Your Brain Is Part Of Your Body, Sort Of

Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self To Your Biggest Challenges

Why do some people seemingly walk into a room and immediately own it? Charismatic entrepreneurs, tech maestros, and artists wield this magic, while us mortals witness them with awe. Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy admits multiple variables probably influence how we manifest what she calls “presence,” not all of which are portable. But Cuddy suggests we have one powerful variable under our control: how we stand.

Reading this book’s description, I expected something like a Dale Carnegie course. The dust-flap copy implied an introduction to “the power of presence,” the tweaks of attitude and comportment that we collectively identify as charisma. We who, for whatever reason, never quite learned society’s unwritten rules in adolescence, frequently look for streamlined guidance for how to handle fraught situations, like public speaking, job interviews, and first dates.

Instead, Cuddy advocates what she calls “power posing.” This means holding your body upright, back straight, chin out, feet spread. Take up space, Cuddy advocates, and your mind will become expansive enough for even the most threatening spaces. Though Cuddy spends time on preliminary concepts like the nature of Imposter Syndrome or the importance of honesty, her book’s heart is invested in the idea that if you pose big, your brain will follow.

I’m reminded of Jordan Peterson’s first Rule for Life: “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” Like Peterson, Cuddy believes this releases beneficial neurochemicals, and justifies this belief by citing wild animals peacocking in their natural environment. At least Cuddy cites higher primates, not Peterson’s seriocomic lobsters. But both psychologists elide one important question: are humans in society essentially similar to wild animals?

Animal social structures are essentially flat. If one chimpanzee leaves the colony, it leaves every aspect of colony life. Human lives are more dynamic, and encompass work, school, family, volunteer groups, sports fandoms, hobby organizations, religious congregations, and neighborhood taverns. Having power in one environment doesn’t necessarily transfer elsewhere. Moreover, I may leave one workplace, yet still safely grab a beer with my former coworkers.

Dr. Amy Cuddy demonstrating
the “Wonder Woman pose”

Cuddy even admits her advice is deeply conditional. Power postures which she claims empower our preconscious mannerisms, come across as deeply phony if we actually do them in public. People seriously pulling what Cuddy calls the “Wonder Woman pose” mainly appear off-putting in group dynamics. That’s why Cuddy cites the behaviors great apes pull in colony environments, but recommends we mimic them in private spaces: because humans aren’t wild animals.

Further, Cuddy admits “power poses” are culturally conditioned. Western power poses, she acknowledges, don’t work in most Asian societies. Though Cuddy cites her own and others’ research to demonstrate posing’s efficacy, her subjects are mostly college students, a core sample critics call WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. I’d question whether these poses work in poor or rural environments, where the person who stands out most usually gets knocked down first.

Please don’t misunderstand. We all recognize the correlation between bad posture and bad attitude. Cuddy herself mentions the hunched posture of the overworked cube farmer, or the increasingly common neck problems faced by teenagers who spend hours bent over their phones. These postures put lateral stress on our spines, structural tension our bodies aren’t optimized to handle. Humans evolved in environments where standing straight meant better access to food.

However, that’s correlation; Cuddy imputes these postures with cause. It’s equally plausible to say “submissive” postures are survival mechanisms. The hunching seen in cube farmers cowed by the workplace, tragically resembles the “don’t hit me” posture demonstrated by survivors of childhood abuse. People make themselves small to avoid making themselves targets. Maybe that behavior is maladaptive in adulthood, but it perseveres because, at one time, it worked.

I don’t want to imply that Cuddy’s conclusions are wrong. I lack sufficient knowledge and standing to support such conclusions. However, reading her text, it’s impossible to avoid noting that Cuddy’s evidence, while staged in scientific terminology, relies heavily on self-reporting. I also balk at Cuddy’s dependence on testimony, as it’s easy to slant outcomes according to which users bother to write back. Disappointed end-users seldom write fan letters.

We’ve probably all stared into a mirror, holding ourselves erect and practicing our breathing and eye contact. Feels empowering, doesn’t it? But we quickly realize the benefits of peacocking are transitory in hostile environments. I don’t want to flippantly dismiss Cuddy’s precepts, which probably help the right people in the right conditions. But her presentation is too sweeping, and doesn’t leave room for people struggling to survive adverse or dangerous circumstances.

Who Are You When Everyone Stops Looking?

Ryan Lindner, The Half-Known Life: What Matters Most When You're Running Out of Time

Ryan Lindner was absurdly young when his first heart attack hit, requiring him to have a pacemaker installed. Since then, he writes, he’s lived in fear of another. Already working as a behavioral coach with some pretty high-profile clients, Lindner began reevaluating not only his own choices, but the advice he’d been giving others. He began an extensive reevaluation of what makes life meaningful, in the constant presence of death.

It’s always risky reviewing self-help books. Because different counselors have different talents, and readers have their own natural dispositions, a perfectly good, scientifically robust text might miss its audience. Lindner’s spirited, individual voice resembles less a psychologist than a motivational speaker, or perhaps a street evangelist. His deeply personal insights aren’t for everyone, but they contain enough incentive to spur the right readers to action.

We tend, Lindner writes, to seek validation outside ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing careers, possessions, and relationships. But these things are all about how others see us; they aren’t ourselves. The problem, for Lindner, arises when people lose perspective and think these external accomplishments are our identity markers. When that happens, we aren’t present with ourselves, but pursuing outside validation that never quite arrives.

Lindner circles this point, examining it from multiple angles: Who are we when we’re at work, or in relationships, or alone with our thoughts? Where do we stop owning stuff, and stuff starts owning us? How can we distinguish what matters from what’s transitory, what’s real from what’s an illusion? His writing less resembles scholarship than a non-religious sermon, an exhortation to examine unspoken assumptions about ourselves and our relationships.

I don’t mean this non-religious sermon comparison flippantly. Lindner’s writing resembles my first time reading Lao Tzu: the point isn’t necessarily any factual claims or how-to procedures for a better life. His point, instead, is to uncover the parts of our lives and experiences we haven’t considered directly, and remind us that these parts exist. He doesn’t give you step-by-step instructions, but questions he wants you to live with.

Ryan Lindner

Most self-help nonfiction follows two basic patterns: the author uses either long autobiographical vignettes to demonstrate points, or extensive evidence from hard science and psychology. Lindner does neither. After his autobiographical introduction, he mostly asks readers questions and demonstrates common patterns. His fast-paced writing breezes energetically, like a prose poem, carrying readers through the patterns Lindner has witnessed in himself and his clients.

I had initial doubts about Lindner’s approach. Literal-minded readers may find his intimate, informal approach off-putting. Post-Enlightenment rationalism has taught readers to seek supporting evidence whenever anybody makes broad claims about life and behavioral ethics. I pooh-poohed Lindner while reading him. Then I put the book down and felt myself strangely compelled to jump into a task I’d long avoided: cleaning the sink. Hmmm, almost like I felt motivated.

Don’t mistake my meaning. Lindner offers evidence, but not from science. He mixes his and his clients’ experience (he removes any confidential information) with quotes from respected sources like Clarence Darrow, Maya Angelou, and… um… Jim Carrey. Some quotes he uses in ways that contradict their original context; I suspect he found at least some of them with Google. This doesn’t mean he’s wrong, only that Lindner’s approach is casual.

Self-help is popular in America because, I contend, many people realize we need help. We realize something is wrong; we just can’t positively identify what. So we seek everything, from feel-good gurus like Tony Robbins to lite-beer scientists like Malcolm Gladwell, because they offer different approaches to fixing the gaping wounds we all feel in our lives. They’re mostly disappointing, not because they’re wrong, but because our needs are individual.

Ryan Lindner implicitly recognizes that your circumstances aren’t mine, or his. He doesn’t try to pitch corporation-friendly pablum. Instead, like Lao Tzu, Lindner wants readers to sit quietly with his enigmatic poetry, asking themselves the questions that daily life tries to muffle. No pseudo-Zen koans or six step plans here; Lindner wants you to uncover who you are when everyone else isn’t looking. And only you can answer that.

Around the halfway mark, Lindner writes: “Do you want change? Okay, be precise; that’s where the progress is. Let’s have a specific, civil dialogue. Offer solutions.” This is slightly ironic, since Lindner’s writing is often general and not solutions-oriented. But, I realized, that’s what he meant: offer solutions specific to you. Lindner can’t do that, only you can. He can ask the necessary questions, but only you have the answers.

How To Have a Socially Acceptable Personality(-ish)

Michaela Chung, The Irresistible Introvert: Harness the Power of Quiet Charisma in a Loud World

Introversion, a term from developmental psychology that most people hadn’t heard twenty years ago, is now a major trait in society at large. The Internet probably did this: because the net is mostly text-based and asynchronous, the development of read-write websites has enabled introverts to express themselves in ways prior generations never had. But that’s all pointy-headed jargon. How can introverts bring their online identities into the offline world?

Michaela Chung started an introverts’ blog after she escaped the corporate world. She wanted to document lessons she’d learned about how introverts, like herself, can navigate social rules written for extroverts. Her blog became successful, and she spun it, first, into a life-coaching consultancy, then into this book. Based on this book, I’d bet Chung’s consultancy is engaging and fun. But she hasn’t really made the transition between mediums yet.

Like millions of us, Chung thought she needed to feign extroverted characteristics to survive. She describes the different ways introverts and extroverts handle social situations: introverts need private time to recharge, where extroverts find energy in company. Loud social situations, which extroverts find exciting, introverts find overwhelming. And so on: Chung adds a personal touch to psychological concepts that the Internet has made commonplace in recent years.

These personal narratives are important, certainly. We introverts consistently heard from authority figures from childhood that our need for solitude and quiet were aberrant, and that our loud, gregarious classmates and co-workers were superior. I spent my first twenty-five years thinking I was maladjusted and doomed to loneliness because I wasn’t outgoing, because that’s what etiquette told me. Hearing that others have faced, and overcome, the same challenges, matters.

Then, Chung presents self-help precepts based on her experiences. Rather than teaching ourselves to behave like extroverts, as our parents and teachers probably did, Chung wants us to embrace the traits that make us unique. Introversion isn’t a problem to cure, Chung says, but a feature to embrace and utilize. We need to shift the self-blaming mindsets we probably learned in elementary school, and learn to love our introverted selves.

Michaela Chung

Huzzah!

Unfortunately, the more Chung talks, the more problems develop with her narrative. She describes introverts as naturally risk-averse, for instance—something that describes some introverts, but not others. She describes introverts as paralyzed between wanting to be sociable, and wanting to avoid overstimulating events—which describes most people, at least sometimes. These generalizations are too broad; I started feeling like she was talking past me.

Between her highly personal anecdotes, and her sweeping generalizations, it quickly becomes clear that Chung is actually describing herself. Which, again, is fine in context. But in reading a book like this, I need to know how I can adjust my thinking so I stop believing I need to behave externally and ignore my inner yearning for solitude. That’s a matter of doing, not merely accepting gnomic sayings.

Around the halfway mark, Chung writes: “In my online courses for introverts, I always include exercises for creating major mind-set shifts.” Great. But she doesn’t include any exercises in this book; she just quotes students expressing the epiphanies they experienced while performing those exercises. We know concrete, specific techniques exist, because Chung tells us so. But she doesn’t tell us what they are, or how to do them.

Don’t misunderstand me, Chung says plenty I concur with. Though she overgeneralizes many statements, her overall goal is to encourage more soul-searching and introspection, and when you’ve done that, you’ll have the skills to effectively decide which broad bromides apply to you, and you to utilize them. Her approach is way rockier than I’d prefer, but she says plenty that helps introverts appreciate themselves where they are.

However, in buying this book, recognize it isn’t self-sufficient. I chose this book, expecting the author would provide guidance in developing valuable social skills, but the actual text involves more personal contemplation. It more resembles poetry than how-to. Chung’s ultimate goal is to persuade readers to subscribe to her online life coaching seminars. Which, in fairness, I might do, because her personality shines through her prose.

I get the feeling, reading this book, that Chung does best working one-on-one or in small groups, where she can develop rapport with students individually. I sympathize; that’s why I resisted online schooling, back in my teaching days. That’s a common introvert trait, and we’re often afraid of alienating our audiences by saying things that don’t apply to them. Unfortunately, that’s a risk you must take in writing a book.

Stop Judging Yourself and Live

Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D., How To Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety

Most of us know shyness occasionally. Not everyone knows Social Anxiety, the death spiral of doubt, self-recrimination, and despair that prevents some people from having the most basic conversation. Not merely introverted or soft-spoken, social anxiety sufferers are masters of self-flagellation, punishing ourselves for missteps we haven’t made yet, policing our actions violently. And most realize we’re only hurting ourselves, but we can’t figure out how to stop.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen left research psychology because she’d rather work with patients. Now a clinician at Boston University and a podcaster, she works heavily with social anxiety sufferers, and admits still struggling with its effects herself. Having conducted her own research into the field, she compiles her own insights, others’ discoveries, and her clinical practice into a hands-on guide to changing our thought patterns which keep social anxiety alive.

Fundamentally, Dr. Hendriksen asserts, social anxiety is a form of overthinking. We all have an Inner Critic, she says; we need that critic. People who lack such self-criticism generally lack restraint necessary to function in society. But for people with social anxiety, that inner critic goes into full meltdown mode, second-guessing everything and rushing headlong into the worst-case scenario. Because we cannot stop thinking, we think ourselves into virtual paralysis.

Hendriksen’s solution begins in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This practice assumes our thoughts control our feelings, and by changing our thoughts, we can overcome maladaptive feelings—like, say, the feeling that everyone’s busy judging us for missteps we haven’t made yet. Most people simply don’t realize the connection between thoughts and feelings, or if they do, they don’t know how to change. We simply aren’t conscious of our own abilities.

Solving social anxiety begins with two steps, which Hendriksen calls Replace and Embrace. When we begin the death spiral of overthinking, she provides a handful of questions to replace faulty thinking. One of those questions is “What’s the worst that can happen?” She knows, of course, that we’ve already anticipated the worst, and are dwelling on it. But she follows that with “How likely is that?” Oh. Shazam.

Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D.

Embrace is even better. It involves becoming aware of our thinking, separating helpful from unhelpful thoughts, and cultivating the superior. Like a teacher, we can choose to emphasize growth and improvement, or we can punish weakness and make momentary lapses into personal judgements. We know, with others, to do the former; but with ourselves we usually do the latter. If, instead, we embrace and cultivate ourselves, we learn healthier thoughts.

There’s your most important points. Hendriksen obviously explains them better, in terms patients can understand, and with sufficient detail to prevent our natural desire to rationalize ourselves back into our former habits. But like the best self-help authors, Hendriksen positions her most important points at the beginning. Everything after that is fine-tuning, which, admit it, we all need. Because with only broad strokes, the roots of anxiety still survive.

For instance, left to ourselves, most social anxiety sufferers would practice Replace and Embrace in our heads indefinitely, refusing to step out until we’ve already mastered the concepts. Which we never will. In theology, we call this the perfect as the enemy of the good. Instead, we must venture into the world, anxiety and all, and permit ourselves to fail, to practice self-confidence. We can engineer low-risk scenarios for this.

Hendriksen calls this Exposure Therapy. By exposing ourselves to circumstances that trigger our anxieties, and remaining conscious of our thought processes, we can learn to identify thinking that undermines us, and reroute it. But we can only perform this mental reprogramming by getting outside the theoretical realm. We won’t teach ourselves out of social anxiety in our living rooms; we must get into the field we fear, and move among people.

Notice the action emphasis. Hendriksen doesn’t advocate lying on the analytical couch (or sitting in your favorite reading chair) and ruminating through the details. We beat anxiety by doing. In that spirit, she includes exercises we can begin, right now, to identify our thoughts, fears, and how one transforms into the other. Feel free to write in the book, or make photocopies or Word documents to write your insights longhand.

The Internet Age has allowed social anxiety sufferers to realize we’re never alone in our fears. It’s given us opportunities to interact without judgement. But eventually, we get jobs, walk dogs, court spouses. We have to leave the house. Dr. Hendriksen provides practical, active ways to confront our anxiety. Which means, ultimately, finding mastery over ourselves.

How To See the Truth in a World Gone Blind

Isaac Lidsky, Eyes Wide Open: Overcoming Obstacles and Recognizing Opportunities in a World That Can't See Clearly

Isaac Lidsky first hit the national stage as a child actor. One of the inaugural cast from Saved By the Bell: the New Class, he had high expectations… which were largely dashed when NBC discovered they couldn’t cast new actors in old roles. He struggled to find his feet, and had nearly done so, when life dealt him a second blow: a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa. He was doomed to spend his life going blind.

Lidsky’s first book is cross-marketed in health, business, and self-help sections, none of which encompasses the author’s level of ambition. Lidsky mixes scholarship, autobiography, and philosophy in a book that deals deeply with what it means to see the world. Our eyes only provide raw data; if we want to see, we see with our minds. Unfortunately, at times, Lidsky also proves the adage that there’s none so blind as one who will not see.

Network interference, and his already failing eyesight, derailed Lidsky’s acting career at an age when other boys still wonder what they want to be when they grow up. But his parents leveraged his television prominence to start a charity advancing retinitis pigmentosa research (there’s still no treatment or cure.) At the same time, Lidsky graduated Harvard Law School, clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, and launched a Manhattanite career younger than I even started college.

At this stage, and throughout this book, Lidsky mixes memoir, and lessons learned from both success and failure, with hard scholarship. His years as a law clerk trained him well in methods of research and writing: this book reads like a more seasoned author’s product, without the digressions and cow paths most business professionals’ first books face. Lidsky lets facts drive his argument, and when he interjects personal philosophy, he knows the purpose it serves.

Except… this taut writing lets Lidsky direct our attention, so it’s tough to notice what he leaves out. Just one example: In one chapter, Lidsky’s TV career is puttering out. His character proves less popular than Screech, and with network hopes pinned on this tentpole franchise, they need numbers. Lidsky finds his Hollywood dream turning into a real disappointment. Then—shazam, he’s nineteen, attending Harvard Law, determined to live on his own. What happened between?

Isaac Lidsky

This diversion happens so fast, I just assumed he was telling his story non-linearly for improved effect. So I forgot it. Only when I consulted my notes did I realize he just basically dropped the thread. Maybe he left it because that story basically fizzled, and there’s nothing left to describe. Or maybe he’s whitewashing something truly horrific. I have no idea, because he doesn’t tell us. It’s tough to evaluate what never gets said.

Please don’t mistake me. Lidsky uses sight and blindness as remarkable metaphors for personal and professional triumph. He tells stories, for instance, about trying to negotiate Cambridge streets with failing eyes, and later, D.C. streets completely blind. This provides insights into screening meaningless data from real content that provides him literal and figurative direction. His transition from normal, if famous, teenager, to ambitious, self-directed adult, provides lessons many adults I know could stand to learn.

Yet Lidsky apparently thinks, as many self-help memoirists do, that his successes are portable; to achieve Lidsky-like success, simply employ Lidsky’s checklist of lessons. He apparently overlooks ways he started from a position of advantage. Consider his acting career, which commenced when his parents drove him to auditions for local TV commercials. Later, they flew him cross-country, on their own nickel, to audition for NBC. He was coached to consider his own success basically inevitable.

Years later, burned out on lawyering at an age when peers were paying down student loans, Lidsky took a career aptitude survey and determined his correct career was, ahem, CEO. Nice work if you can get it… which he did. Because a well-heeled friend purchased him a foundering Florida tile company. This doesn’t discredit Lidsky’s accomplishments: he turned a building subcontractor around during the housing downturn. But maybe I could, too, if somebody fronted me the money.

I found plenty to like in this book. Lidsky’s principles of controlling what we see by yoking our thoughts, have significant merit. But they apply to him too: it really feels like he doesn’t grasp how others ensured he didn’t start from zero. Like other self-help memoirs I’ve reviewed, this is a case of “take what you need and leave the rest.” Because you aren’t Isaac Lidsky, sadly, and Isaac Lidsky isn’t you.

Dollar Store Jesus

Mitch Kruse with D.J. Williams, Street Smarts From Proverbs: How to Navigate Through Conflict to Community

The other day I reviewed a business book that had an underlying moral message. This time, it goes the other way: I have a Christian book that’s essentially an encomium to capitalism. And I have the same basic responses to both: they’re okay, provided you don’t push either to their logical extremes. Tempered with moderation and accountability, either could be uplifting and game-changing; unmoored from community, either could lead to self-sanctification and arrogance.

Reverend Mitch Kruse paid for his seminary education through proceeds from selling his Internet start-up to eBay. This duality, the transition from capitalist self-marketing to Christian humility, inflects this, his second book. He has a biblically solid exegesis, based on a fairly consistent conservative evangelical read of Proverbs and, to a lesser degree, other Scripture. But the emphasis is very first person singular. It’s about I, me, my relationship with God… which isn’t what Proverbs is about.

Kruse believes monthly rereadings of Proverbs will instruct open students in judgement, discretion, and restraint. This, for Kruse, makes a working definition of “wisdom,” a form of thinking in which faithful believers sublimate their human reason to God’s will. Because Proverbs has thirty-one chapters, reading one per day will increase opportunities for learning and self-correction. Through repetition, devoted readers will acquire the habits of right thinking and self-control which Proverbs makes available to open minds.

Pursuing this goal, Kruse is a master maker of lists and other mnemonic devices. The largest part of this book delves into what Kruse calls the Twelve Words, important themes which recur in Proverbs and define its overarching goal, Wisdom. These include Righteousness, Justice, Discipline, and Learning— words which mean something different in Biblical contexts than in conversational English. Kruse defines these terms using a mix of scholarship and anecdote, in the classic sermonist style.

My problem isn’t Kruse’s writing. He hews to a familiar homiletic style which I assume Christian writers must learn in seminary, because it recurs regularly. I might wish Kruse broke from a mold I find boring in Christian pop nonfiction, because I’ve seen it so often that my eyes skim the page, but that’s my personal problem. Rather, his choice of Proverbs, probably the most first-person-singular book of the Bible, leaves me scratching my head.

Mitch Kruse

Proverbs is part of what Hebrew scholars call Wisdom Literature, four books (seven in the Septuagint, called the Catholic Apocrypha) that differ from other Biblical books. Neither history, like the Torah, nor exhortations of the people, like the Prophets, Wisdom Literature mostly involves gnomic poems and sayings restraint, humility, and godliness. Unlike most Hebrew Scripture, Proverbs isn’t intended for the whole people; it’s specifically for kings or (like the case of Ecclesiastes) sons of kings.

That’s why mainline liturgical churches often avoid Proverbs in pulpit ministry. We can’t agree on how it applies to most believers today. We consider it inspired, and like all scripture, useful for instruction. But to call it controversial is underselling the situation. Kruse often has to perform theological gymnastics to make Proverbs yield the communitarian thesis he promises in his title, an approach that, I’ve noticed, doesn’t much include direct citations from Scripture, including Proverbs.

Thus we’re faced with a Christian book that seldom cites the principal Christian source, a communitarian book about hierarchies, a book about Hebrew Scripture that largely eschews the Hebrew prophetic tradition. Kruse trades primarily in contradictions, which I think even he doesn’t always see. His most recurring theme holds that Christians need to subjugate their will and intellect to God’s, yet h almost entirely emphasizes individual salvation, not what God would have us actually do.

My biggest problem turns on Kruse’s distribution of rewards. His anecdotes generally follow a reliable pattern: a person Kruse knows, or knows about, ventures into willfulness and self-seeking, which ends badly. (He particularly dreads substance abuse.) That person rediscovers God’s purpose, surrenders to divine will, and gets restored. This often ends with some earthly reward: a university degree and a family, lucrative speaking gigs, media stardom. Heavenly salvation, in Kruse’s theology, generally brings earthly rewards.

Kruse never says anything I find altogether wrong. He often shares meaningful, uplifting, theologically sound precepts. But with his emphasis on individual salvation and the journey from poverty to riches, literal or metaphorical, he’s essentially sharing a Christianized Horatio Alger story. Though I often like Kruse’s message, I cannot escape the reality that, throughout, he never stops thinking like a businessman. Christianity is, for Kruse, a transaction, where the faithful hope to make a profit.

Getting Enough Sleep Isn't Enough

Dr. Mark Burhenne, DDS, The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox: How We Are Sleeping Our Way to Fatigue, Disease, & Unhappiness

Snoring isn’t cute. Despite adorable viral videos of snoring babies, puppies, and grannies, snoring is a serious health issue. By now, with the prevalence of CPAP machines and mandibular advancement devices, we’re probably all somewhat familiar with sleep apnea. But Mark Burhenne insists this is only one form of “sleep-disordered breathing,” a category of breathing illnesses that can have cascading effects on your health, happiness, and quality of life.

Burhenne is one of a developing class of dentistry, specializing in sleep disorders. Many warning signs of sleep-disordered breathing, he writes, manifest in the mouth. This may include crowded teeth and recessed jaw, damage from chronic teeth grinding, and others. However, the signs he identifies still need quantified by MD sleep specialists before treatment can begin, or be compensated by insurance. That, he says, is where things become tricky.

The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox, Burhenne writes, is assuming counting the hours you spend asleep and assuming, as Mother probably taught you, that eight hours equals a good night. But simply being unconscious isn’t the same as getting a good night’s sleep. Citing multiple sources, Burhenne suggests that anywhere from half to four-fifths of Americans aren’t getting enough deep, restorative sleep, and lack of air is the most common reason.

Worse, we have a tendency to minimize or dismiss real problems. I say “we,” meaning the general population, but Burhenne writes, that includes medical professionals too. Patients diagnosed with “mild” sleep apnea often get sent home with best wishes and little more, but even mild apnea means a person’s airways close. And that means the person comes partway awake to breathe, and therefore isn’t getting necessary Stage-4 and REM sleep.

This book’s first few chapters explain the warning signs in themselves. These include now-familiar signs of sleep problems, like obesity and chronic fatigue. It also includes, but isn’t limited to, signs of poor sleep, like needing caffeine and frequent naps (guilty); or waking up with dry mouth or headaches, signs you’ve spent the night gasping for air. But if you’re browsing this book, you already know you need to change.

Mark Burhenne, DDS

But Burhenne avoids the most common shortcoming of self-help books, encouraging readers to diagnose themselves. Rather, after just two chapters on recognizing signs of sleep-disordered breathing, the largest portion of the book focuses on working with a sleep specialist to get an actual diagnosis that leads to treatment. This is difficult, Burhenne admits, because sleep studies are expensive, and insurance companies incentivize doctors to avoid costly tests.

Getting an appointment with a sleep specialist usually requires a recommendation from your GP. And if you aren’t middle-aged and overweight, Burhenne writes, many GPs won’t make that recommendation. So he provides tools to increase your doctor’s cooperation in the fifteen minutes you usually have, including the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and the STOP-BANG questionnaire. He also includes important questions to ask, and important information to provide.

After going through all that, patients have no guarantee their insurance will actually cover the procedures. Burhenne copiously expounds how to navigate the paperwork necessary to get treatments covered. This includes how to convince your insurance provider that you need some treatment other than CPAP, which is the most commonly used anti-apnea technology, but doesn’t work for everybody. Getting the right treatment takes effort, apparently, but it’s worth it.

Burhenne does provide life hacks that patients can apply individually. To give just two examples, this includes mouth taping, which is exactly what the name implies. If you have only a mildly obstructed airway, closing your mouth overnight with surgical tape can ensure you breathe through your nose for maximum efficiency. It also includes certain non-steroidal nasal sprays to keep airways open, again, for nose breathing, like your body prefers.

Nevertheless, Burhenne doesn’t mainly emphasize these internet-friendly hacks. He primarily keeps focus on medical science, including the most recent discoveries (as of when this book was written), and the information you need to get best results from your physician. A certain distrust for the medical establishment lingers beneath Burhenne’s prose. Though admittedly, this makes sense, considering the ideas he describes are still controversial in certain circles.

Medical pundits tell patients to watch our weight, manage our stress, and get our eight hours nightly. But we can’t do these if we’re tired from lack of deep, restorative sleep. It’s surprising to read this advice from a dentist, and I admit, I needed some convincing, but Burhenne certainly provides that. If, like me, you need not just more but better sleep, start here.

Poor-Shaming in the Self-Help Industry

Earlier this week, New York-based MSW Melody Wilding published a column declaring people prone to poor decision-making could improve their choices, and their lives, using the HALT method. This approach requires people making any particular choice to first take care that they aren’t choosing while Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I reached the end and wondered: does this author realize she just described the experience of being poor?

I don’t mean the experience of being destitute. Of course people living in illegal squats or sleeping on sidewalks make poor choices. Living day by day, hour by hour, they lack freedom and security enough to even make long-term decisions; they’re more focused on ensuring the few possessions they still have don’t get pilfered while they’re chasing the next meal. We expect the truly indigent to make bad decisions.

Rather, I mean ordinary working poor. People like me, living paycheck to paycheck, spend much of our time Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I’ve sometimes punted meals onto the next pay cycle, banking on the reality well-known to survivalists, that the sensation of hunger dissipates after two to three days. I’ve postponed sleep to dedicate time and energy looking for other jobs, hoping to improve my material situation to rise above a constant HALT state.

And the job conditions absolutely require a tolerance for both loneliness and fatigue. I know, writing this, that by the time you read it, I’ll probably be at my job, working under solitary or near-solitary conditions. The equipment I use is too loud to permit me plugging earbuds into my phone, much less conversing with whatever co-workers might wander past. Even in a crowd, work conditions are intensely isolating.

Just last week, my boss assigned me a side task, “when you need a break.” So I assumed the task was low-priority, and continued my main assignment. The next morning, I found the parts I’d been assigned to locate and collect, when I needed a break, jammed atop my regular tools so precariously that, if I moved one piece, the others would collapse, possibly breaking my tools. My boss admitted pulling this passive-aggressive move out of pure petty spite.

So yeah, I’m Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired most of the time. Nor is this unique to any particular job. My blue-collar career has consisted of both construction and assembly line work, jobs that pay poorly because they’re considered low-skill and unimportant, and leave workers constantly surrounded by people but unable to talk. Before that, I was a university adjunct, a job that left me socially stimulated, but chronically broke and overextended.

These conditions are complicated by issues that seem incidental, but prove very important. For instance, the poorer you are in America, the further you live from work, statistically speaking. And probably, the further you live from access to public transportation, too. So you’re economically dependent upon your car, in which you probably spend a significant portion of your non-work hours. That’s time not spent with family, friends, or doing anything constructive or ennobling.

Also, a growing body of evidence indicates that most addictive behaviors, including substance abuse and certain other addictions, like gambling or risky sex, originate from some form of pain. This may include physical pain, or the psychological pain induced by loneliness. As the 1990s song indicates, Common People “dance and drink and screw, because there’s nothing else to do.” Put concisely, despite the common wisdom addictions don’t cause poverty; poverty causes addictions.

America’s elected officials prefer to invest resources in expanding what’s already Earth’s biggest military, offsetting costs by cutting half-invisible programs like Meals on Wheels. Why, these officials ask, can’t the elderly get their children to provide food and other protections against economic freefall? But these same officials do nothing to prevent the concentration of wealth in a few major cities, forcing young adults to move to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco in pursuit of work.

So yeah, America’s poor are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired most of the time. This forces us into cycles of lousy decision-making that prevent us improving our own lot. We recognize our own situation; we don’t need Gothamite experts reminding us. Yet self-help writers, from Jack Canfield to Suze Orton, constantly invent new ways to imply the poor are poor only because they lack Wall Street’s well-worn methods of saving, investing, and other good decisions.

I believe Melody Wilding means well. I certainly attempt to improve myself and my decision-making constantly. But when my job sometimes requires me to work thirteen days on, one day off, telling me that I’m making bad decisions because I’m tired isn’t just insulting. It’s a sign of deep-rooted ignorance in today’s economic atmosphere.

If You've Become Uncomfortable In Your Comfort Zone...

Andy Molinsky, Ph.D., Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence

Back in the Paleolithic Era, having a fairly small comfort zone probably made good sense. Fearless people likely got eaten by lions. But today's relatively lion-free environment makes hugging our comfort zones perilous and constricting. Our reasons for avoiding uncomfortable situations are as numerous as our tactics. But the short-term stress relief robs us of long-term opportunities. Sadly, just telling ourselves to get out of our comfort zones doesn't work.

Brandeis organizational psych professor Andy Molinsky has dedicated years to studying this conundrum, and published dense research project on the topic. Thankfully, this book avoids the scholarly jargon of such papers. Writing with business professionals, job interviewees, and students in mind, Molinsky crafts a nuts-and-bolts explanation of why we have comfort zones, why we should step outside them, and how to achieve that seemingly impossible goal.

Permit me to paraphrase Molinsky, without giving anything away, since he says everything better, and in more detail than I could. We have five basic mental justifications for our comfort zones: because whatever makes us uncomfortable feels inauthentic or immoral, may make others perceive us as incompetent or unlikeable, or it really shouldn’t be our responsibility anyway. Molinsky identifies these five causes from both academic research, and in-person interviews.

Once we recognize which principle, or combination of principles, hold us back, we have three tools available to re-stack the deck in our favor. Molinsky calls these tools Conviction, Customization, and Clarity. This means we believe whatever makes us uncomfortable still really needs doing; we can organize how we handle our circumstances to minimize discomfort; and we have enough self-awareness to face our challenges without them breaking us.

It really is that simple, though like most simple explanations, it’s really not that simple. Molinsky wouldn’t have written a 250-page book if he could’ve written a fortune cookie. His book combines psychological research with field interviews, demonstrating ways people have allowed their comfort zones to constrain them, and how applying these simple principles has transformed their lives. If Molinsky’s interview transcripts are credible, “transformed” isn’t an exaggeration.

Andy Molinsky, Ph.D.

Molinsky puts his most important points in this book’s first half. Though he’s guilty of a little throat-clearing in the earliest pages, he mostly gets down to brass tacks, combining his measured principles with stories that serve as object lessons. His stories are often very personal, yet concise in structure, without excessive rumination. They demonstrate how people got out of their own paths and stopped being their own worst obstruction.

This isn’t a book of straightforward exercises. I admit being disappointed by that, as I’d expected something like Kelly McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct, which combines high-minded theories with road-tested exercises for beginners. Molinsky compares this book to a free-form recipe, where rather than fixed measurements, we have a broad outline of what the finished product could look like. We simply have to interpret freely, putting our stamp on the recipe.

Not that Molinsky prescribes no concrete actions. As a sometime writing teacher, my favorite involves describing your own situation, in writing, in third person. Crystallizing ideas into words, Molinsky demonstrates, frees people to act, besides having quantifiable physical health benefits, according to one of his sources. So we have concrete actions, just no step-by-step journaling procedures. That probably works better overall, but requires your effort to get started.

Reading this book, I see myself, and other loved ones besides. As we get older, as we own more stuff and have more responsibilities to family and community, our comfort zones contract. Mine has become strangling. But Molinsky demonstrates we needn’t risk everything we treasure, to venture outside ourselves. By understanding why we’ve become so risk-averse, and applying Molinsky’s Triple-C approach, we’ll find doors opening immediately.

This book probably belongs on the same nonfiction-as-self-help shelf as Malcolm Gladwell and James Duhigg. It has the same purpose of taking known, well-studied science, and turning it into actionable advice. But unlike those other writers, who attempt to disguise their self-help as journalism, Molinsky, a working research scientist, doesn’t pretend his advice is anything but advice. Like Daniel Kahneman, he comes right out and says: Do This.

I’m still working to incorporate this book’s advice into my thought processes. Because this book really is about me, and people like me, it presents an opportunity to stop my decline into stultifying comfort. If you’re like me, and you probably are, this book is for and about you. Please grab this opportunity to turn your life into something greater. I already feel energized, knowing this exists.

The Business of Psychology in the Psychology of Business

Dawna Markova & Angie McArthur, Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently

"He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
—Aristotle

I repeatedly recalled this quote while reading this book. Dr. Dawna Markova, internationally recognized specialist in learning and perception styles, starts with the premise that we must interact with many diverse personality types in today’s go-go technological society. Aided by research assistant (and daughter-in-law) Angie McArthur, she commences a detailed examination of what that means for most people, particularly in the workplace.

I initially had high hopes for this book. Principal author Markova writes differently than, say, Malcolm Gladwell or Jack Hitt. Being a scholar rather than a journalist, she writes with tight, erudite focus, with emphasis on reasoning and research. And she has no pretense of journalistic dispassion: these are her discoveries, darnit, and she’ll expound them with fierce mama-bear love, never pretending to offer conflicting viewpoints or false balance. Her specificity is bracing.

Markova wants readers to cultivate what she calls Collaborative Intelligence, or CQ. This involves broad, detailed understanding of how other thinking styles work, including recognizing both their strengths and their blind spots. We already know not everybody is good at everything; from there, we must collaborate, to bundle everybody’s strengths. A poorly managed group is chaos; but a well-managed group can accomplish more than members can individually.

To achieve CQ, we must better understand ourselves. Markova begins by subdividing thought patterns into three core categories: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (hands-on) thinking. We all have all three, though to different degrees. Prioritizing this gives us six starting templates; below that, thirty-five further “thinking talents” subdivide the personality styles, which can be charted into quadrants, parsed for strengths and “shadow traits,” and partnered for ultimate strength.

So far, so good. Markova more than doubles the personality categories available via the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), meaning we have increased room for individuality. This liberating latitude permits Markova’s target audience, primarily corporate middle- and upper-management professionals, to customize their relational skills to their companies. As Markova repeatedly insists, we cannot change problem personalities, only how we relate to them.

Great. However...

Dawna Markova, Ph.D.

Around this book’s midpoint, Markova discusses thinking styles with an ambitious young CEO, a discussion spanning several chapters. The CEO expresses trepidation about interactions with his chairman, stemming from their very different personalities. Markova guides the CEO through the thinking styles, arriving at an awareness of their respective strengths and mutual blind spots. Which sounds great, but the whole time I’m thinking: why can’t they sit down and have a conversation?

This exemplifies my problem with this book. Not that it’s wrong, because I don’t believe it is; indeed, handled judiciously, I believe it could potentially thorny interactions between divergent personalities. However, used flippantly, it provides potential excuses to avoid talking with strangers, subordinates, and competitors. If we ramrod everyone into somebody’s pre-scripted identity templates, we needn’t bother getting to know their real characters and aspirations.

Markova’s CQ model, like the highly influential but scientifically sketchy MBTI, basically assumes personality types are constant. Though she acknowledges some wiggle room, there’s little concession for differences between workplace and home personalities; for personality shifts based on physical and mental health, nutrition, and sleep levels; even for personalities’ tendency to shift with age. Markova stuffs everybody into respective boxes, willy-nilly.

In myself I’ve noticed, with encroaching middle age, distinct personality shifts: increasing extroversion, openness to novelty, and adaptability. That’s largely the opposite direction most aging brains travel, but still, it reflects that personalities aren’t fixed. Though Markova repeatedly asserts that her categories are mainly guidelines, not rules, she doesn’t particularly stress that. And we’ve seen, with MBTI’s popularity, how lay psychologists turn thumbnail categories into rules.

Modern multinational corporations don’t permit employers to know every employee, admittedly. Organizations must often think in categories, painting subordinates with a broad brush, because knowing everybody is cost-prohibitive. But common sense and personal experience tell me that organizations which adopt Markova’s approach will inevitably misuse it, believing certain personality types slot cleanly into certain jobs, even when overwhelming evidence says otherwise.

Again, please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t believe Markova’s approach is wrong. Her techniques derive from legitimate research, both her own and others’, and trained psychologists and managers could potentially apply her approach to great profit. But as long business books often do, Markova’s keeps going after its point is proved, inadvertently revealing its own weaknesses. We’re all individuals, not categories, and deserve treated as such.

The ADHD Revolution

Dale Archer, MD, The ADHD Advantage: What You Thought Was a Diagnosis May Be Your Greatest Strength

If you give methylphenidate (Ritalin) to a child who doesn’t need it, that child will become mechanically fixated on repetitive tasks, no matter how meaningless, no matter the lack of reward, demonstrating what doctors call “robotic tendencies.” I always thought this mean to kids, until I started working at a factory, where unshakeable fixation and robotic tendencies were positively encouraged. That, arguably, says everything about why ADHD diagnoses have skyrocketed in the last thirty years.

Bestselling author Dr. Dale Archer wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD himself until after beginning his medical career. He openly gives thanks for that. He attributes his professional success to his condition, which makes him ambitious, mentally agile, and intolerant of busy-work. And his accomplishments are exportable. As he writes: "Simply put, ADHD can be best understood as a brain with a very low boredom threshold (yes, this is greatly simplified, I wish it were so easy)."

Several entrepreneurs, discoverers, media figures, and others Archer identifies show ADHD diagnostic traits. However, when regarded as features rather than disorders, these traits acquire new distinction. These include an ability to juggle multiple responsibilities, carefully learned composure under stress, and relentless curiosity. Though it’s impossible to diagnose the dead, Archer notes that many famous pioneers apparently demonstrate ADHD symptoms, and grow bored with settled living and wage earning. Archer even calls ADHD “the explorer gene.”

Perhaps most beneficial, Archer identifies “Bingo Brain,” the quality of seeing every ball moving at once. Where linear thinking produces linear results, the ADHD brain sees multiple balls in motion, makes connections others haven’t seen yet, and creates new meaning from life’s plentiful raw material. Archer spotlights multiple high-flying stars, from design impresario Ty Pennington to the CEO of JetBlue Airlines, who attribute success to Bingo Brain showing them patterns nobody else has spotted yet.

Dr. Dale Archer

Archer never claims ADHD isn't serious, or that nobody needs medication to control symptoms. Some people’s faculties are irreparably shattered. But too many doctors prescribe powerful drugs as a first, rather than last, resort. In America, where insurance companies make treatment decisions and Big Pharma markets directly to doctors and consumers, ADHD diagnosis rates in 2014 stood above 11%, far higher among boys. In Britain, where health care is nationalized, ADHD diagnoses stood below 2%.

Too often, especially with children, diagnoses come based on undesirable behaviors in group settings. Schoolteachers, underpaid and short-handed, recommend students for heavy stimulant treatments following disruptive classroom comportment. According to the DSM, doctors should prescribe anti-ADHD drugs only following two-hour diagnostic sessions, but predominantly cannot afford such time, writing scripts within three minutes. Most such prescriptions are written by GPs, not trained in diagnosing psychological situations. All in an effort to silence noisy, curious children.

Most such criticisms are written by journalists, physicians, and other white-collar professionals with little working-class experience. I contend that economic issues loom large here. Many children from overstuffed classrooms graduate into employment in overstuffed factories or cube farms. The skills we claim kids should learn in school take second place to real workplace skills like shutting up and buckling down. We diagnose kids, and increasingly adults, on flimsy grounds and questionable science, to subordinate them.

Some people certainly benefit from medications, provided they know what they’re getting themselves into. Just as antidepressants blunt all emotions, anti-ADHD meds channel all thinking, even beneficial thinking. Archer quotes entrepreneur Mark Neeleman on taking Adderall: "When I am on it I am like a machine and can't stop working." Neeleman, according to Archer, takes medications three days a week to accomplish nuts-and-bolts business responsibilities, then goes natural four days to think like an entrepreneur.

An ADHD patient himself, Dr. Archer identifies several shortcuts and work-arounds successful ADHD superstars have invented. Some are individual, from “brain dumping” and leveraging technology, to exercise regimens and productive relationships. Others are more diverse and complicated; a few verge on begging society to reorganize itself to stop compounding ADHD problems. Archer openly longs for “progressive” classroom education permitting more adaptability to individual needs. If he’s serious, I’d suggest he consider Tom Little’s Loving Learning.

ADHD isn’t some picnic, neither for its sufferers nor those who love them. Archer acknowledges it brings significant complications and makes life burdensome for many people. But for those willing to embrace their diagnosis as an opportunity, rather than a disorder, it opens distinctive windows on life’s little-seen viewpoints. Bosses and schoolteachers will medicate you to enforce your conformity. But if you prefer a life of creativity, exploration, and risk, ADHD may be your ticket.

Being Your Own Best Business Asset

Thuy and Milo Sindell, Hidden Strengths: Unleashing the Crucial Leadership Skills You Already Have

Many publishers mass-produce business guidebooks on maximizing your personal strengths, identifying your strengths, or finding the Venn diagram overlap between your strengths and the market. Considering market saturation, you’d think America’s professional class had reached Charles Atlas levels of personal strength. Yet well-respected companies and executives keep getting blindsided. Clearly we need another approach.

Silicon Valley consultants Thuy and Milo Sindell suggest we’re missing powerful opportunities within ourselves. Rather than highlighting obvious natural strengths, those skills which come easily to us, or skirting obvious weaknesses, the Sindells turn our attention to our middle range, the skills we haven’t cultivated yet, but could. These neglected skills, which they call Hidden Strengths, represent untapped opportunity to remain versatile, responding to today’s changing market by changing ourselves.

This book has many advantages over other business guides I’ve read recently. First, it’s concise. Only slightly thicker than a pamphlet, it delivers its message without needless verbiage or grandiosity. Too many business authors keep talking long after they’ve made their points, inadvertently revealing their weaknesses and blind spots. This book makes its point as quickly as possible, and when it’s done, hands the next step over to you.

The Sindells identify twenty-eight “skills,” actually umbrella categories, that business professionals exercise regularly. These encompass leadership skills like Resilience, Listening, Inspirational Vision, and Delegation. They admit most business leaders generally find three, maybe four, of these twenty-eight come easily, while one or two remain so difficult, they’re beyond redemption. But at best, these obvious strengths and weaknesses represent under one-third of most people’s capability; much potential, tragically, remains permanently unexplored.

In essence, that’s the entire book. Fleshed out with a few examples and relevant details, the Sindells present an overview so compact, they could potentially stage it as a live symposium. Dedicated readers could savvy this whole book in one sitting—though it certainly rewards slower reading, backed with careful reflection. Besides the simple how-to, the Sindells present a worldview complex enough to demand business leaders rethink everything they do.

Milo and Thuy Sindell

First, the Sindells’ vision requires leaders willing to listen, connected to others willing to provide meaningful feedback. Though they have a self-evaluation quiz available through their website, they admit that you’ll get better results with what they call a “360-degree assessment” from peers, supervisors, and subordinates. Their system relies upon frank introspection, calling users to examine themselves within their organization. You cannot improve yourself if you don’t first know yourself.

It also requires users to face their difficulties head-on. We’re accustomed to accentuating our innate talents, rewarding ourselves for what comes easily. But the Sindells insist that more difficult skill development, which may perhaps require greater self-sacrifice but produce greater rewards over time, reflects the long view necessary in business. Career development is an investment with an ever-changing payoff horizon. Leaders should prepare, personally and professionally, for the long haul.

Besides their deep, multi-faceted reasoning, I cannot stress enough the Sindells’ brevity. Despite their structure’s inherent complexity, our authors remain succinct, saying just enough to guide readers into the message, then stepping back, permitting us to fit their message to our situation. Too many writers make assumptions about readers, then keep talking long after they’ve made their point. By keeping brief, the Sindells permit us to remain top-level career control.

Our authors write explicitly for business professionals, and draw their relevant examples from the business and finance world. However, what they describe can, with minor tweaks, apply to many career fields. An attorney with good speaking and listening skills can still benefit from partnership building and conflict resolution. Artists, especially in current markets, can benefit from cultivating entrepreneurship skills and performance monitoring. These skill sets are ecumenical and eminently portable.

Today’s capitalist fascination with Disruptive Innovation means executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs who rely on one skill set to accomplish one goal quickly get plowed under. This means that personal development isn’t only personal. A motivated will to improve one’s skills ensures a versatile mind and adaptable sensibilities. Buffeted by the demand for constant change which modern markets create, only flexible, resourceful leaders can remain relevant when surrounding pressures constantly evolve.

Having clashed recently with other business writers, whose prolix style and mercenary reasoning don’t withstand blue-collar scrutiny, I must commend the Sindells. Their brief, practical, intelligent guide provides the mix of organizational savvy and humble ambition I’ve missed in several recent business books. Truly, this reads like a book entrepreneurs and seasoned executives can enjoy equally. I know I’ll be applying these precepts to my own career.

Notes Toward a New American Stoic

David Brooks, The Road to Character

I’m sure dedicated trend-watchers must view reality TV, political scandals, and the eternal Kim-n-Kanye peep show with unalloyed dismay. Especially for social conservatives, yoked with a sense of moral obligation to the larger society, they must feel an especial impulse to intervene, to stand athwart the downhill slalom they perceive society following, and holler “Stop!” Bill Bennett felt that impulse twenty years ago. The feeling is older than dirt.

David Brooks has represented the voice of moderate Republicans in various mainstream and partisan newspapers since 1983. In various supposed leftist bastions like PBS and the New York Times, he’s become famous for upholding common conservative (as opposed to party hard-liner) opinions. It seems he’s perhaps grown tired of his own voice, because in his introduction to this book, he laments his own self-seeking, and that of today’s generation.

That should’ve been my first warning. I wanted to like this book. I’ve been reading, in my off hours, on Stoic philosophy recently, and though Brooks never uses that word, his collection of exemplar biographies on the principles of admirable character replicates the heart of classical Greco-Roman Stoicism. Yippee. Except the longer I read, the more I noticed Brooks evidently occupies a divided world. All virtue lives in the past; all wickedness lives in the present.

In one of the weirder passages I’ve seen from literary criticism, C.S. Lewis quotes Chretien de Troyes, writing in the 1170s, that “the age of chivalry is dead.” Homer believed his was a dying age, inferior to the Argive Greeks who fought at Troy. Men of affairs have always considered their era a ghost of some honored past, a past somehow populated by giants and uncluttered by pedestrian people. Consider these quotes from Brooks:

“Today, when we say that people are repressed, we tend to mean it as a criticism.”

“It is important to point out how much the sense of vocation is at odds with the prevailing contemporary logic.”

“Today, the word ‘sin’ has lost its power.”

Realize, Brooks isn’t discussing Lost Atlantis or the virtuous queens of Avalon. He’s describing people of the Twentieth Century, public personalities like Dwight Eisenhower and Dorothy Day. Later, Brooks spools backward to George Eliot, Samuel Johnson, and even St. Augustine, but early on, his examples come from living memory. The outer limits of living memory, admittedly (Ike died when Brooks was seven years old), but living memory nonetheless.

David Brooks

Therein lies my problem with this book. Brooks has created a primer on moral rectitude and self-discipline, based on principles I wholly endorse and agree with. But he’s created a crystal trap modern readers cannot overlook: that everything in live used to be good, and now it isn’t. Virtue dwells uniquely in antiquity, while today’s modern age is populated by such complete venality that we’re essentially fighting the avalanche.

Then, very late in most chapters, Brooks will suddenly throw in revelations that his subjects actually couldn’t sustain the virtues for which he extols them. Labor organizer turned FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins so thoroughly vanished into her work, her daughter could only rebel by profligate living and carousal. Eisenhower was so fixated on his moral core that he slept through major trends of his Presidency, including the dawning civil rights movement.

I stopped taking Brooks seriously when he conceded that Eisenhower, for all his virtues, nevertheless abandoned his wartime mistress, Kay Summersby, with a mere letter. Wait, Ike kept a mistress? During the war?? While married to Mamie??? That somehow never made my official history textbooks. Following all the hero-making about Ike’s glamorous “self-conquest,” such intemperance in a commanding officer is deeply disturbing. Ask David Petraeus.

My problem, therefore, is with Brooks’ presentation. He completely segregates virtue from ordinary life, both in time, and within his subjects. He populates the past with presidents, saints, and superhumans. Then he assumes the worst celebrity excess represents modernity. The well-intentioned product is frankly discouraging.

Again, I don’t disagree with Brooks’ vision of virtue. Though salted with highly emotive Christian language, Brooks deftly describes classical Stoicism, without using that word that’s been cheapened by misuse. But I’ve said before: Stoicism, as a character-molding force, is a phenomenon whose time has surely come again. Please consider the original source:
Epictetus, Discourses
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Seneca, Letters

PS. Early on, Brooks wishes somebody would write a book about how Americans’ changing experience with death reflects Americans’ changing public morality. Please consider Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. You’re welcome.

The Well-Engineered Self

Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

Attorney turned author Gretchen Rubin has previously written about how people become happy, and why they don’t. A trained legal researcher, she brings a scholarly eye to her projects that isn’t exactly journalistic. She writes with a mix of acumen, anecdote, and humor that reaches certain audiences where they live. Now she turns her attention to the question: how can we make happiness self-supporting?

Humans, Rubin writes, are necessarily creatures of habit—we have to be. Easily forty percent of our daily activities function habitually, on neurological automatic, because we cannot spare the mental focus to make every decision consciously. But often, we fall haphazardly into habits that don’t bring satisfaction, and often obstruct productivity. Rubin encourages additional mindfulness about our habits, and engineering them directly.

Well-built habits begin with self-knowledge. Rubin acknowledges that many self-help books falter because authors assume their personalities are somehow normative. Rather than one-size-fits-all prescriptivism, Rubin begins by coaching readers through steps to recognize their personality types. She broadly outlines what she calls the Four Tendencies, which somewhat resemble the MBTI types, but not really.

I concede doubts about these Tendencies immediately. Rubin’s descriptions of Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, and Rebel run broad as newspaper horoscopes, so inclusive that most people could recognize themselves in these categories. I recognize Questioner and Rebel in myself by natural tendency, and Obliger and Upholder encultured by my upbringing. Actually utilizing these tendencies will require substantial efforts at winnowing.

Leave that aside momentarily, though. Because subsequent chapters on the “Pillars of Habits” have robust roots in hard science and personal observation. Too often, we reprimand people for not fixing their own hash by undifferentiated willpower; pop visions of habit formation rely upon common sense, not replicable science. But as Duncan J. Watts writes, common sense is often neither common nor sensical.

Gretchen Rubin

Some of Rubin’s pillars are internal, particularly her emphasis on diligent self-monitoring, while others are more external, like the need for human accountability. Some straddle this divide, like writing firm schedules, which start internally but create an external document which demands users’ respect. Either way, they underscore that humans need a combination of self-awareness and public mutuality that’s become too rare anymore.

Once habit-forming behaviors commence, Rubin unveils the steps necessary to encourage productive habits, and discourage counterproductive ones. For instance, we’re more likely to continue patterns which we perceive as convenient, and halt those we consider inconvenient, so engineering our lives so desirable behaviors are also handy matters. Similarly, she suggests “pairing,” or linking something we ought to do with something we want to do.

Readers may find Rubin’s abstention chapter most controversial. We’ve heard the claims: I can occasionally indulge this behavior without becoming habitual, or once an addict, always an addict. Debates over addictive habits, from drugs to porn to workoholism, rehash this point, with people insisting that whatever works for me, works for everyone, QED. Rubin dares suggest that humans are individuals, and you’ll know whether you can safely chip.

Perhaps Rubin’s most revealing chapters deal with rewards versus treats. Though we may consider these interchangeable concepts, Rubin demonstrates they’re definitively not. Treats uplift our spirits, giving us motivation to continue onward. Rewards, and their close cousin, finish lines, permit us to consider the process “done.” As Rubin notes, and you’ve probably noticed yourself, once we halt desirable behaviors, getting started again is nearly impossible.

This book essentially isn’t for me. Rubin’s message often overlaps with Charles Duhigg and Kelly McGonigal, without their scientific grounding. In my experience, I (and many others) need the science to remind ourselves why certain processes work, and aren’t just mindless ritual. With her instructional bromides and coupled with upbeat anecdotes, Rubin more resembles a motivational speaker, and writes for audiences who need motivation over data.

Also, my opinion is somewhat colored: I read Rubin directly after Johann Hari’s Chasing the Scream, about the drug war. Quoting multiple researchers, Hari demonstrates that addictive behaviors—the worst of all bad habits—result markedly from childhood abuse or social isolation. Since many of Rubin’s precepts involve social connections and unearthing buried causes, she’s perhaps stumbled onto principles with yet-unexplored mass social implications.

Within those caveats, Rubin writes an engaging book with many actionable principles. Though she doesn’t get into technical details, her points are specific enough that most people could actually apply them in ordinary circumstances. And though early precepts sometimes run vague, Rubin’s overall approach gives readers tools enough to improve their regular choices to create better circumstances and better lives.

Wes Moore's Very Busy Life

Wes Moore, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters

Wes Moore has lived a varied and kinetic life. Born poor amid hardscrabble circumstances, he nevertheless enjoyed a muscular support network that hoisted him upward, smashing barriers few African American youth successfully beat. Many peers, lacking his support, faced similar challenges and collapsed, an experience recounted in his blockbuster first book, The Other Wes Moore. That book, like its author, shattered barriers. This one, well… doesn’t.

Moore’s prior volume ended with Moore headed for college, triumphant over life’s adversities. This one commences with Moore boarding a plane for Britain, a newly minted Rhodes scholar. Where his first book covered a specific theme, the struggles that guided a child out of the stark poverty that crushed his peers, this second lacks a unifying through-line. Moore expects us to glean meaningful lessons from his life experience, but he avoids making decisions about what to include, what to leave out.

From Oxford, Moore caroms into an internship at the nascent Office of Homeland Security, through a big-spending but brief career in high finance, into the peak of fighting in Afghanistan while America’s focus held on Iraq. Completing his national duty, he returns to America, assumes a career in public service, and eventually campaigns for Barack Obama. Moore has enjoyed a very active, socially engaged life. And he wants to share it all with you.

Each major portion gets equal space in this book gets an equal-sized chapter. His career in international finance, a highly remunerative but unsatisfying career characterized mainly by marathon work hours followed by frenetic London pub crawls, gets exactly the same treatment as his engagement at Forward Operating Base Khost, Afghanistan. And by exactly the same, I don’t just mean length. Moore describes everything, but everything, in an unvarying, mild, synoptic tone, frustratingly free of details.

It's impossible to completely accept Moore at his word. Like most political and religious memoirs, events in Moore's story reach us through a filter of the message he hopes we'll take away. Except in Moore's case, his filter is unusually visible. Moore stuffs his paragraphs with what Duncan J. Watts calls "narrative sentences," sentences that describe, not events or circumstances, but Moore's moral message:

"I had a job that many people, especially in those days before the financial crises to come, respected, even if they didn't quite understand it. Things were good and I was lucky. So lucky that I wanted out."

Wes Moore

Then, Moore pairs every autobiographical chapter with a matching mini-chapter about someone else whose official biography demonstrates the point he already extracted from his own story. As if his style wasn't high-handed and sententious enough. These "Profiles In Courage" draw heavily from their subjects' official press bios and Moore's interviews. Because obviously captains of industry and career bureaucrats will tell their own story honestly if you ask.

Moore's strange blend of self-mythologizing and motivational boosterism reads oddly detached. In his introduction, Moore describes parachuting into an Afghan free-fire zone, promising intimate tales of battle, and lessons learned therein. But that proves his most concrete description. His actual war experience plays second fiddle to long historical discursions, aphoristic lectures, and other people's stories. Moore himself remains curiously distant.

In my teaching days, one student, an Iraq veteran, wrote about his wartime experience. He described his vehicle getting hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), killing two men under his authority and maiming a third. He woke in a field hospital thirty-six hours later, permanently deaf in one ear. An Iraqi militant who'd lost a leg planting a miswired IED lay dying in the next bed. While he struggled to heal, my student also struggled to comprehend the moral breadth that let US doctors tend a member of the opposition who had tried to kill him.

Now that's a memoir, dammit! He needed only eight pages of detailed prose to nutshell how war shatters young men's illusions of glory. Though he recounted his difficult personal trial, he offered no pat resolution; he admitted writing was part of his healing, that the conflict remained active in his head, that no easy answers were forthcoming. He invited me along on his journey, but avoided signposting the destination. We just walked together.

Perhaps Moore thought he needed a sequel to justify his adult life. Perhaps he signed a contract, and after his debut success, his name became remunerative. But if somebody asked me to grade this manuscript in college, I’d say: needs concrete detail. This feels like an outline for several manuscripts Moore now needs to write.