ask for something big first, then retreat to something smaller when they say no, so they feel they owe you the sale.
• On consistency: People have, and want to have, a strong sense of personal identity. If a potential buyer is “primed” beforehand to identify with your product, they’re much more likely to go all the way with it. The takeaway for salespeople: Get potential buyers to identify with your product in some (seemingly voluntary) way, such as agreeing to write a letter, sign a petition, display a small sticker or logo, pass along an email, etc. This also creates a perceived commitment, which they are loathe to go back on later. Or, get someone to commit to a product by making a lowball offer, then raise it later. (This is also sometimes called the “ladder of comittment.”)
• On social proof: People copy each other. They just can’t help it. No one can do all the research themselves; they rely on others to lead the way. The takeaway for salespeople: Use the cliché pitches: “fastest-growing,” “most popular,” customer testimonials, etc.
• On liking: Liking is also a super effective way to encourage the desire to buy. The takeaway for salespeople: Think about how can you get people to like or root for your brand—to be on your side, identify with your cause, want to spread the word.
• The book also discusses the principle of contrast, saying that when you first try to sell a higher priced item, or you artificially raise the price to begin with, when you take it down a notch it feels like a great deal.

About the Author

Robert Cialdini is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University. He is widely recognized as a leading expert in the field of influence and persuasion, and is the author of the best-selling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In his work, Cialdini has identified six key principles of influence, including reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, likability, and consensus. He has applied these principles to a wide range of fields, including business, marketing, and politics, and has helped companies, governments, and other organizations understand how to use these principles effectively. Cialdini’s insights have had a significant impact on the way people think about influence and persuasion, and his work continues to be widely cited and respected.

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Can’t quite get to all the nonfiction and self-help books that interest you? Read Books I Want My Kids to Read Someday here.

If you don’t read at least three books on physics during your life, you’re truly missing out. Let one of them be The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, a well-written overview of the mysteries of the universe by Brian Greene.

Read it to gain an understanding of some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries ever made (black holes! quantum physics!) and for the joy of pondering your place in it all.

Key Takeaways

• This book focuses on revisions to our understanding of space and time, from Aristotle to Einstein.
• Despite not understanding every aspect of the universe, we have an understanding of its broad strokes.
• Our experiences shape our perception of reality.
• Scientific inquiry has shown that human experience is often not an accurate reflection of reality.
• The work of scientists has revealed a universe that is surprising, unfamiliar, and unlike what was expected.
• Modern physics has shown that assessing life through everyday experience is limited.
• Einstein’s theories of relativity toppled Newton’s conception of reality.
• Classical physics (Newtonian physics) is limited in its depiction of reality, which is actually relativistic.
• According to quantum mechanics, the future and past are not etched into the present and the universe participates in a game of chance.
• Quantum mechanics describes a reality in which things are sometimes uncertain until observed.
• Superstring theory unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, has the potential to explain all of nature’s forces and matter, and suggests the existence of extra dimensions beyond what we can see.
• If superstring theory is proven correct, our current understanding of reality would be limited to a small slice of a richly textured cosmic fabric.

Key Quotes

• “The overarching lesson that has emerged from scientific inquiry over the last century is that human experience is often a misleading guide to the true nature of reality.”
• “A core feature of classical physics is that if you know the positions and velocities of all objects at a particular moment, Newton’s equations, together with their Maxwellian updating, can tell you their positions and velocities at any other moment, past or future. Without equivocation, classical physics declares that the past and future are etched into the present … But according to the quantum laws, even if you make the most perfect measurements possible of how things are today, the best you can ever hope to do is predict the probability that things will be one way or another at some chosen time in the future, or that things were one way or another at some chosen time in the past.”
• “The universe, according to quantum mechanics, is not etched into the present; the universe, according to quantum mechanics, participates in a game of chance.”
• “If superstring theory is proven correct, we will be forced to accept that the reality we have known is but a delicate chiffon draped over a thick and richly textured cosmic fabric.”

About the Author

Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist and mathematician, best known for his contributions to our understanding of string theory and the concept of parallel universes. He is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and a co-founder of the World Science Festival. Greene is also an award-winning author, with books including The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and Icarus at the Edge of Time. He has been featured in numerous television programs, including the documentary series The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Elegant Universe, both of which were based on his books.

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Can’t quite get to all the nonfiction and self-help books that interest you? Read Books I Want My Kids to Read Someday here.

I love a good journalist. Tara Parker-Pope is one of those. She’s done her research on the research, and now presents us with a thorough examination of the science of marriage. Here are my notes on For Better: How the Surprising Science of Happy Couples Can Help Your Marriage Succeed.

Key Takeaways:

• Contrary to popular opinion, “. . . marital stability appears to be improving each decade.”
• Modern marriage is sometimes called the “soul mate marriage,” and the expectations on it are high.
• “. . . Strong marriages have at least a five-to-one daily ratio of positive to negative interactions.”
• Scientists have found a genetic link for monogamous and non-monogamous behavior.
• Hormonal contraceptives can cause women to choose the wrong partner, blunting her natural instincts.
• Marriage is a protective factor for colds, cancer, heart attacks, dementia and more.
• The longer a relationship continues, the less sex women crave. “Researchers from Hamburg-Eppendorf University in Germany interviewed 530 men and women about their relationships and interest in sex. They found that 60 percent of the thirty-year-old women studied wanted sex ‘often’ at the start of a relationship. But within four years this figure dropped to fewer than half, and by twenty years, only one in five women wanted regular sex. The sharp decline in sexual interest wasn’t seen among men in the study.”
• Researchers found that the way a partner describes how they met their spouse–whether their story of the event is tinted with optimism or with negative or regretful overtones–predicts their future with that spouse. (Happy couples also say “we” or “us” more often than unhappy ones.)
• Eye rolling is one of the most reliable body language indicators of troubled marriages.
• “Marriage researchers say that 70 percent of the time, the conflicts that arise between couples are never resolved. In one study, couples who were tracked for a decade were still fighting about the same things they had been arguing about ten years earlier . . . The lesson, say a number of noted marriage researchers, is that compatibility is overrated.”
• “Studies show that women tend to initiate about 80 percent of fights. This doesn’t mean women are to blame for causing all the trouble in marriages. It just means they are more willing to take the emotional risk of trying to resolve problems.”
• Physiologically, women respond with greater calm to conflict than do men.
• Successful arguments often start with a complaint. Unsuccessful ones often start with a criticism.
• Successful arguers know how to de-escalate a fight using calm tones and non-hostile body language.
• New parenthood lowers marital satisfaction greatly, though largely temporarily.
• A fair division of household chores is one of the best ways to avoid marital tension.
• Often, women chose to take on more responsibility at home because they don’t want to give up control. They also care more about and are better at deciphering details.
• Arguments between same-sex couples seem to contain fewer verbal attacks and less controlling behavior.
• Couples who stay married often marry after the age of twenty-five, are not college dropouts, wait ten years before deciding whether or not to divorce, marry someone with similar interests and background, and marry someone whose parents are still married.

About the Author

Tara Parker-Pope is a writer and journalist who specializes in health and wellness. She is best known for her work as a health columnist at The New York Times, where she has written about a wide range of health topics, from fitness and nutrition to medical treatments and public health policy. Parker-Pope is widely respected for her in-depth reporting, her ability to translate complex medical information into accessible language, and her commitment to helping people live healthier, happier lives.

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Can’t quite get to all the nonfiction and self-help books that interest you? Read Books I Want My Kids to Read Someday here.

David Burns has been writing about depression, anxiety and one of the best-known treatments for it, cognitive therapy, for a long time. In my opinion, this is his best work. When Panic Attacks: A New Drug-free Therapy to Beat Chronic Shyness, Anxiety and Phobia provides surprising methods for combating these difficult mental health challenges, and his conversational–even humorous–tone will inspire you to try them (no matter how wacky they may seem).

Read this book to learn a variety of interesting techniques for coaching yourself through difficult moments.

Key Takeaways

There are many cognitive exercises you can use to self-calm during an acute episode of anxiety, panic or depression. Here are just a few:

• The “what-if technique”: Write down the negative thought and ask questions to challenge them. Keep asking questions until you get to the core fear.
• The experimental technique: Test negative thoughts like a scientist tests a theory, asking for and weighing the evidence.
• The reattribution technique: Rather than talking yourself out of your negative thought or fear, simply take a more well-rounded perspective and reduce exaggeration. Look for the shades of grey.
• The “process versus outcome” technique: When worried about your performance, think about both the effort you put in and the outcome. You can control your preparation and hard work, but external factors may affect the outcome. Focus on the effort you put in, like attending classes and preparing well, and accept the outcome.
• The should-catching technique: Catch any “shoulds” that you find in your negative thought or fear. Realieze that “words that cause emotional distress often fall outside the categories of moral, legal, or laws-of-the-universe shoulds. For example, feeling shy is not immoral, illegal, or a law of the universe.”
• The “be specific” technique: Don’t let overgeneralizations fool you. Be specific about your self-critiques so they will hold less weight. Performance anxiety can come from fear of failure and being labeled a failure as a person.
• The “supervisor from hell” technique: Play the part of a grumpy supervisor (your inner critic) who is telling you the things that your brain is telling you in your negative moment. Then, gently talk to the supervisor, questioning them until you see how illogical your inner critic is.
• The self-monitoring technique: Count your negative thoughts throughout the day. Continuously monitoring negative thoughts can lead to a significant decrease in them and a noticeable improvement in your mood. You can use a score counter, like the ones golfers use, to keep track of your negative thoughts.
• The worry breaks technique: Schedule time to purposely allow negative thoughts and feelings to surface and not fight against them. During these scheduled times, you allow yourself to experience the negative thoughts fully. The rest of the day, you can focus on living positively and productively.
• The paradoxical magnification technique: Instead of refuting your negative thoughts, buy in to them and exaggerate them until they become humorous and absurd. “For example, if you feel inferior, you could tell yourself, ‘Yes, it’s true. In fact, I’m probably the most inferior person in California at this time, and maybe in the entire United States.'”
• The humor technique: Substitute a funny, absurd fantasy in place of the one that’s making you anxious.
• The acceptance technique: Instead of defending against the negative thought, find some truth in it. Agree with it, and befriend the critic in your mind.
• The cost-benefit analysis technique: Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of having a negative thought that is bothering you.
• The “devil’s advocate” technique: To overcome tempting negative thoughts, make a list and give it to a friend or family member. Ask them to act as the devil and tempt you with the thoughts on the list. The other person should use seductive language and address you with “you.” Your goal is to resist the temptation and defeat the devil. It can be challenging to do this, especially if your list is honest. If you get stuck, reverse roles so your friend can demonstrate a more effective response.

Other techniques for effectively overcoming an acute anxiety or depression episode are behavioral rather than cognitive. Some of these are:

• Shame-attacking exercises: In order to overcome a fear of embarrassment, intentionally do something foolish in public. “You’ll usually discover that most people don’t look down on you and the world doesn’t really come to an end. In fact, most of the time, everyone ends up having a lot of fun.”
• Exercise: Bursts of intense exercise, like jumping jacks, can stop a panic attack and get you out of a negative spiral.
• Exposure therapy: Instead of avoiding your fears, engage in them! This is one of the best ways to overcome the fear. Keep track of your progress in writing.

About the Author

David D. Burns is an American psychiatrist, author, and pioneer in the development of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). He received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and is best known for his bestselling self-help book, “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,” which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and is widely regarded as a classic in the field of CBT. He has also written several other books on CBT and psychotherapy, and is a frequent speaker and trainer at professional conferences and workshops. Burns has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field of mental health, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists.

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You’ve probably already noticed that these days, figuring out what to eat isn’t a simple matter. Opinions are all over the place. Unlike most diet books, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan is objective—maybe the most objective, balanced diet book out there. Pollan is not a nutritionist, but a journalist seeking the answer to a seemingly simple question, namely: “What should I eat?” You’ll never sound gullible quoting from a book by Pollan.

Key Takeaways

Pollan offers sixty-four succinctly and divinely worded food truisms, including “Eat only foods that eventually will rot” and “It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.)”

Says Pollan: “There have been, and can be, healthy high-fat and healthy low-fat diets, but they have always been diets built around whole foods.”

And: “I learned that in fact science knows a lot less about nutrition than you would expect—that in fact nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science … Nutrition science … is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650—very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate? I think I’ll wait a while.”

A wide variety of traditional diets are healthy; the modern diet is not. “What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets.”

The book’s bottom line is this: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

About the Author

Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his work on the intersection of food, agriculture, and culture, and has written several highly acclaimed books on these topics. Pollan is a strong advocate for sustainable agriculture and the importance of knowing where our food comes from. He has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and has won numerous awards for his writing, including the James Beard Award and the John Burroughs Medal. Pollan’s books, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food,” have had a significant impact on the way we think about food and the environment.

Malcom Gladwell, y’all. He’s not just another writer. He’s a genius journalist, whose stories keep you on edge and intellectually stimulated at the same time–even his story about ketchup. (Yes, he’s written one, and it was awesome.)

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is about what happens when we make crucial decisions in the tiny span of time between the external stimuli and the onset of logical thought. It takes you from a doctor’s office to a forest fire to a police shooting, recounting the ways that professionals applied split-second intuition (or missed their opportunity to do so) in vivid detail.

Read this book to better understand the inner workings of your mind, to better appreciate its powers of computation, and to learn when to listen to your intuition–and when not to.

Key Takeaways

• Intuition is a powerful tool. Gladwell argues that our first impressions and gut feelings are often more accurate than we give them credit for. He explores the concept of “thin-slicing,” which is the ability of our unconscious mind to make snap judgments based on small amounts of information.
• Sometimes, split-second decisions are more reliable and accurate than well-thought-out ones–but only when instinct has been cultivated over time with experience and expertise. These Gladwell calls “blink moments” – instances where people make split-second decisions that have significant consequences. He explores how experts in various fields, such as art, music, and medicine, use their intuition to make quick and accurate decisions.
• When trying to decide if a painting was real or a fake, the split-second guess of three experts was more accurate than the well thought out decision of different experts.
• Context matters too. Gladwell emphasizes that context is crucial in our snap judgments. He argues that we need to be aware of the factors that influence our gut reactions and take steps to eliminate biases and external factors.
• We can improve our intuition over time. Some ideas that can help us do this are: practicing mindfulness, paying attention to our first impressions, and seeking out diverse perspectives. Gladwell also discusses the role that experience plays in developing expertise and intuition.
• Intuition does have some drawbacks, however. Snap judgments can be influenced by factors such as stress, fatigue, and emotion, and how these factors can lead to errors in judgment.
• Intuition doesn’t always work when fear short-circuits our instincts. An example is when cops shot an innocent kid while looking for a criminal (they were inexperienced and didn’t follow protocol).
• Bias is also powerful and can affect our intuition negatively. Gladwell explores how our cultural backgrounds, experiences, and stereotypes can influence the way we perceive people and situations.

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and speaker. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has published several best-selling books, including The Tipping Point, Outliers and Blink. Gladwell is known for his ability to weave together complex ideas and research to create engaging narratives that challenge our assumptions and offer new insights.

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Whatever Arises, Love That is one of my favorite book titles ever. When it comes to this book by spiritual teacher Matt Kahn, a self-proclaimed channel, this short phrase is pretty much the whole show. In it, the idea of acceptance of what is is expanded and expounded upon until (hopefully) it sticks.

Read this book as a way of getting the title’s message more deeply into your mind and to encourage you to start or continue a habit of mindfulness.

Key Takeaways

• Whatever arises in your life, choose to love it. This practice is the gateway to feelings of well-being.
• Honor your feelings. Give them permission to be. In this way, we avoid rumination during times of hardship, and instead gracefully accept the present moment.
• No matter what life situation comes about, meet it with love and acceptance.
• Repeat the words “I love you” over and over throughout the day in order to practice acceptance of what is.

Key Quotes

• “No matter what seems to trigger you, each reaction represents the releasing of cellular debris collected from lifetimes of experiences.”
• “Throughout this process, it is important to remember that a sensation only feels like a barrier for as long as you refuse to feel it. As it is invited to be felt, a willingness to experience each moment as an opportunity to heal clears out layers of cellular memory to make room for the emergence of heart-centered consciousness.”
• “Instead of using this practice as a cosmic fire extinguisher to merely resolve the flames of personal despair, I invite you to treasure your heart on a regular basis, until the world you are viewing reflects back the light that your love reveals.”
• “While moments of transcendence are incredible to behold, the true benchmark of spiritual maturity is how often your words and actions are aligned with love.”

About the Author

Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher, author, and empathic healer. He is the author of several books on spirituality and personal growth, including Whatever Arises, Love That and The Universe Always Has a Plan. Kahn’s teachings emphasize the power of self-love and compassion to transform our lives and the world around us, and he has gained a large following through his YouTube channel and live events.

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Parenting books based on research–particularly recent research–are a nice break from polemics based on anecdotes and opinion. Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is particularly worthwhile since its focus is teaching children, not disciplining them.

Read it to be in the know about stuff your parents might’ve been clueless about.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t praise kids for their smarts, or they might think of intelligence as a fixed feature and become afraid to try new things. Instead, praise them for effort and persistence, showing them that intelligence can be developed and motivating them to take on difficult challenges.
• Kids who get even fifteen more minutes of sleep per night on average do much better in school.
• Do talk to your kids about race. Kids are constantly looking for differences. They want to belong, so they often exclude others unless told not to.
• All kids lie. See untruth telling as teachable moments, not moral failure.
• Teach kids to interact with siblings in much the same way they interact with friends.

In addition, here are some tips for helping a baby learn how to speak:

• Words should accompany interaction, especially facial cues. TV doesn’t help with this.
• Follow the baby’s lead. Say the words for items they’re showing interest in, when the internal motivation to learn the word is already present.
• For small babies, wiggle a toy or object to draw attention before naming it. 
• Incorporate common sentences with new words.
• Say the same idea in different words.
• Respond to almost all vocalization in same way, teaching the child they’ll affect you in predictable ways by their sounds.

About the Authors

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman are American journalists and authors, known for their work in popularizing research in social and behavioral sciences. They co-authored the books Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children and Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, which explore topics such as parenting, education, and competition. Their writing has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek.

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Anger is natural. It’s a normal part of life. But we don’t want to experience it for longer than necessary. Fortunately, our emotions aren’t entirely out of our control; by examining our negative beliefs, our accompanying negative feelings become less persistent and less convincing. There are many methods for doing so, but the one with the most evidence behind it is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

In The Feeling Good Handbook, one of the most-read books on the subject, David Burns details the process. I highly recommend this and other CBT books, or working with a therapist who uses the method regularly. (There are also CBT worksheets and instructions online.)

In spite of the prodigious amount of literature devoted to the subject, CBT is a simple, intuitive process. Working either with a therapist, or alone with a journal, you identify your most anxious, fearful or hateful thoughts. Then you examine it objectively, asking yourself if the thought is entirely true, or if it’s untrue or just partly true–an exaggeration. By the time you’re done, you’ve found at least a few more positive thoughts to counteract the negative ones, and as a result, your depression or anxiety is lessened. In a perfect world, every child would be taught the technique in school, and every adult would practice it regularly.

As one of the early, and most thorough and textbook-like books on cognitive therapy, The Feeling Good Handbook has become a legit self-help classic. However, other books on cognitive therapy use the same basic principles and might be more concise. I recommend reading at least a few on this subject and using cognitive therapy weekly at least throughout your life.

Key Takeaways:

• The way to change how you feel is to change how you think.
• “If you say, ‘I just can’t help the way I feel,’ you will only make yourself a victim of your misery–and you’ll be fooling yourself, because you can change the way you feel.”
• “I don’t believe you should try to be happy all the time, or in total control of your feelings. That would just be a perfectionistic trap. You cannot always be completely rational and objective.”
• Beware of the ten most common forms of twisted thinking, namely: all-or-nothing thinking; overgeneralization; using a mental filter; discounting the positive; jumping to conclusions; magnification; emotional reasoning; ‘should’ statements; labeling/name calling; personalization; and blame.
• The author suggests ten ways to question your negative thoughts: examining the evidence (like a judge would); using the experimental technique or the survey method (like a scientist would); thinking in shades of gray or using the semantic method (like a philosopher would); using the cost-benefit analysis method (like an economist would) and more.

About the Author

David D. Burns is a psychiatrist and author known for his work in the field of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and self-help literature. He gained prominence through his best-selling book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,” which was first published in 1980.

“Feeling Good” is a self-help book that focuses on CBT techniques to help readers understand and manage their emotions, alleviate depression, and improve their overall mental well-being. The book presents practical strategies and exercises to challenge negative thought patterns and develop healthier ways of thinking.

In addition to “Feeling Good,” David Burns has written several other books on related topics, such as anxiety, relationships, and communication. Some of his other notable works include:

1. “The Feeling Good Handbook”
2. “When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life”
3. “Intimate Connections: The Clinically Proven Method for Making Close Friends and Finding a Loving Partner”
4. “The Ten Days to Self-Esteem”

David Burns is known for his engaging writing style and his ability to translate complex psychological concepts into practical advice that readers can apply to their lives. He has also been involved in teaching and training mental health professionals in the techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

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It’s another marriage book, but it’s not just another marriage book. It’s The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages: The Little Things That Make a Big Difference, and in it, researcher Shaunti Feldhahn throws all the researcher at us, giving us the closest thing we have to a scientific formula for a happy partnership.

Read this book to find out what happy couples do and don’t do and to begin to incorporate the helpful habits into your current life (married or not).

Key Takeaways

• Highly happy couples feel deeply cared about. When asked whether they care deeply about their spouse in a survey, eight of ten said “yes, absolutely.” In fact, out of the 1,261 people officially surveyed, only nine people said, “not really.” However, more than four out of every ten coupled people said they believed their spouses didn’t care about them deeply. This might explain some of the problems between unhappy couples: they care about their partner, but don’t feel cared about in return. 
• “Once you believe your spouse absolutely cares about you, those distancing feelings of hurt, anger and resentment arise a lot less often,” writes Feldhahn.
• Highly happy couples always assume good intentions. “By expecting the best, you bring out the best.” 
• Highly happy couples do go to bed mad. They take time to cool off before continuing difficult conversations.
• Highly happy couples are not brutally honest. They know how to calm their partner and sometimes, tell white lies.
• Highly happy couples hang out with each other. In doing so, their ratio of positive-to-negative interactions is tipped to the positive side.

About the Author

Shaunti Feldhahn is an American author and social researcher. She is best known for her books on relationships, personal finance, and work-life balance, including For Women Only and For Men Only. She has also written several fiction and non-fiction books on other topics such as leadership and success. Feldhahn holds a degree in public policy from Harvard University and has worked as an investment banker and a public policy analyst.

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There’s really no way around it: In order to be a person in a partnership in the 21st century, you pretty much have to know about attachment styles. Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship by Stan Tatkin is one of many primers on the topic, but its a really good one.

Read this book to understand your own attachment style and to learn what to expect from the attachment of others.

Key Takeaways

• There are three types of partnership styles: securely attached; islands; and waves. Islands prefer aloneness and are often uncommunicative. Waves are highly emotional, turbulent and have a great need for reassurance. Securely attached partners often give and receive assurance, but also trust their partners and don’t disconnect.

• One way to securely attach to your partner and to provide for their needs is to learn what their triggers are. Often, people feel like they are “messed up” and have a lot wrong with them, but most people have only three or four major overarching triggers. These have often been wired in them from a young age and will likely be with them for the rest of their lives, to some degree. The loving partner’s goal should be to understand, recognize and calm these triggers as needed so that their partner feels safe and protected. No shame. No blame. Just helping them get through that situation. Then, when it’s your turn, they will do the same for you. 

• Being on each other’s side, always, is the best way to engender feelings of security. Also, attachment requires full and complete honesty, especially regarding third parties (coworkers, friends, etc.). 

About the Author

Stan Tatkin is an American psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is the founder and developer of the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), a research-based and innovative method of treating couples and families. Tatkin has written several books on relationships, including “Wired for Dating,” “Wired for Love,” and “Your Brain on Love.” He has also been featured in various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today. Tatkin has a private practice in Calabasas, California, where he provides therapy and training for individuals and couples.

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I have a special affection for the book What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest Growing Company in the History of the World by Jeff Jarvis. It not only changed how I thought about business and marketing; it is the book that ignited my passion for nonfiction. Here, you’ll find good business strategies, but you’ll find something else, too: a new way of thinking about economics, creativity and society.

Read this book to get your mind blown in the way that the best nonfiction books are capable of doing.

Key Takeaways

We are in a new age of marketing and business, the author writes. The new rules of the new age are as follows:

• Customers hold the power now–not marketers, managers or CEOs.
• With social media, customers have the ability to have a major impact on large organizations in an instant. Be aware of the power of the crowd. People have easy access to information and can either support or harm a company based on their experiences.
• The key to success is no longer just marketing, but having meaningful conversations with customers.
• Trust and control have an inverse relationship. Trust your customers and let go of control.
• Listen to your customers. Be honest, transparent, and collaborative. Encourage, enable, and protect innovation. Allow customers to feel like they are a part of the process and able to provide suggestions.
• Life is always in a beta stage! Embrace changes and improvements.
• Amazingly, “free” is a now viable business model! Many of the largest online companies (Facebook, Google) started by offering their services for free–and still do. The “tree” business model involves giving away value to expand your market base, then making money through alternative means.
• The mass market has been replaced by a multiplicity of niche markets.
• Don’t just be a product; be a platform! Help others build value on your site. Examples of platforms: Home Depot (for contractors) and Continental Airlines (for booking tours).
• Ownership is no longer the key to success–openness is.
• Google commodifies everything, especially knowledge. The economy is no longer based on scarcity, but on abundance. Control over products or distribution does not guarantee premium profits.
• Focus on intangible solutions and rethinking physical products for an online presence.
• Determine what business you are really in and protect it by offering solutions better than competitors.
• Blunt honesty is more effective in marketing materials and blogs. When creating marketing materials, always use a natural and human tone.
• Examples of Google-league marketers include: Facebook, Craigslist, Amazon, Flickr, WordPress and PayPal.

Google Laws:

• Give control to customers and they will use it.
• Your worst customer can be your best friend, providing valuable feedback about how to improve.
• Your best customer is your partner. Incentivize them to spread the word.
• Links are vital. Get linked to and talked about.
• Focus on what you do best and link to the rest.
• Join a network or, ideally, become a platform for others.
• Think in a distributed manner.
• Being searchable is essential for visibility.
• Life and business are transparent.
• Learn to handle mistakes well.
• Rethink company structure for an “elegant organization.”
• Small is the new big in a post-scarcity economy.

About the Author

Jeff Jarvis is a journalist, author, and professor. He is best known for his work as a media critic and commentator on the intersection of technology, media, and society. He is the author of several books, including “What Would Google Do?” and “Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live”. He is a professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches courses on technology and entrepreneurship.

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Oprah loves Eckhart Tolle, and she’s almost never wrong. In her book of short essays, One Thing I Know for Sure, she says A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose is her favorite book of all time. I prefer The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, but both are pretty great.

Read these books for inspiration to try the evidence-based strategy of mindfulness (present moment awareness) for mental health.

Key Takeaways from The Power of Now

• Realize that possessions, social status, relationships, beliefs, and other ego identifications are not truly who you are. The ego’s needs are endless and lead to a constant state of fear and want. Instead of exploring its manifestations, understand that the mind is not dysfunctional but becomes so when mistaken for self.
• To end this delusion, focus on the present moment and body awareness to stay rooted in the now.
• Experiment with closing your eyes and waiting for your next thought, realizing that intense presence frees you from thought. To deepen your connection with your inner body, focus your attention within and let all negativity flow through without reacting.
• Focus your attention on the feeling inside of you, even if it is painful. Don’t judge or analyze the feeling, simply acknowledge its presence.
• Be mindful of any defensiveness, as it is likely an attempt to protect an illusory identity or image in your mind.
• There are many portals to the source, including the now, dreamless sleep, cessation of thinking, surrender, being in touch with the inner body energy field, disidentifying with the mind, and silence. You only need one portal to reach your inner being.
• Love is not a portal, it is an inner feeling.
• Space and silence are portals, as you cannot think and be aware of them at the same time.
• The body is the way to reach your spirit or inner body.
• Adjust your vision and look closely at what you thought was a stone statue. You might find that there was never a stone statue, but instead it was an angel all along.
• Illness is not real in the present moment; rather, it is the belief, label, and past/future associations that give it continuity in time and make it seem real. Outside of time, it is nothing.

Key Takeaways from A New Earth

• Humanity is ready for a major transformation in consciousness (enlightenment). This book discusses how to accelerate this process.
• Get rid of ego. It’s just not helping. All that anger, defensiveness, arguing, making wrong, being right … all of that can safely go away. The death of your ego is not the death of you. Instead, it’s the start of your real life.
• When you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as a field of conscious Presence. (I have a couple of friends who consciously follow this advice, and it shows.)

A Few Good Quotes from A New Earth

• Shift “your attention from the external form of your body to the feeling of aliveness inside it.”
• “Give up defining yourself—to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you.”
• “An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks, and acts as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetrate the unawakened state.
• The author tells of how he once saw a crazy woman talking to herself on a bus, then realized he was like her. Her constant angry chatter was the same as his constant anxious mental chatter. “If she was mad, then everyone was mad, including myself. There were differences in degree only.”
• “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”
• “There are people who have renounced all possessions but have a bigger ego than some millionaires.” Take away one ego identity, and it will find another.

About the Author

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher, author and speaker. He was born in Germany in 1948 and later moved to England. Tolle’s teachings focus on helping individuals connect with their inner selves and find peace and happiness in the present moment, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. His books have been translated into over 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Tolle continues to offer teachings and workshops on mindfulness and spirituality to this day.

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This book sells itself. Who doesn’t want to break a bad habit or learn how to maintain healthier routines? It’s called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, and it’s written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath.

Read this book to map out a plan for change, whether personally or professionally.

Key Takeaways

• Changing a habit or a culture is like forcing an elephant carrying a writer to change direction. One must not only convince the rider (the rational mind) but also the elephant (the emotions). In addition, one must make the path easier to follow. In this book, the writers describe these three main ways to encourage change: direct the rider; motivate the elephant; and shape the path.
• To direct the rider: find the bright spots; script the critical moves; and point to the destination.
• To motivate the elephant: find the feeling; shrink the change; and grow your people.
• To shape the path: tweak the environment; build habits; rally the herd; and keep the switch going.
• The Happiness Hypothesis study showed that our emotional side is like an dlephant and our rational side is its rider, with the rider holding the reins and seeming to be in control. However, the rider’s control is precarious as it is small compared to the elephant. When the elephant and the rider disagree, the rider always loses.
• On finding the bright spots: The “bright spots” refers to the positive aspects of a situation or a person. To find the bright spots, one must avoid the “fundamental attribution error”, which is the tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to their inherent qualities instead of the circumstances they are in. This is why shows like “The Dog Whisperer” or “Super Nanny”, which depict the transformation of “bad” dogs or kids, captivate our attention. The fact that these dogs or kids can be reformed in a short intervention amazes us–but the truth is that they were never bad. They had bright spots already, but those spots had to be highlighted.
• On scripting the critical moves: In Miner County, South Dakota, high school students conducted a survey to revive their dying community. They found that if residents spent just 10% more of their disposable income at home, the local economy would be boosted by $7 million. A year later, the amount of money spent in Miner County had increased by $15.6 million, showing that clarity is important for change to be successful.
• Another way to script the critical moves is to preload decisions. Preloading a decision refers to making a decision in advance, such as deciding to go to the gym after dropping off the kids, to increase the likelihood of following through with it. This technique involves action triggers, which make the decision easier by reducing the mental effort required to make it later. By preloading the decision, there is less work involved in making it later on.
• A research study conducted by Peter Golwitzer and Veronica Brandstatter tracked college students who had the opportunity to earn extra credit by writing a paper by December 26th. While most students had the intention of writing the paper, only 33% actually wrote and submitted it. However, for a different group of students in the study, the researchers required them to set action triggers–to note in advance when and where they intended to write the report. The results showed a significant improvement, with a whopping 75% of those students successfully writing the report.
• On pointing to the destination: Crystal Jones was a teacher for Teach for America in 2003, teaching first grade in Atlanta, Georgia. The school lacked a kindergarten program, so she had to use language that motivated her students. Jones told her students, “By the end of this school year, you will be third graders,” and held a “graduation” ceremony when they reached second and third grade. She referred to her students as “scholars” and, by the end of the year, more than 90% of the kids were reading at or above a third-grade level.
• For change to be effective, it must be clear and specific. A local media campaign was created to encourage people to switch to 1% milk and it was a success, increasing the market share of low-fat milk from 18% to 35%.
• On finding the feeling: Robyn Waters, a “Trend Manager” at Target, played a crucial role in transforming the company from being similar to Walmart to the iconic “Tarzhay”. She achieved this by creatively incorporating displays of colorful M&Ms and the latest Apple iMac computers to demonstrate the importance of incorporating color in their offerings.
• The rider wants to “analyze-think-change” but in reality we “see-feel-change.”
• Change can be facilitated by visual and emotional cues. For example, a presentation on reducing spending on gloves was made more effective by laying out all the gloves with different prices on a table, rather than using spreadsheets.
• On shrinking the change: In 2007, Alia Cru and Ellen Langer conducted a study on hotel maids and their exercise habits. The study divided the maids into two groups, with one group being told that they were already meeting the recommended exercise levels, while the other group was informed about the benefits of exercising. After 4 weeks, the results showed that the maids who were told that they were good exercisers lost an average of 1.8 pounds, which is equivalent to almost a half-pound per week, a significant weight loss. However, the other group of maids did not experience any weight loss.
• On growing your people: Lovelace Hospital Systems in Albuquerque, NM was facing rapid turnover, a common issue in the healthcare industry. To address this, they hired Susan Wood of Appreciative Inquiry, a method of transforming organizations by focusing on their strengths rather than weaknesses. Wood discovered that the nurses who remained at the hospital longer believed in the noble nature of their profession. In response, the hospital created an orientation program that emphasized the admirable qualities of nursing and established mentorship programs to enhance the nurses’ skills and knowledge. Employee satisfaction surveys indicated that these measures were effective, and as a result, turnover decreased by 30% over the following year.
• On tweaking the environment: In 2000, a study was conducted in a Chicago movie theater where free popcorn and soft drinks were offered to movie-goers. The popcorn was intentionally made to be unappetizing, but even so, the results were surprising. People with larger popcorn buckets ended up eating 53% more popcorn than those with smaller buckets, and most of them were not aware of this fact. The results showed that the environment can play a huge role in affecting behavior.
• In another study, participants were given chocolates or radishes and then asked to solve puzzles. Those who had only eaten radishes gave up after 8 minutes, while those who had eaten cookies gave up after 19 minutes, showing that self-control is an exhaustible resource.
• It was also noted that our mind works differently when we are supervised, such as when learning something new, compared to when we are not, such as when driving a car. This is why shopping can be tiring.
• On rallying the herd: We look for environmental cues and examples of others to know how to act. Therefore, make your change feel like a norm that has already been established. For example: “In the 1980s, Jay Winsten, a public health professor at Harvard, got interested in the idea of a ‘designated driver’..” unknown in the US at that time. “Winsten and his team collaborated with producers, writers and actors from more than 160 prime-time TV programs, sprinkling designated-driver moments naturally into the plots.” Requested just “5 seconds” of dialogue featuring the idea. “In 1991, three years after the campaign launched, nine out of ten people were familiar with the term designated driver.”
• On keeping the switch going: Punishment rarely works. Instead, change the environment. Take small steps. Praise all steps on right path. You will get there.

About the Author

Chip Heath and Dan Heath are American authors and speakers who specialize in the fields of business and psychology. They are brothers and co-authors of several popular books, including Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. In Switch, the Heath brothers use insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to explain why change is difficult and to offer practical advice for making change easier. The book is widely regarded as a practical and accessible guide to overcoming resistance and making real, lasting change in both personal and organizational contexts. Chip Heath is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, while Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University’s CASE center. Together, they are known for their ability to make complex concepts accessible and actionable for a general audience.

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Ghosts! Telepathy! Magic! Is there a reader on Earth who doesn’t love the idea of a scientific inquiry regarding evidence for the paranormal? When it comes to nonfiction, Fringeology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable – And Couldn’t by Steve Volk is in a class of its own. Where do they even put it on the shelf at Barnes and Noble?

Read this book because, firstly, you know you’re curious and secondly, because it might open your mind.

Key Takeaways

• Scientists can be dogmatic and irrational in their beliefs, just like anyone else. This is a natural human tendency. The debate should not be between paranormal believers and skeptics but rather what evidence is sufficient to support the paranormal. This perspective is referred to as “possibilianism.” It is the position that all truly open-minded people take to the paranormal.
• Chapter One focuses on near-death experiences and presents evidence to suggest they are real. There are numerous accounts of these experiences with interesting similarities between them, and skeptics have not provided a satisfactory explanation.
• Chapter Two focuses on telepathy and presents evidence for this paranormal phenomenon. A small effect has been proven when large enough samples are used; however, the effect is not large enough to serve practical purposes. The author als describes the ongoing debate between skeptics represented by CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) and the Parapsychological Association, whose findings are sometimes dismissed without good reason.
• Chapter Three explores the concept of consciousness outside of the brain. It provides an overview of quantum physics, which suggests that the smallest units of matter have mind of their own. The author tells the story of Dr. Stuart Hameroff, who wrote about consciousness.
• Chapter Four discusses the possibility of aliens and UFO sightings, including a convincing sighting in Stevensville, Texas. The author points out that UFOs are certainly real, since they are defined simply as “unidentified flying objects,” but that most sightings have Earth-based explanations.
• Chapter Five focuses on ghosts and the author’s personal experience living in a haunted house. The reality of ghostly phenomena is debated.
• Chapter Six explores the Overview Effect, a feeling of unity or oneness with all that is experienced by many astronauts who view the earth from space. Edgar Mitchell, who had this experience, is on a quest to understand the source of the unity he felt.
• Chapter Seven discusses the positive effects of meditation and meditative prayer, as researched by Dr. Andrew Newberg.
• Chapter Eight focuses on lucid dreaming and the experience of becoming aware one is dreaming while still dreaming. The findings of notable sleep and dream researcher, Dr. Stephen LaBerge, are explored.
• Chapter Nine explores Induced After-Death Communication (IADC), a therapeutic technique for overcoming trauma, which involves recalling painful memories and moving the eyes from side to side. The story of Al Botkin, who discovered this therapy, is told. Although anecdotal evidence is promising, no large-scale studies have been conducted.
• Chapters Ten and Eleven present the author’s conclusions. The author discusses the human desire for certainty, though intellectual curiosity is often a wiser perspective to take.

About the Author

Steve Volk is a journalist and author, best known for his book Fringeology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable–And Couldn’t. The book explores the topic of the paranormal and the boundaries of science and skepticism. Volk is a contributing editor at Philadelphia Magazine and has written for a number of other publications.

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Sometimes, you need some fatherly advice about money–from someone else’s father, of course. Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! combines good old-fashioned common sense with professional insights on financial success that apply to a wide range of investors (even–especially–the newbies).

Read this book to fill in your knowledge gaps regarding money and to get inspired to start an investment strategy today.

Key Takeaways

• The definition of  the word “rich” is “able to live off the interest from one’s investments.” This is your goal.
• Look where no one else is looking for business opportunities. Don’t follow the crowd; buy when stocks crash rather than selling, as others do.
• Know the difference between an asset and a liability. An asset puts money into your income column and a liability takes it out. Everything else, including personal property that can’t be easily sold, is neutral. Many people see their home as an asset, but it is not an asset if you aren’t gaining income on it.
• Pay yourself first, even before paying your bills. Put money into your investments first! You’ll be forced to use your creativity to get the rest taken care of, too.
• Don’t fear risk. This is what keeps many people from investing in anything high yield and going with mutual funds and others safe investments instead.
• Money is not real. It’s all just a game. Have fun with it!
• If you don’t enjoy a certain type of investing, do something else. You’re unlikely to be successful at something you dislike. 
• Hire people who are smarter than you.
• Most rich people lose it all at some point but they usually make it back–and then some–because they know what they’re doing.
• Create a corporation and wrap it around your largest assets.
• Educate yourself about money. Read advice books and follow it.

About the Author

Robert Kiyosaki is an American author, entrepreneur, and investor. He is best known for his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, which has become a personal finance classic and has been translated into 51 languages. In the book, Kiyosaki shares lessons he learned about money and investing from his “rich dad,” and contrasts them with the financial advice he received from his own father. He has written several other books on personal finance, including Cashflow Quadrant and Retire Young Retire Rich. Kiyosaki is also the founder of the Rich Dad Company, which provides financial education and training.

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Meditation isn’t just for the woo-woo crowd. Written by agnostic journalist Dan Harris, Ten Percent Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story is a well-written memoir about an everyday workaholic who takes up meditation.

Read it to convince your skeptical self to try this evidence-based strategy for improving mental health.

Key Takeaways

• Studies have shown the transformative effects of meditation, including evidence for the existence of enlightenment.
• The purpose of meditation is not to feel something, but to simply try and build your meditation muscle, similar to practicing a sport or a musical instrument.
• Meditation can help you improve your work relationships, as evidenced by the author’s own transformation from being a difficult colleague to being seen as “easy”.
• To meditate, first choose a focal point for your breath, such as your mouth, chest, or belly. Whenever your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back to your breath. You can silently repeat “in-out” to help you focus.
• After grounding yourself in your breath, practice “noting”–noticing and labeling thoughts or dominant feelings without judgment. This is called “choiceless awareness” and can lead to a real breakthrough in meditation.
• Don’t worry too much about how you feel while meditating. The goal is to redirect your attention back to your breath whenever it wanders. That’s the whole game.
• During a long meditation, it’s normal to experience both bliss and misery within the same hour. As you advance in your practice, the ups and downs will become less pronounced.
• If focusing on your breath doesn’t work for you, try a body scan meditation, a compassion meditation, or a choiceless awareness meditation instead.

About the Author

Dan Harris is an American journalist and author, best known for his book 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story. The book was published in 2014 and describes Harris’ journey from skepticism towards self-help and spirituality to a more balanced and mindful life. In it, he explains how he found inner peace through meditation, and how this practice helped him to be more productive, less stressed, and happier in his personal and professional life. The book was a New York Times bestseller and has been praised for its accessibility and practical approach to mindfulness and meditation. Harris is also a co-anchor of ABC News’ “Nightline” and the co-founder of the 10% Happier movement and app.

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