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A review by desihorcrux
Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin,Endorphin Levels by Loretta Graziano Breuning
4.0
A book that explains the connection between our psychological structure to the biological science behind it? Count me in! This was time well spent and a solid 3.5 read for me.
'Habits of a Happy Brain' is a book that has taken the core of enzyme science and explained it in a simplified manner to help us understand on how to train our brain into becoming happier. The philosophy here is straightforward - Your brain secretes enzymes as a result of certain actions and this triggers happiness (or unhappiness) respectively. Not intricate or elaborate, but it works to convince everyone on my favorite core ideology that is "You are not your thoughts".
Let's meet our friends: Dopamine, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Cortisol (this is categorized as an 'unhappy' enzyme, however we learn to understand why we need him too). I love how the author mentions that forming new habits is like paving a dirt path in a rainforest with a highway through it. It is difficult, takes time and you'd rather use the highway of bad habits you have, but proceeds to explains that repeatability is the ultimate success formula. The book provides a simple approach to starting a new good habit in 45 days (mainly to train your brain to feel good about this habit despite initial resistance) and how to overcome obstacles along the way. This one has definitely made me want to pick up my guitar practice that I'd had abandoned at the beginning of the year. That's a win in my opinion.
"If you're always looking for wrongs, you will not find the rights even if you stumble upon it."
"We all have an idealized view of happiness. Our expectations will never match the actual. Try to feel happy about small things. Make it a habit to see the good in everything."
The only downside to this book was that it seems to written in a way that it expects everyone reading it is objecting/disagreeing with everything said within it. It has multiple sentences following an important statement that are along the lines of "but you might disagree with what I just said so let me explain more". I just wish the author had trusted me more to actually like it (which I did most of the time). I also wasn't a big fan of the repeatability of similar concepts within this book, but most self help books fall into that trap to drive the point home so I'm not going to hold this against the book.
The best parts of this was the last chapter where the Author provides a list of similar books, what they are about and why she recommends it. I just wish every book had this to make it easier for me to not seek out the next perfect read along similar lines (which I always end up doing).
'Habits of a Happy Brain' is a book that has taken the core of enzyme science and explained it in a simplified manner to help us understand on how to train our brain into becoming happier. The philosophy here is straightforward - Your brain secretes enzymes as a result of certain actions and this triggers happiness (or unhappiness) respectively. Not intricate or elaborate, but it works to convince everyone on my favorite core ideology that is "You are not your thoughts".
Let's meet our friends: Dopamine, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Cortisol (this is categorized as an 'unhappy' enzyme, however we learn to understand why we need him too). I love how the author mentions that forming new habits is like paving a dirt path in a rainforest with a highway through it. It is difficult, takes time and you'd rather use the highway of bad habits you have, but proceeds to explains that repeatability is the ultimate success formula. The book provides a simple approach to starting a new good habit in 45 days (mainly to train your brain to feel good about this habit despite initial resistance) and how to overcome obstacles along the way. This one has definitely made me want to pick up my guitar practice that I'd had abandoned at the beginning of the year. That's a win in my opinion.
"If you're always looking for wrongs, you will not find the rights even if you stumble upon it."
"We all have an idealized view of happiness. Our expectations will never match the actual. Try to feel happy about small things. Make it a habit to see the good in everything."
The only downside to this book was that it seems to written in a way that it expects everyone reading it is objecting/disagreeing with everything said within it. It has multiple sentences following an important statement that are along the lines of "but you might disagree with what I just said so let me explain more". I just wish the author had trusted me more to actually like it (which I did most of the time). I also wasn't a big fan of the repeatability of similar concepts within this book, but most self help books fall into that trap to drive the point home so I'm not going to hold this against the book.
The best parts of this was the last chapter where the Author provides a list of similar books, what they are about and why she recommends it. I just wish every book had this to make it easier for me to not seek out the next perfect read along similar lines (which I always end up doing).