This book helps you understand why you should “pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases creating our way of life.”
Written by Brianna Wiest and published in 2017, this book only recently came to our attention through a contact recommending it.
Initial thoughts
Upon receiving it, we were immediately captivated and loved the 101 essays presented in 101 short chapters. The chapters were made up of short essays, lists, or bullet points, making the content easy to read and digest, and not overwhelming.
The beautifully written content covers limiting beliefs, relationships, daily habits, emotions, happiness, arguing intelligently, mental breakdown, anxiety, love, and many more topics.
Brianna has also been thoughtful with each chapter heading, allowing you to focus on the chapters that interest you.
Each topic explains the psychology of the subject and supports it with scientific insight and evidence with practical guidance and challenges interwoven in a concise, direct, and chatty style.
The concise chapters create lots of space for you to question, reflect and ponder where you are in life, your thinking, and your current mindset. What behavior patterns are not serving you well? And importantly, how to make positive and practical changes to enhance your life.
Grounded and grateful
We found many of the chapter’s grounding and content reassuring. Although our favorite chapter was chapter 81, ‘Every Relationship you have is with yourself.’ The quote below really struck a chord with us –
“The sooner you face you, the sooner other people’s actions don’t affect you negatively – your mindset doesn’t depend on them.”
Many chapters helped to make us feel grounded and grateful for what we have and where we are, including chapter 9 – ‘20 signs that you are doing better than you think‘. We at My Mind News practice gratitude daily, but the book reminds us that we need to be grateful for the things that haven’t gone to plan and the challenges we have had on the way.
The final point, 20, nicely states –
“you have been through some crap.”
We can definitely say that we have never taken the time to be grateful for the growth and learning that we have experienced due to these challenges. After all, it is part of what has made us, us. Something that we now acknowledge and that we are learning to be grateful for.
If, like us, you enjoy highlighting books to look back on for words of wisdom, guidance, and learning, this book will give you many opportunities to do this.
Overall thoughts
Every chapter has been a joy to read – a real source of enlightenment. There is so much in this book that creates self-awareness and much reflection. We learned so much about ourselves, which has helped us understand our behaviors and to accept them.
We can best describe this book as a handbook to understanding and knowing you. It is an excellent gift for anyone at any age. Still, it is certainly one we wish we had read in our thirties, as it has accelerated our self-awareness and sense of self, which will benefit us and those around us.
My Mind News highly recommends this book to anyone who wants to get to know and understand themselves.
