Ebook 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman
59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman. Let's review! We will certainly usually learn this sentence almost everywhere. When still being a childrens, mom used to order us to constantly read, so did the teacher. Some publications 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman are totally checked out in a week and we need the commitment to support reading 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman Exactly what around now? Do you still love reading? Is reviewing simply for you that have commitment? Never! We right here supply you a new book entitled 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman to review.
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman
Ebook 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman
Why must pick the trouble one if there is very easy? Get the profit by purchasing the book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman right here. You will certainly obtain different way to make an offer and obtain the book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman As recognized, nowadays. Soft documents of the books 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman end up being very popular amongst the users. Are you among them? And here, we are supplying you the extra compilation of ours, the 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman.
Here, we have countless e-book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman and collections to read. We additionally offer alternative kinds and type of the publications to look. The fun publication, fiction, history, novel, science, as well as various other sorts of publications are offered below. As this 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman, it turneds into one of the favored e-book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman collections that we have. This is why you are in the appropriate site to view the remarkable books to possess.
It won't take more time to download this 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman It won't take even more money to publish this book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman Nowadays, individuals have been so wise to make use of the innovation. Why don't you utilize your device or other tool to save this downloaded and install soft file book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman By doing this will certainly let you to always be gone along with by this book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman Of course, it will certainly be the best good friend if you review this publication 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman till completed.
Be the initial to purchase this book now and also get all factors why you require to review this 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman Guide 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman is not just for your duties or requirement in your life. Books will always be a buddy in every time you review. Now, allow the others find out about this page. You can take the advantages and also discuss it also for your good friends and individuals around you. By by doing this, you can actually obtain the definition of this book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life In Under A Minute, By Richard Wiseman profitably. Just what do you consider our suggestion here?
A psychologist and best-selling author gives us a myth-busting response to the self-help movement, with tips and tricks to improve your life that come straight from the scientific community.
Richard Wiseman has been troubled by the realization that the self-help industry often promotes exercises that destroy motivation, damage relationships, and reduce creativity: the opposite of everything it promises. Now, in 59 Seconds, he fights back, bringing together the diverse scientific advice that can help you change your life in under a minute, and guides you toward becoming more decisive, more imaginative, more engaged, and altogether more happy.
From mood to memory, persuasion to procrastination, resilience to relationships, Wiseman outlines the research supporting the new science of “rapid change” and, with clarity and infectious enthusiasm, describes how these quirky, sometimes counterintuitive techniques can be effortlessly incorporated into your everyday life. Or, as he likes to say: “Think a little, change a lot.”
- Sales Rank: #120915 in Books
- Published on: 2010-12-28
- Released on: 2010-12-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .75" w x 5.19" l, .57 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Features
- Like new
- Self-Help/Psychology
Review
"This is a self-help book, but with a difference: almost everything in it is underpinned by peer-reviewed and often fascinating research."
�— New Scientist
"For all those who are tired of the usual self-help formula--homespun anecdotes, upbeat platitudes, over-the-top promises--Richard Wiseman's 59 Seconds is just what the PhD ordered."
�— The Wall Street Journal
"Seemingly perfect for this age of short attention spans and instant gratification."
�— The Chronicle Herald
"At last, a self-help guide that is based on proper research. Perfect for busy, curious, smart people."
�— Simon Singh, author of Fermat's Enigma
“Wiseman is a brilliant name for a psychologist, and this book proves the professor is not misnamed. . . . [59 Seconds] contains dozens of fascinating and useful nuggets, and they all have science on their side.”
�— The Independent
About the Author
Richard Wiseman is based at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom and has gained an international reputation for research into offbeat areas of psychology, including deception, humor, and luck. He is the author of The Luck Factor, Quirkology, and numerous other books. A passionate advocate for science, Wiseman is well-known for his media appearances, high-profile talks, live demonstrations, and mass-participation studies. Wiseman also regularly acts as a creative consultant for print, broadcast, and new media.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Self-help exposed,
Sophie’s question, and the
potential for rapid change
DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE an important aspect of your life? Perhaps lose weight, find your perfect partner, obtain your dream job, or simply be happier? Try this simple exercise. . . .
Close your eyes and imagine the new you. Think how great you would look in those close-fitting designer jeans, dating Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, sitting in a luxurious leather chair at the top of the corporate ladder, or sipping a pi�a colada as the warm waves of the Caribbean gently lap at your feet.
The good news is that this type of exercise has been recommended by some in the self-help industry for years. The bad news is that a large body of research now suggests that such exercises are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, harmful. Although imagining your perfect self may make you feel better, engaging in such mental escapism can also have the unfortunate side effect of leaving you unprepared for the difficulties that crop up on the rocky road to success, thus increasing the chances of your faltering at the first hurdle rather than persisting in the face of failure. Fantasizing about heaven on earth may put a smile on your face, but it is unlikely to help transform your dreams into reality.
Other research suggests that the same goes for many popular techniques that claim to improve your life. Attempting to “think yourself happy” by suppressing negative thoughts can make you obsess on the very thing that makes you unhappy. Group brainstorming can produce fewer and less original ideas than individuals working alone. Punching a pillow and screaming out loud can increase, rather than decrease, your anger and stress levels.
Then there is the infamous “Yale Goal Study.” According to some writers, in 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the 3 percent of people who had specific goals all those years before had accumulated more personal wealth than the other 97 percent of their classmates combined.
It is a great story, frequently cited in self-help books and seminars to illustrate the power of goal setting. There is just one small problem—as far as anyone can tell, the experiment never actually took place. In 2007 writer Lawrence Tabak, from the magazine Fast Company, attempted to track down the study, contacting several writers who had cited it, the secretary of the Yale Class of 1953, and other researchers who had tried to discover whether the study had actually happened. No one could produce any evidence that it had ever been conducted, causing Tabak to conclude that it was almost certainly nothing more than an urban myth. For years, selfhelp gurus had been happy to describe a study without checking their facts.
Both the public and the business world have bought into modern-day mind myths for years and, in so doing, may have significantly decreased the likelihood of achieving their aims and ambitions. Worse still, such failure often encourages people to believe that they cannot control their lives. This is especially unfortunate, as even the smallest loss of perceived control can have a dramatic effect on people’s confidence, happiness, and life span. In one classic study conducted by Ellen Langer at Harvard University, half of the residents in a nursing home were given a houseplant and asked to look after it, while the other residents were given an identical plant but told that the staff would take responsibility for it. Six months later, the residents who had been robbed of even this small amount of control over their lives were significantly less happy, healthy, and active than the others. Even more distressing, 30 percent of the residents who had not looked after their plant had died, compared to 15 percent of those who had been allowed to exercise such control. Similar results have been found in many areas, including education, career, health, relationships, and dieting. The message is clear—those who do not feel in control of their lives are less successful, and less psychologically and physically healthy, than those who do feel in control.
A few years ago I was having lunch with a friend named Sophie. Sophie is a bright, successful thirtysomething who holds a senior position in a firm of management consultants. Over lunch Sophie explained that she had recently bought a well-known book on increasing happiness, and she asked me what I thought of the industry. I explained that I had serious reservations about the scientific backing for some of the techniques being promoted, and described how any failure to change could do considerable psychological harm. Sophie looked concerned and then asked whether academic psychology had produced more scientifically supported ways of improving people’s lives. I started to describe some of the quite complex academic work in happiness, and after about fifteen minutes or so Sophie stopped me. She politely explained that interesting though it was, she was a busy person, and she asked whether I could come up with some effective advice that didn’t take quite so much time to implement. I asked how long I had. Sophie glanced at her watch, smiled, and replied, “About a minute?”
Sophie’s comment made me stop and think. Many people are attracted to self-development and self-improvement because of the lure of quick and easy solutions to various issues in their lives. Unfortunately, most academic psychology either fails to address these issues or presents far more time-consuming and complex answers (thus the scene in Woody Allen’s film Sleeper, in which Allen’s character discovers that he has awakened two hundred years in the future, sighs, and explains that had he been in therapy all this time he would almost be cured). I wondered whether there were tips and techniques hidden away in academic journals that were empirically supported but quick to carry out.
Over the course of a few months I carefully searched through endless journals containing research papers from many different areas of psychology. As I examined the work, a promising pattern emerged, with researchers in quite different fields developing techniques that help people achieve their aims and ambitions in minutes, not months. I collected hundreds of these studies, drawn from many different areas of the behavioral sciences. From mood to memory, persuasion to procrastination, resilience to relationships, together they represent a new science of rapid change.
There is a very old story, often told to fill time during training courses, involving a man trying to fix his broken boiler.
Despite his best efforts over many months, he simply can’t mend it. Eventually, he gives up and decides to call in an expert. The engineer arrives, gives one gentle tap on the side of the boiler, and stands back as it springs to life. The engineer presents the man with a bill, and the man argues that he should pay only a small fee as the job took the engineer only a few moments. The engineer quietly explains that the man is not paying for the time he took to tap the boiler but rather the years of experience involved in knowing exactly where to tap. Just like the expert engineer tapping the boiler, the techniques described in this book demonstrate that effective change does not have to be time-consuming. In fact, it can take less than a minute and is often simply a question of knowing exactly where to tap.
From the Hardcover edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
403 of 411 people found the following review helpful.
Please drink a cup of coffee before reading this review
By Julia Flyte
This is an easy and enjoyable book to read - the kind that you can dip in and out of, picking up interesting tips along the way. For each topic, Wiseman discusses a number of research experiments (both his own and ones done by others) and then gives a number of concrete suggestions on how you can quickly implement these findings (although 59 seconds is often a stretch). And why the title of this review? Because one of the things I learned from reading this book was the fact that if you've just had a caffeinated drink, you are far more likely to be swayed by someone else's opinion!
The book is based on the premise that quick techniques can sometimes be surprisingly effective at helping us to change and explains (based on research studies) which ones work and which don't. Some examples that I found interesting were:
- a simple five day writing exercise that can lift your mood for several weeks
- how to create the perfect plan to achieve almost any goal
- how spending money on experiences is a far more effective way to make yourself happy than spending it on things
- how punching a pillow to relieve anger actually increases your anger, while sitting quietly and thinking about how you benefited from the experience has the opposite effect
- conversational techniques that can build instant rapport on a first date
- exercises to stimulate the unconscious mind that lead to better decision making
- simple tests to assess your child's emotional intelligence.
Like Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives, the book also has lots of facts that seem to have been included just because they're interesting. So we learn that people with bumper stickers are more aggressive drivers, that having a photo of a baby in your wallet significantly increases the chance of it being returned if you lose it, that your initials can influence your life expectancy and that adding plants to an office increases the number of creative ideas that employees will have.
The chapter list gives a good indication of the subjects covered in the book:
1. Happiness
2. Persuasion
3. Motivation
4. Creativity
5. Attraction
6. Stress
7. Relationships
8. Decision Making
9. Parenting
10. Personality
96 of 98 people found the following review helpful.
Self-help theories laid bare!
By Barry L. Davis
Subtitled "Change Your Life in Under a Minute," this fascinating book resulted from a conversation the author had with his friend Sophie, who was questioning a recently purchased self-help book she had on happiness. She asked him what he thought of the whole self-help industry. As he opined on his professional opinion of many of the techniques touted by these "experts," Sophie asked if he had some information that would be more helpful in less time. After all, she is a busy, successful professional. When Wiseman asked how much time he had, she glanced at her watch, smiled and said, "About a minute?"
Thus 59 seconds was born. This intriguing and highly practical book is replete with scores of studies on a wide range of topics that are the targets of the self-help, pop psychology industry, notably happiness, persuasion, motivation, creativity, attraction, relationships, stress, decision making, parenting and personality. Wiseman combines solid research with whimsy and practical activities to aid the reader in executing the subtitle of the book - Change your life in under a minute.
The author closes the book by providing Sophie with ten techniques that can, on a good day (according to Wiseman), be explained in under a minute (say, 59 seconds?).
Here they are:
1. Develop the gratitude attitude.
2. Be a giver.
3. Have a mirror in your kitchen.
4. Buy a potted plant for the office.
5. Touch people lightly on the upper arm.
6. Write about your relationship.
7. Deal with potential liars by closing your eyes and asking for email.
8. Praise children's effort over their ability.
9. Visualize yourself doing, not achieving.
10. Consider your legacy.
Do yourself a favor and don't just copy and try these ten techniques. Read the book and apply them.
140 of 151 people found the following review helpful.
SO helpful, SO useful -- I am floored!
By Fox in a Box
Depressed? Overweight? Angry? Failed every which way but loose? No accident, my friend, but help is here. Pour a cup of tea, grab a comforter and thank god.
I have some grounding in the study of psychology and much of its clinical research over the past 20 years, and know that Wiseman knows whereof he speaks. In addition to my academic study, I've so many books on these subjects that at a garage sale starring my self-help library, someone asked me if I was a psychiatrist. No, I said, I'm just nuts.
Yes, it's true that Wiseman offers jokey (and political) asides that might annoy some readers, but that is nothing compared to the enormously helpful distillation of psychological research offered here and the ease of application to one's own life.
The book is well organized, well written and lucid. It explains in lay terms why common and familiar "self-help" directives simply don't work, have never worked and are really no more than endlessly reiterated (and successfully marketed)myths. He then prescribes remedies that not only work fast, but have been proven by scientific study to provoke lasting change. Some are counterintuitive, some make immediate sense, all are easier than I had any right to expect.
I was quite surprised, not only by how quickly Wiseman's recommendations work, but by the holding power of the changes that ensue. Good work, good book, badly needed and it's about time.
See all 173 customer reviews...
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman PDF
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman EPub
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman Doc
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman iBooks
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman rtf
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman Mobipocket
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman Kindle
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman PDF
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman PDF
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman PDF
59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman PDF
