“This generation doesn’t have a knowledge problem. We have a consumption problem. We are addicted to learning for the sake of knowing. Book after book. Podcast after podcast. Conference after conference. Sermon after sermon. But still, for many of us, life remains the same…” – Dale Partridge (author of Saved From Success)

Here is an unlikely picture of a doomed person. Let’s call him Zain.

Zain has been introduced to the concept of reading personal growth books to change his life. He has perhaps picked his first book and felt that boost of dopamine that comes with knowing something that he believes at least 90 percent of the world does not know. He feels incredible, good about himself, and hopeful for the future.

Zain begins to make vague plans in his head, plans to defeat procrastination, quit his social media addiction, stop eating junk food, wake up earlier, etc. He begins to fantasize about the transformation of his life and how he would most definitely be a successful person in the future.

Perhaps Zain does apply some of the things he has learned from the books for the period in which he still feels motivated. In the first 2 to 3 days, he wakes up by 4 a.m., exercises, journals, prays for an hour, reads the scripture, places his hands on his head, and screams that he has ‘A millionaire mind!' for thirty minutes in front of a mirror.

And then the motivation fades away, slowly at first, but surely. He relapses into old habits and starts feeling like a terrible person; like he is losing sight of himself, his visions, and his goals for the future.

So he buys another productivity or spiritual book, abandoning all the principles and morals has learnt from the first. And for the period that he reads that book, he feels productive. He is getting in line with his goals once again and is getting ahead of his peers. He is being his ideal self.

Everything feels good after that. Soon after, he feels like buying another book and then another and another until this becomes an addiction. He reads productivity books during almost all waking hours. Then he moves to other platforms that give him the same good feeling. Ted talks, sermons, conferences, seminars, and all different avenues provide the same dose of dopamine.

Soon after, his binge reading takes the place of implementing any actions in his life. The brain begins to interpret the hours spent gulping book after book after book as productive ones. With each book he reads, he gets this illusion that he is headed to his bright future, to the success that he wishes to attain.

 

PSEUDOPRODUCTIVITY

Work that looks as though it is valuable but is truly just an elaborate means of wasting time (dextronet.com)

 

Each time Zain opens the first page of a new book; listens to a new sermon, or watches another Ted Talk, his brain fills him up with dopamine. He gets a peculiar sort of high. For him, living in the pages of motivational books or the euphoria of Ted Talks, or other such activities has become his new normal.

These sorts of activities provide him with a tremendous reward. He ends up having little motivation to get off the high, put down the book and apply what he has learned. He probably will never do so. But it does not matter to him, because he already feels diligent and has a sense of fulfilment.

It does not matter that 99 percent of the things he learns in the books are forgotten once he drops them for the next fix. After all, billionaires and powerful men of God read tons of books, right?

Zain does not realise it, but this habit of his leaves him stuck in his current predicament, without any tangible results or change, in an unending cycle that will leave him empty and depressed.

Because at a point in his life, he will have to realise that despite everything, he has achieved nothing yet. He is bound to realise that he has made no real progress in his life. All he has done is indulge in activities that have convinced him that he has been making progress.

 

ADDICTION

A compulsive, chronic, physiological, or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behaviour, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects… (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary)

 

You can get addicted to the good feelings that come with reading personal growth books, much to your detriment. It seems an unlikely correlation, does it not? I am sure many people do not expect to see the words, ‘addiction’ and ‘personal growth books’, being used in the same sentence. But hear me out. Just hear me out.

There is a proliferation of personal growth and spiritual books in the market. This means that no matter what area of your life you are trying to address, there are at least a hundred books addressing that issue, and even more.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with reading these books. Well, some of them. But that is a topic for another day.

But I dare to say that your extensive consumption of books, even spiritual books, sermons, teachings, messages, etc, without giving yourself the time to act by the teachings of those books would lead to outcomes you may not expect, negative outcomes.

And I have the backing of the scripture on this one.

James 1:22:

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

Reading further, the scripture has painted a beautifully tragic picture of the sort of person who continues to listen to the word (or read books) without ever applying the teachings therein.

James 1:23-24:

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror, for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”

 

The underlying problem here does not stem from reading books. It stems from when these books become just another book to be read, like a novel, to be quickly abandoned and forgotten after reading. The problem lies in the twenty church books we have shoved in our drawers but never gone back to gain new applicable insights from, in the highlighted productivity books that are never used to make our lives better.

The problem lies in when we become so addicted to gaining knowledge about how to be our best selves; that we forget to apply the knowledge we have gained.

And what do we have as a result? Personal growth book lovers still stuck in the same spot because they have not mastered the discipline to apply what they have learned. Pastors not abiding by what they preach. Christians who substitute the reading of spiritual books for spiritual growth.

Do not get me wrong. You are even more doomed if you do not take out the time to read the scripture or spiritual books or personal growth books. At least those who do so know the principles for success. At least, there is some chance that they might realise they need to apply the knowledge they possess. They are on a higher level than the individual that refuses to read anything and refuses to expand his mind.

I once saw a question that asked, “Do you really need to read an entire book to know the right steps to take to be successful?”

Yes, yes of course you do. If you have a particular challenge in your life, wisdom on how to overcome it will not fall from the sky. You need a book, a sermon, or a mentor.

The real question that we should ask here is, “Do you really have to read ten to twenty books dealing with the same topic? Do you need to be told to pray or wake up early or destroy procrastination ten different times in ten different books from ten different authors?”

I mean, if you have gone past book two and have not received enough insight to deal with your challenge, then there has to be something fundamentally wrong with the way you consume these books. You have a consumption problem.

Reading these books this way is a peculiar and dangerous form of procrastination.

You must make a conscious effort not to allow yourself to consume more information than you take action on. Do not let yourself fall into the trap of pseudo productivity or pseudo-spirituality.

Here is the basic truth. Reading spiritual and self-help books in and of themselves would do nothing for you. If you want to change your life, you have to take action. Otherwise, you are no better than the person who has not picked up a book in his entire life.

A person who has read just a single book but has let his subconscious take in all the lessons from that book, and has vigorously implemented it into his life, is better than the binge reader that does nothing with the information that he or she has learned.

A serious question needs to be asked here…

Do you think great men of God just read spiritual books?

Do you think successful and influential people got to that point in their lives by just reading books?

Well, the answer is simple and obvious.

No.

Why?

Because reading books is not enough. What you choose to do with the aftermath of your reading endeavours is crucial to your success and spiritual growth.

 

WHAT TO DO?

1, Read with intention. Do not just grab a book because the title seems nice. You do that for novels, not for books that you presume you are investing money and time in to grow and develop as an individual. Identify a problem you need to solve in your life and begin hunting for books that could help you with that problem.

If you read a book whose teachings you cannot apply, it is wasted knowledge.

Most books have synopsis and summaries online. Even if you think that the book will help you, ensure that you read the summaries online to get a clear picture of what the book is all about and to be certain that the book is the one to help you.

One thing that I have begun to teach myself to do is to read books about specific principles that I would wish to emulate. Hence, I try to avoid vague and clickbait books and go into the more specific ones. If I want to learn how to be consistent, I read a book about consistency and highlight key points to implement. The same goes for any other principle I wish to learn, whether it be how to build good habits, how to forgive, the importance of spiritual mentors, or how to let the Holy Spirit guide my every step.

2. As you read, take notes, and highlight, so that you can have references to return to when you need to refresh your memory.

3. Apply the principles you have learned in your life. Never move to another book without having a clear-cut plan on how to actualise the lessons learned and begin to apply them in your life.

In the end, no matter how many books you read, they are useless if you do not choose to take responsibility and implement changes in your life. You grow by making a conscious effort to grow, not by reading books on how to grow.

 

 

 

Recently, I drew up a poll on LinkedIn asking students and professionals what their biggest challenges were. While imposter syndrome was at the top of the list, lack of ‘work/life balance’ came as a close second.

This comes as no surprise of course. Nowadays, with the increasingly demanding work spaces and academic curriculums, the rise in remote or at-home work, and the upsurge of media dedicated to the promotion of toxic productivity, a lot of people have found themselves devoting more time than is necessary to their work and abandoning other parts of their lives as a result. There is currently a widespread increase in stress levels and burnout across universities and work spaces as people have found themselves migrating from the 40-hour work week to 60 and even 80-hour work weeks. 

Of course, for a person working for 80 hours out of 168, almost half of the person’s week gets devoted to work and with the hours set out for sleep, very little time is dedicated to doing other things that make life worth living.

But what if the issue cannot really be circumscribed into a mere work/life balance issue? What if the answer to the reduction of the increasing rates of stress and lack of balance in life comes, not from trying to achieve a fifty/fifty balance between work and this vague concept of ‘life’, but from the realisation of the fact that our lives cannot be divided into those two categories and that the only way to achieve a full and wholesome life is to be clear and mindful of the many other aspects of our lives that we often sacrifice on the altar of work or even trying to achieve the said ‘work/life’ balance.

I was looking for a work that really explains the concept of having a balanced life, a truly balanced life and not just a life that we try to divide into a 50/50 segment, and I came across a wonderful book titled, ‘The Work/Life Balance Myth’ written by David J McNeff.

I have written a previous review of this book here, and have reached out to the author to provide us with some insights as to how we can achieve a stress-free, balanced, and harmonious life without necessarily having to carve our lives into only two aspects but instead an understanding of the fact that our existence is composed of far more than just ‘work’ and ‘life’.

Enjoy my interview with author, life coach, and president of Peak Consulting Group in Massachusetts, United States, David J McNeff.

****

Q: When and how did the idea of the theories that you have laid down in your book come to mind in your life? Was it as a result of personal experiences, or solely on the basis of the experience of others that you got to listen to?

There was no one big event. It was just that part of my upbringing brought the knowledge that there were lots of parts to your life. And so as a teenager, I was sort of aware that these other parts or slices, as I listed in the book, mattered and were important. So, it was a small evolution that took place, and by the time that I got into my twenties and thirties, and forties, it had become a part of my life. And in my business, I began helping people that were under stress. So, it has been more of a part of my life, rather than this special process that took place.

Q: Can a person’s life be strictly said to be divided into only those seven slices? Do you believe, apart from times of retirement, that there could be times in a person’s life in which a person could have more or fewer slices of life?

Remember that the whole point of being aware of these slices is how to manage yourself and stress better. Where you choose to live your life is something different. So spending your time in these five, smaller, time-consuming slices of your life, is designed to help you live better in your family and professional life, meaning, that is where most of the pressure and stress in your life comes from.

So it really is up to you. You can live your life however you want, but the point of the Seven Slice method is, if you are under stress, knowing how to spend time in these other slices can help with the stress. Now, finding your meaning and purpose in life; that is a whole other question. But the Work/Life Balance Myth is about, ‘Can you live your life without feeling like you are going out of your mind?’ And the answer is yes, but that means that you have to live in these other slices for some amount of time per week. And you will find your stress levels come down and you feel like you are really now living in harmony with yourself.

Now, if you want to be a mountain climber or an astronaut, you can do whatever you want to do, but this method will help you live your life with a sense of more harmony and balance.

Can you live your life without feeling like you are going out of your mind?

Q: So all through your life, can you say that you have lived stress-free and in harmony and balance, using this method of yours?

Oh no, no, no. Nobody lives a stress-free life. Stress is constant. The question is, do you manage the stress, or does the stress manage you? 

For a lot of people, it goes like, ‘Oh, I am having a good day because the stress level is low.’ Or ‘Oh, I am having a bad day because the stress level is high.’ But my pitch is, you can be the same every day, if you manage the stress, by living in these seven slices. 

So when I work with people who go up and down, in the sense of, one day they are happy and the other day, they are depressed, I go, ‘You cannot live your life like that, that is crazy’ You have to try to be consistent and have a perspective and the only way to realise that is to take note of the fact that you have a personal, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual life.

You only have to spend minutes on the other five slices per day. And I achieve this by scheduling. So I schedule physical activities. I schedule time to sit and talk about feelings. I schedule time to read books, about 25 a year, two a month. On Sundays, I go to church services and read the bible three times a week. I schedule all this because it works for me. 

You can decide not to schedule and do this whenever you feel like it. But when people do not spend time in any of the other slices of life, it gets them overwhelmed.

The question is, do you manage the stress, or does the stress manage you?

 

Q: You believe in the solution being addition and not subtraction. But is it not possible that there are times in which a toxic amount of time is being invested in a single slice and it would only make sense to cut down on the time spent in that slice?

So I call that getting overwhelmed. When people find themselves getting overwhelmed, spending too much time at work, school or family, i.e. only one slice, that is when you have to pull yourself out to spend time in these other 5 slices in order to go back to that major slice with a better perspective. Because I think that what happens when there is too much focus on one slice, is that it becomes all or nothing. That is, I either spend all of my time on this one slice, or I will fail.

But the perspective changes when you begin spending time in these other five slices, all of a sudden, you realise that it is no longer life or death. It’s just a problem that needs to be solved. So that is how you can get out of being overwhelmed, you spend little bits of time in these other slices.

Q: How does a person incorporate some aspect of balance during those difficult moments of life, like during periods of emergency, in which a person seems compelled to sacrifice other slices of his or her life to focus on a singular slice?

So, there are emergencies, disasters, and crises, that require 100% of our time and attention. In my experience, during times of crisis, there is always a beginning, a middle, and an end. It does not go on forever. So my point is; deal with the crisis, and as the crisis comes to an end, go back to living in all seven slices.

Q: But during that period of crisis, it is alright for you to have an unbalanced life, even for that short period of time?

That is the whole point of it being an emergency, it is different from everyday life. So I get sick, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and then I have to slowly incorporate those other slices of my life so that they can help me deal with the post-emergency. 

Q: Do you believe that the main issue that people have with achieving balance in our lives boils down to the fact that our work lives are more often too demanding?

So, sometimes, our work becomes too much of a burden, too consuming, all the time. That is when you need these five slices the most. What you do is that you take minutes and not hours a day in each of those other slices and it takes the pressure off immediately so that you can put this work problem in the right context, and get through it. 

Everyone who works gets overwhelmed periodically. That is when you are supposed to use this method right away because you have to bring the temperature down so that you can deal with everything calmly. 

I believe that the ‘too demanding’ issue is something that we allow to happen. I have found people who get overwhelmed at work and I ask, “Why did you let that happen?” They usually reply, “Oh no. I am out of control, my boss told me this or that…” You know, in times like that, you could speak up for yourself and say, “Okay, I will take care of it in a little bit. I have to go do something else now.”

They ask, “So you can do that?” and I reply. “Yes. In business, all they want you to do is to finish. So, even if you finish it later, what they want is for you to get it done.”

Business is not to be taken personally. The purpose of it is just to make money. Your business does not have to control your life. And I think that what happens to people is that without a balanced, seven slice life; when they get yelled at while at work, they think that it is the end of the world. That is not how it works. 

You need to keep balance. Finish your work, but live in harmony with yourself, so that the yelling and the emergencies of work do not throw you off. You can take control of your life. You do not have to hand your life over.

I listen to people say things like, “Oh no, I have to work all weekend.” And when I ask why, they say things like, “Well, it is due on Monday.” If it is due on Monday, then get it done on Monday. 

Some people need permission to allow themselves to live a better life. Some people think they have to do as they are told by their boss. This is a reminder; all they want is for you to get the work done. So, get it done, but use your own timeline.

Your business does not have to control your life.

Q: In these current times, in which a lot of people are choosing to work at home and the work slice is slowly getting fused with other slices, how do people achieve balance?

So this was a big problem during Covid when people suddenly went home. So suddenly, you could work all day and all night. That period of time was when I really had to apply scheduling. 

Because, at that period of time, people became very accessible. Everyone knew that all employees were at home with their children on Zoom. Hence, it became very easy to send invites at any time of the day. 

So, a lot of work with the seven slices became about setting boundaries. When working at home, without the commute time and without the office, you have to build boundaries in your home and work life at home. Schedule work, so that it is not all day and all night. 

Q: How were you able to do this as a writer? Because as a writer, I do not really set the proper 8-hour scheduling. Sometimes, I write all day, sometimes I write all night. 

You solve that problem by limiting the amount of time that you are allowed to work. So you get the same amount of work done, for instance, but you get it done in 4 instead of eight hours. So you have a start and you have a stop time. 

And this is how we get people realising that they waste time working inefficiently because they have unlimited time. They say, “Well, it is 9 o’clock, and I can get it done all night.” And then what happens? You get to work inefficiently. You ramble. You get up. You go to get a cup of coffee.

But if you say, well, it is 9’o clock and I have to get ten pages of work done in 2 hours and stay focused in those two hours, stopping exactly when that time is up, something magical happens. Ten pages of work appear.

Remember, if you are any good at all at what you do, you can get it done in a short amount of time. Or maybe you do not know what you are doing. Then that is a second problem. People take a project that should be done in four hours and it takes them eight hours, and they go, well this is a lot of work and so on. No, this work should have taken only four hours. What is the problem here? Because there is something that you do not know if it takes twice the time to do and amount of work as it should take anyone who knows what they are doing.

So let’s not solve the time problem, let’s solve the expertise problem. Before you start writing, know what you are writing about. Spend time learning because if you learn it, then you will write it faster. 

Q: Coming to you, how were you able to identify and begin spending time in the empty slices of your life?

Well, remember that I kind of grew up with this process in mind. So, I have an idea, per week, of how I am going to spend my time. Occasionally, one slice goes wandering off, like my emotional slice, and then I get a little frustrated and angry and I realise that I need to start spending time there. So if you learn to recognise yourself when you are out of balance, you can learn how to address that issue. Again, you do not have to spend a day in a slice. You can spend just twenty minutes. 

And the beauty of these seven slices is that you can combine them. You can go for a walk with your partner and talk about the stresses of the day and that is your physical and emotional slice in one fifteen-minute time period walking around your street. So that I what I do, I usually combine them.

 Learn to recognise when you are out of balance.

Q: What has been the biggest transformation in your life ever since you began incorporating your theory of the seven slices?

Well, the biggest transformation has been applying it and seeing the impact that it has had in the lives of others. Seeing it work in the lives of people gives me a terrific feeling because I grew up with it and it has not been a big deal for me. It gave me quite a shock when I realised that other people did not know this. 

For instance, when the book first came out and I had a Zoom meeting with fifteen or so people, so many of them raised their hands and asked how it was possible that no one had ever written such a book before. 

I replied that it had been sitting there and hiding in plain sight. I mean, we all have these slices, so why did they not use them? And the problem is, many people have about two or so of these slices empty, from my experience. So I tell a lot of people to spend about five minutes or so in the empty slices of their lives and they do so and come back to tell me that they feel better already. 

Q: Finally, an additional question. I know that your book was focused mainly on professionals and people in the workplace, but I believe that students actually have a harder time being able to achieve balance in their lives, with the growing pressure for grades good enough to have a chance in the labour market. What is your advice to students, and how do you think that they should go about achieving balance in all slices of their lives?

People go to school from age five to age twenty-five. That is a lot of time. So I have come to think of school the way that I think of one’s profession. If you leave school, you move to your profession. Hence, if you are in school, that is your professional slice.

So, why would this process not work for you as a student? All that you would have to do is to cross out the professional slice and replace it with school. And you would use it the same way. To me, there is no difference.

I have heard a lot of clients ask me whether it would work for their children in school that suffer from stress and anxiety and I ask them whether the children usually spend time in the other slices of their lives. Most often, the answer is ‘I don’t think so.’ So I say, “Well, why don’t you try it?”

So I would say to you, it works the same way for students.

Q: So, when I read your book, I asked myself how I was going to implement this in my life. You see, I am a law student, and as a law student, my academic life is not restricted to only lectures and assignments. I also have a host of extra-curriculars. Hence, there are times that I would come to school in the morning and leave by 7 pm at night. And there are students who do this, sleep for a few hours, and then come back for night class and the likes. So, I was wondering, is it really workable in my life?

I say to you, it is the same thing. In the course of your day at law school, you can find five minutes for your personal life. What I do is that I take a ten-minute personal vacation every day. So for ten minutes, I do nothing other than stare out the window or read a paper or something. So, for me, I take a break in which I leave every other thing and focus on myself. It makes the rest of the day easier. 

So when I hear people like you saying, “Oh, I am in school from early morning to late at night.” I go, “I bet that I can find an hour of free time in ten-minute increments. Time in which you can read, pray, chant or meditate, talk with a friend about nothing, or take a ten minute.”

There is no barrier to the other slices of your life. It just takes little bits of planned time. It takes a little bit of discipline. It is a decision that you have to make to do it.

What I think is that a lot of people think about life as though it’s just happening to them or just coming at them. I mean, for you, you chose to go to law school. No one made you go to law school. So why do you not manage law school? Why do you let law school manage you?

^{There is no barrier to the other slices of your life. It just takes little bits of planned time and discipline.}

 

You can get the work done even if you follow your own course. The biggest question I ask people is why they follow other people that are stressed out instead of those that are more relaxed with their lives. As I tell them, go with the flow that works for you. If you follow one that does not work for you, you will end up unhappy and miserable.

*****

You can purchase David McNeff’s book, “The Work/Life Balance Myth” on Amazon. Click on this link to buy and get the full knowledge of what it truly takes to have a balanced life.

This is coming a bit late, but here are the personal growth books that I read in the month of June. I did read other books of other genres, but I will be highlighting and talking about them in my next book lover journals blog post.

1. Spiritual direction by Henri Nouwen

This has to be one of the best Christian books that I have read in a while. This particular book went to great lengths in explaining so many things that have been a source of concern to me as a growing Christian.

This was not a full book written by Henri Nouwen, but according to the publishers, a collection of the essays that he wrote during his lifetime.

According to the author, the goal of spiritual direction, which is essentially having a community of Christians to guide you along the way in your spiritual life, is spiritual formation, which is the ever-increasing capacity to live a spiritual life from the heart. 

And he states that three disciplines or spiritual practices are useful as one engages in the spiritual direction relationship. These things are what will help to create space for God in our hearts. They are:

• The discipline of the heart: Consists of introspection and contemplative prayer.

 

• The discipline of the book: in which we look to God through the sacred reading of the bible and other spiritual writings.

 

• The discipline of the church or community of faith: Requires us to be in a relationship with the people of God, witnessing to the active presence of God in history and community.

The author spends the rest of the book elaborating on the above listed and he stated a few insights that particularly stuck with me as I read the book.

• Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken with Jesus as our friend and finest guide.

• Living into a new way of self-understanding and spiritual depth is aided by having a sturdy spiritual companion or soul friend.

• To be a witness means to offer your own faith experience and to make your doubts and hopes, failures and successes, loneliness and woundedness, available to others as a context in which they can struggle with their humanness and quest for meaning.

• Community is not some sentimental ideal place or time where everybody lives together, loves each other, and always gets along. That is never going to happen. Rather, in living together, we come to realise that community doesn’t require or offer total emotional harmony. It offers us the context where we try to love one another and receive the love and care of others.

• If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we are guilty of idolatry.

• Finding a spiritual director begins with prayer.

If you are a Christian that is currently struggling and trying to grow in his or her spiritual life, I believe that this is for you. In fact, the title of the book is a bit limiting when looking at the amount of information and spiritual knowledge that can be found inside it. It has taught me some great life lessons and I believe that it will do the same for you as well.

Click to purchase

2. 13 things mentally strong people don’t do by Amy Morin 

This is a book that was written by a therapist who wrote it on the brink of trying to cope with a plethora of losses in her life. In the book, she highlights some key attributes that people who have been able to develop their mental strength, which she states is about improving your ability to regulate your emotions, manage your thoughts, and behave in a positive manner, despite your circumstances.

She states some things to note about mental strength, saying that it is not about acting tough, not about ignoring emotions, not about having to be completely self-reliant, not about positive thinking, and not about chasing happiness. She even goes as far as to say that it is not synonymous with mental health but is instead more about building a sort of mental resilience over the storms of life.

The author then proceeds to list out the 13 things that mentally strong people do not do. Six out of the thirteen that were really interesting and inspiring to me were:

1. They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves.

2. They do not shy away from change.

3. They do not focus on things that they cannot control.

4. They do not resent other people’s successes.

5. They do not fear taking calculated risks.

6. They do not worry about pleasing everybody.

With each of the chapters, the author narrates stories of her clients that have battled with the issues and how they were able to overcome their difficulties in a way that is very motivational and pushes one to begin to think of ways of changing one’s life.

So, I do think that it is a very nice book and one that is worth reading by all.

 

Click to purchase

 3. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I believe that this book can be stated to be the worthy predecessor to the sensational bestselling book titled, “Atomic Habits by James Clear”. Now, this does not mean that they both basically say the same thing. Even though they deal with the same issue of habits, they do have approaches that are a bit distinct, and to be honest, I found out learning more from Atomic Habits but enjoying The Power of Habit more.

This book is not just filled with tips such as the importance of understanding cues when it comes to being able to maintain habits, and being able to understand the environmental factors that may cause one to develop a habit and find it very difficult to let go of that habit, but is also filled with a lot of research and examples of the ways that countrywide or personal habits were able to be transformed by using the rules of habit change.

Essentially, according to the book, new habits are created by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop. And the golden rule of habit change is that if we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted.

This, according to the writer, was what was able to make a former addict and smoker completely transform her life, was able to bring America into the habit of brushing their teeth, was able to get a majority of the country to begin to like a new song that was once hated and so on.

The author also touches different other subject matters, like the idea of keystone habits, which are the habits that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns. He also touches on the topic of willpower and habits, the concept of priming of the environment, habit tracking, and so much more.

It is a great read, if you are a person that loves to dive, not only into practical lessons but research, studies, and stories that prove the effectiveness of the lessons being taught but if you want a book that goes more straight to the point in terms of habit change, I would suggest that you read ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. Both books are wonderful and very effective either way.

So there you have it, the books that I read during the previous month. What about you? What books have you gotten around to reading these past few months?

I find it rather shocking, perhaps, because I am a writer as well, that many people take the habit of reading fiction as nothing more than a leisurely activity, on the same level of entertainment as mindlessly scrolling through memes on Twitter or playing video games. 

Of course, there is no doubt that with the freedom that has been afforded every single person on this earth to write and self-publish a book, unlike what was available when books could only be published through top publishing companies that thoroughly screened books before they could reach the eyes of the public, and with the recent phenomenon of improperly constructed web novels, with plots that are as absurd as the styles of writing and the prevalence of grammatical errors in each of them- this is self-deprecating, I do earn a fair amount of both passive and active income from writing web novels, that there are books that are so mindless that reading them could be placed in the same category as mindlessly scrolling through social media.

But as for me, a chronic book lover, or bookaholic, as we like to call ourselves, I have found that books, and especially fiction books, do offer more than entertainment, but an opportunity to find some of the most interesting ways to learn about new concepts. 

The importance of fiction in this regard is a bit underrated. As an almost involuntary act, one of the first things that I do if I want to find out about a particular concept or learn something new is to check if there is a novel somewhere about it.

That has been how I have managed to navigate and learn new things about one concept that has been rather intriguing to me, which is the concept of the human mind. For a relatively long time, I have been mesmerised by the way the mind of humans work and I have found myself conducting personal studies into psychology, and more specifically, into mental illnesses, trying to figure out what changes occur in the brain and mind of a person that makes the person develop a mental illness.

One of the first mental illnesses that I became interested in was depression. This did not just occur without a reason, for I was introduced to that aspect of psychology by a competition that pushed me to study depression. It was a poetry competition and even though I have forgotten what wordings were used in the theme of the competition; I do recall that it had something to do with depression and suicide. The moment I saw the competition and got interested in it, I knew that one of the first things that I was going to have to do would be to read all that I could on the sickness, and not just read up on it objectively, but to express, with words, what goes on in the mind of a person, what pushes a person to decide that suicide is the only way out for him or her.

I began researching, of course, and at the time, I did not make use of a book but did a Google search on the topic. However, while I saw a million and one blog posts that tried to explain the symptoms of depression, I could not make sense of what went through the minds of people suffering from the mental illness until I stumbled into a blog post in which the sufferers and suicide survivors used their own words to explain what it felt like for them to be on the edge, what it had been for them to decide that there was no other way out for them than to end their own lives and it was only through reading those accounts that I could tap into the thought processes of depressed people and have a feel of what they felt.

Some lines of the poem that I came up with after reading the personal accounts are:

I am alone in a dark lonely night, silent as a graveyard, basking in my state of acute pain

..........

It has been a war between hope and despair, a war in which I tried to ignore the intrusive thoughts, the impulses, the outright despair that threatened to override my survival instincts

..............

I can’t see beyond this deep pit that I have been hurled into, the pain will never end, I will be better off dead

...........

I have to do this, I need to

I need to end my incredibly painful, totally senseless now, need to end these dark nights of the soul that I have had to endure.

.....................

This may be an impulsive ultimate decision, but I have a strong conviction that it is the only way out.

Now, given that I am not much of a poet, and because of some issues that I had with my submission, I did not get to win the contest. However, there is no denying that it did open my eyes to the world of the psychology of mental illnesses and began my quest to find more ways to learn about them.

Given that I had gotten my true first understanding of the mental illness, I sought to write more about it and many more mental illnesses, using my knowledge of the illnesses to bring into light the challenges that people who pass through such illnesses go through because I felt it was important to bring these to light, given the fact that in Nigeria, mental illnesses are more or less unspoken about and many do not even get treatment.

Of course, to write accurately about both depression and other mental illnesses, I had to supplement my knowledge by reading stories of people that had suffered from the illness; it came as no brainer to me that if I wanted to learn all that I could, the best place to look in was in the world of fiction.

And that began my quest into reading on mental illnesses, including depression in fiction.

Now, I believe that depression is one of the easier mental illnesses to write about, so I found it very easy to find scores and scores of books on the topic. Here are some novels that I read and how they opened my eyes deeper into the mind of a depressed person. 

1. IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY BY NED VIZZINI.

This was one of the first books that I read on depression. It is a true-life story of an experience that the author went through (I feel as though I should note this, but after I finished reading the book, I, to my greatest despair and sadness, found that the author committed suicide a few years after writing the book so it changed a few things about the perspective I had of the book.)

The book centers on a fifteen-year-old boy named Craig. From what I can recall of the book, he enters a high-profile private high school that he worked very hard to get into, but the moment he enters the school, he begins to find it very difficult to cope amidst other smart people. Furthermore, the fact that his ‘closest’ friend, one whom he does drugs with, gets into the high school easily without putting in much work and is currently dating a girl that he has a crush on does not help matters for him.

The pressure that comes with the pressures of his over-demanding school, his feeling of inadequacy in the school, his perfectionism, the fact that he is somewhat of an overachiever, and the teenage angst that he is overcome with plunges him into depression. After some time, he finds it difficult to even eat, and eventually, after a night of coming terribly close to committing suicide, calls a suicide hotline and gets himself admitted into the institution where he spends five days on admission.

During the five days, he has experiences, meets other mentally ill people, gets a crush, and is eventually able to overcome his depression.

From the onset, when I read the book, I found it to be an interesting and heart warming book about survival and one that was very detailed and did quite a lot in opening my eyes as to not only the fact that depression is not age specific, but to the mind of a depressed perfectionist teenager. But I have to admit that I was sceptical of the five days to recovery narrative. I felt that the things that happened were a bit too rushed and there was not much of a thorough analysis or much time given for a proper dive into the internal issues that led to his depression. it almost appeared he got into the institution, fell in ‘like’ with a girl, made some new friends, found that some of his old friends were not the people that he thought they were, got some support, and that was enough. It was a nice story but from what little I knew, I felt that it did not seem quite enough to treat depression. But I had these beliefs before I found that it was a true-life story.

But the book has its peaks. There was not much suspense in the book, the action was minimal, but I have to say that it was clear that the author knew and had gone through what he wrote. The portrayal of what Craig went through before he entered the mental institution was heart-wrenching, honest, and realistic. The conversations that he had with his therapist opened my eyes to a lot of the internal struggles that a person with depression has to go through, and I even related a little to the pressure that he felt with being inadequate in school. 

Craig, the protagonist, was light in how he talked about his depression, without leaving the heavy nasty parts.

“Some days I woke up and got out of bed and brushed my teeth like any normal human being; some days I woke up and laid in bed and looked at the ceiling and wondered what the hell the point was of getting out of bed and brushing my teeth like any normal human being.”

“I just want to not be me.”

“I should be a success and I’m not and other people- younger people- are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting their lives in order. I’m still a nobody. When am I going to not be nobody?”

The author wrote other books dealing with teenage angst and depression, but I did not get around to reading any other ones.

2. BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, I’LL BE DEAD BY JULIE ANNE PETERS

I have to say; the title made me know that I just had to read the book.

And this book, oh my, it is something, to say the very least. 

The book centres around a protagonist named Daelyn, who is on her last strand of life. What this means is that she has attempted and failed to commit suicide so many times. In fact, the last attempt she had, in which she poured ammonium and bleach down her throat, resulted in her having a burned stomach lining and a collapsed oesophagus and she has to wear a heavy neck brace. Also, the attempt leaves her unable to talk and eat. She gets skinny and frail as a result.

A bit of insight is given into why Daelyn wants to end her life. She has been bullied throughout her years in school, demeaned and insulted because of her weight, and even almost gets raped at a point in time. Furthermore, because of her being overweight, her parents make her go through a series of diets and even enroll her in a fat camp in which she gets abused emotionally and tortured with excessive exercise.

This culminates in the suicidal person that she is at the moment. 

As a character, she does not have much to offer but I think I understand why the author chose to make her that way. She is at a point in which she has logged onto a website for suicidal people and has 24 days in which she intends to distance herself from every other person in the world and mentally prepare herself to finally have a successful attempt. 

Apart from the flashbacks that she has, most of her days are spent reading novels and on her laptop, having no other hobbies or activities. She is almost dead on the inside, deeply depressed, and does not show much of any emotions in the book. She could be viewed as being a bit one-dimensional in that aspect, but I think it makes utter sense. 

Right as she is trying to get distanced from everybody, in walks Santana, a boy her age that, no matter how much she tries to distance herself from him, just does not leave her alone and talks a lot to her even though she does not respond to most of his questions. Eventually, though, she begins to have tender feelings toward him and they build their friendship.

The book ends on a cliff hanger. It is the last day of the 24 days that she has set out to die and the author does not resolve whether or not she chooses to die, leaving it to the readers to decide. 

Like most books that deal with depression, this is not action-packed and is quite disturbing to read. But the writing of the author made me enjoy learning about the book and does a good job in showing what the thought process of a suicidal person feels like, as it displays raw accounts of the girl deliberating on how best to die and choosing the most pain-free ways to go about it. It is a great read if you are into heart-wrenching stories.

3. SUICIDE NOTES

This book is different from the others because, despite the title, it is quite light-hearted if compared to some of the other books that deal with these topics.

It deals with a protagonist named Jeff who, after a failed suicide attempt in which he slits his wrists, he finds himself committed to a mental institution where he is to stay for 45 days. 

But here is the thing, even though he attempted suicide, he does not believe that there is nothing wrong with him and is under the belief that he differs from the other patients at the mental institution, people that he refers to as nut jobs.

The book follows the 45 days that he spends in 45 chapters in which Jeff gets to have an experience that is somewhat similar to the one of Craig in ‘Its Kind of a Funny Story.’ However, just like the other book, this one cannot be listed amongst the best books on depression that I have read in terms of how it describes the illness. Also again, it did not go into a deep dive to explain what happens in the mind of depressed people, no doubt because they wanted to push the narrative of the main character being delusional, funny, and comical (like calling the doctor Dr. Cat Poop throughout his duration kind of funny).

However, his tone was confusing to me. This was someone that attempted suicide, something that a lot of chronically depressed people do not even get to do and he is being written as comical almost the very next day? I did not buy it at all.

There is a point in which one character, the friend of the protagonist, Sadie, commits suicide and I think that was the only point that I felt genuinely sad in. Apart from it, the book ranged from being too light-hearted to being disturbing at some points.

4. CUT

This is another book that is quite insightful, but which I had mixed feelings about. The main character is a 15-year-old girl named Callie, who cuts herself and, as a result, has been put into a rehabilitation centre called Sea Pines treatment centre.

But during the period that she is there, she does not show any sign that she is willing to change, does not even speak, and is mocked by her fellow patients as a result. In fact, while she is there, she is silent during group time, hides behind her hair, and even when she sees her counsellor, she cannot bring herself to speak. All she does is watch and listen.

She is the only cutter in the group for a while until Amanda comes into the group. Unlike her, Amanda is very vocal and shows her scars. According to the book, the moment that Callie sees the scars or tattoos that Amanda does on herself, for some reason, it makes her want to stop cutting herself.

It is later revealed that she is a perfectionist, a runner, has a sick younger brother and her parents are too busy to pay any sort of attention to her. She also has social issues, as is revealed by her silence around the other patients and how she finds it difficult to make any sort of connection with them.

Callie blames herself for a lot of things. For her brother’s illness, (and it is revealed that a particularly nasty incident with her brother, in which her brother fell very ill, seemed to lead to her cutting), for the fact that she is neglected by her parents and blames herself for her mother’s anxiety issues. Also, the fact that she lives in a lonely broken home contributes to her mental illness.

After some experiences that she has with her fellow inmates, including her interactions with Amanda, the anorexics, and Daphne, the girl who is obese and is a compulsive eater, she finds healing within the centre and in the end; she decides that it is time to speak and narrates her experiences to her unnamed counsellor.

The book was the shortest of the bunch and whilst I was used to the lack of suspense and much action that is associated with books that deal with this topic, I have to say that, compared to another book that had descriptions on cutting that I had read, ‘Scars’ by title, the description of the cutting and the reasons behind the cutting were a bit lacking.

I did like the book, especially the inner drama between the patients, but it was not comprehensive enough and did not go deep into the inner workings of the girl’s mind or give a very satisfactory ending.

The four other books that I read on the topic include:

1. MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES

2. GET WELL SOON

3. THE MANIFESTO ON HOW TO BE INTERESTING

4. CRANK

They will be analysed in another post (link will be attached to this one once it is published).

In all, I have to say that the novels really opened my eyes to all the intricacies of living with chronic depression. As an author that intends to write a lot of stories dealing with victims of abuse and mentally ill persons, to bring light to the issues that they face, they have provided me with a blueprint on how to go about writing the books.

And also, I believe that we all should read some sort of literature relating to mental illnesses. Not only will doing such broaden our minds, but it could potentially lessen the prejudice that people with mental disorders face.

...............................

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