An uplifting, scientifically supported guide to motivate real and lasting life changes.
Bobinet presents a self-help guide to changing negative behaviors that focuses on a newly researched part of the brain in this nonfiction work.
Based on the latest scientific findings, the author, a physician and health care executive, believes that the way we have previously been taught to change our behaviors and alter bad habits relies too heavily on “performative approaches” that essentially set us up to fail. Per Bobinet, the dopamine rushes that occur when pursuing “SMART” (“specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound”) goals don’t result in long-term success. Instead, scientists have turned their focus to the habenula, a small area located in the brain’s thalamus that “activates whenever there is perceived failure and then, often subconsciously, downregulates one’s motivation to try again.” The author explores how certain activities or events (like making New Year’s resolutions) can actually trigger the habenula in different ways and introduces a new “iterative approach” toward making lasting change that can be remembered through the acronym ITERATES (standing for Inspiration, Time, Environment, Reduce, Add, Togetherness, Expectations, and Swaps). Essentially, Bobinet posits, the key to sustaining behavioral changes is using the brain’s natural neuroplasticity and understanding how the habenula works. Some of what the author discusses is likely to sound familiar to most readers, such as the harmful effect of social media on mental health (especially for adolescents), but there is plenty of information about the habenula that is likely to be new. While scientific descriptions, cited studies, and occasional charts and graphs support Bobinet’s argument, her writing is clear enough to prove easily accessible even to readers with no science background at all. Plenty of anecdotes, as well as a keen insight into people’s internal struggles, transform a straightforward self-help guide into a motivational powerhouse: “You can’t pull up an old habit’s roots simply by forming another one on top; you’re just providing a new highway that you prefer to drive right now.”
An uplifting, scientifically supported guide to motivate real and lasting life changes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 979-8887503684
Page Count: 208
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
