An often invigorating guide to pursuing change with confidence.
Tasler, an organizational psychologist, offers a motivational book on maximizing change.
The author offers a unique perspective on personal and professional growth. His simple framework asserts that “Change happens. You grow. Then you win”; he blends social science with storytelling to reinforce these theories and offers examples from the careers of leaders such as IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Tasler observes that people who’ve reached a certain level of success find themselves at a crossroads: They either cling too closely to their survival instincts and avoid change, or they embrace a growth mindset and evolve. He explains how one can leverage the “spring fever effect,” in which the anticipation of a win triggers a greater dopamine release than the win itself, and explores the “power of a nudge,” such as a mentor’s encouragement, to push one toward new opportunities. The book urges readers to shift from “fragile optimism” (a belief in one specific positive outcome) to “agile optimism” (a belief that one will gain insights leading to any number of desirable outcomes). It also intriguingly questions the role of resilience, noting that “bouncing back to our original form isn’t the optimal response to change.” His “push-and-love approach” encourages leaders to challenge their team members while also reassuring them that they’re capable of more. Similarly, in times of change, rather than infuse subordinates with fear (via “jump-or-fry ultimatums”), leaders can inspire creativity through “dream-and-fly suggestions.” Some readers may find the “Change→Grow→Win” scenario to be overly optimistic, as it assumes people immediately have enough agency to instigate change and will ultimately come out on top. Still, throughout this book, Tasler offers creative conceptualizations of self-improvement, such as contrasting “chameleon resilience” (a survival instinct in which someone returns to the status quo after change) versus transformative “caterpillar resilience.” Overall, his advice is simple and practical, and he offers several insightful exercises, such as considering one’s current situation from a future perspective or writing about oneself in the third person to alter common self-perceptions.
An often invigorating guide to pursuing change with confidence.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781643435466
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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