Description

Here is one good review I found :Subject in a Nutshell: Personal development / psychology. This book provides a scientific approach to increased optimism and a healthier state of mind.Recommendation: Buy it if you have trouble staying optimistic, are ‘peaky’,or if you feel you struggle with depression at times. Provides an excellent, ‘not fluffy’ approach to improving the way you think about things.Author’s Background: A leading US psychologist in the field of depression management and cognitive thought.The Good:I am not exaggerating when I say that this book has greatly improved my personal mental health.Whether you can tell by my writing or not, I’m a fairly clinical person. I like numbers, facts, and verifiable tangible evidence. I don’t like fluffy-wuffy, give yourself a hug, chant positively at the ceiling 50 times type stuff. And neither does this author .He makes a very interesting argument at the start of the book, suggesting the ‘new age’ positivity fad is actually damaging to our mental health. It is suggested that this approach creates false expectations and fails to alter people’s behaviour, and erodes personal responsibility. He had me onside straight away. When he took a swing at positive self affirmation (chanting to yourself). Every personal development book I’ve picked up in the last 8 years has had some type of chanting in it . I sat riveted.What he espouses is that you can improve your state of mind, your baseline happiness, by being more disciplined in how you think about yourself and the events that affect you. It creates a framework for understanding how we internally interpret the world, and then provides a set of tools to help us manage our own personal behaviours. It is a fascinating read.If you think you’re an optimist I challenge you to take the optimism survey in this book… you may be startled to find you’re not nearly as optimistic as you thought (I was). For example, I’ve come to understand a couple of my own tendencies which are:I apply too much permanence to negative events. That is, (internally) I exaggerate how long it will impact me.And conversely, I apply too little permanence to positive events. That is, I minimise or brush off their significance too quickly.The net affect of these behaviours is that I don’t stay happy about good things long enough, but I stay grumpy about negative things too long. This impacts my ability to ‘rebound’This is just one item, there are many aspects to optimistic thinking that are explored in this book. Just knowing about them has made me a much happier person, and it’s affect has been lasting unlike a lot of buzz books… 3 months and counting The Bad:This book is really all about the tools. It is written in a very analytical fashion, which is very dry at times.The author gets very wrapped up in his clinical studies, and at times waffles too much about research success and other things that are at best, marginally interesting. He establishes his expertise early on, and to rehash it again later in the book feels excessive (a little egotistical).It feels like he wanted to make this much more then just another personal development book by some Tony Robbins wanna-be, and so included a lot of stuff the average reader is likely to be bored by. This is not your average feel good book.Enjoy!