In the first article, I introduced you to the habenula, its functions, and the work of Kyra Bobinet: “Meet Your Habenula: Your Motivation ‘Kill Switch’. The Tiny Brain Circuit With a Big Impact.”

The second article shared Kyra Bobinet’s brainstorming tool, and 30 starter ideas I’d created for us to try out: “Working With Your Habenula as a Caregiver”

A reminder

This is Kyra Bobinet’s brainstorming tool ‘ITERATES’, 1

In her book, Bobinet describes how she discovered the ‘MacGyvers’ who

• Instead of setting rigid goals, they experiment—asking “Let’s see if this works” rather than treating actions as pass-or-fail tests.

• They practise new behaviours, such as learning a skill and observing what happened without harsh judgment.

• When something doesn’t work, they iterate: tweaking and adapting their approach in small ways until they find what fits.

Bobinet and her team called this MacGyverism: the Iterative Mindset—people are iterative—continuously improving—in their approach, instead of performative.

Whether you’re a practised ‘MacGyver’ caregiver or a newbie, these prompts can stimulate your ideas about how to approach something differently.

1. I – Inspiration: Motivational mantras / reframes that protect from failure

2. T – Time: Frequency, duration, repetition, timing, habit stacking

3. E – Environment: Making it easier to do the positive thing, harder to do the negative thing

4. R – Reduce: Difficulty, intensity, complexity, cost, peer pressure, temptation

5. A – Add: Abundance, ease, variety, social support

6. T – Togetherness: Do with others, join groups, invite peers

7. E – Environment: Making it easier to do the positive thing, harder to do the negative thing

8. S – Swaps: Healthier substitutions, similar sensations/emotions, feasible changes

You can read more details about these in her book: Kyra Bobinet’s book, “Unstoppable Brain: The New Neuroscience that Frees Us from Failure, Eases Our Stress, and Creates Lasting Change” (Published 19 March 2024)

A Community Brainstorm of Ideas.

I’ve created some prompts inspired by Bobinet’s work to stimulate ideas.

I recommend bookmarking this page so you can easily reference it.

I’m hoping that we can multiply our ideas together, share what works for you and encourage each other to put these thoughts into action

A Community Ideation

I – Inspiration

Motivational mantras or reframes that protect us from failure

1. Daily “good-enough” mantra

   • Say or write: “Good-enough care is still loving care.” Repeat it after tricky moments so the brain tags the day as “hard but not a failure.”

   • Do you have a mantra you use?

2. Visible reminder of impact

   • Put one photo, thank-you card, or sentence on the fridge: “I’m here. He’s safer.” Look at it after difficult tasks, or when you see him struggling, so you can counter those thoughts of, “Why can’t I protect him? Why can’t I relieve his pain?” (I was thinking of how I cared for my Father).

   • What would you write on a Post-it?

3. Reframe “setback” as “data”, and move away from definitives

   • When something new in the routine or meal doesn’t work, say: “Okay, that doesn’t work. I’ve just ruled one thing out.” This shifts from “I failed” to “I learned something useful.”

   • How could you shift from negative to ‘I learnt’?

   • How could you reframe a definitive ‘I failed’ to something more compassionate - as if you were coaching your best friend through a setback?

I keep this quote by Viktor E. Frankl on my phone. It’s been my ‘North Star‘ mantra since 2015, and continues to remind me that I need to breathe, hold space and reframe what I’m thinking to choose a better, values-aligned response.

T – Time

Frequency, duration, repetition, timing, habit stacking

1. Shrink experiments to 5–10 minutes

   • Instead of “I have to get Dad walking every afternoon,” try: “Five minutes of gentle movement after his favourite TV show.” Tiny, repeatable wins soothe the “why bother” circuit.

   • What small wins in caregiving for your loved one OR yourself could work?

2. Anchor new habits to existing care tasks

   • After taking medication, take three slow breaths at the window or stretch your shoulders. The brain starts to pair “hard task” with a predictable micro‑reward.

   • Can you share a micro-reward that’s worked for you?

3. Name a couple of brief self-care rituals

   • Knowing you’ve defined something for yourself, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day, helps. Zoning into those minutes, for quality self-care time, will feel worthwhile. For example, applying moisturiser to your face after brushing your teeth or savouring a good cup of your favourite tea

   • What can you do to break the hard-slog mentality, as part of your usual day?

E – Environment

Making it easier to do the positive thing, harder to do the negative thing

1. Prepping for ‘tomorrow-wins’

   • Prepare meds, clothes, or breakfast items the night before. Morning-you gets an easy win instead of starting with chaos.

   • I set the breakfast table for the next day. What do you do?

2. Create a calm corner or have a ‘comforter’ for resets

   • A calm corner: Keep a chair, soft light, blanket, and maybe headphones in one place. When overwhelmed, go there for a few minutes. A predictable, soothing environment dampens threat signals.

   • A comforter: I have a favourite big mug (thermos mug) that I use like a touchstone comfort as well as the hot tea inside.

   • Where’s your go-to spot? What’s your comforter? Reinforce the positive comfort being readily available

3. Make it easier to reach out for comfort and support

   • Identify the people you can contact when things are tough via different media: text, email, WhatsApp, in person, on forums, etc Different people, different times, different ways of communicating, e.g. Carer forums, texts to friends, email for longer news or requests. Reduce the effort required to connect for support in difficult times. You’re enabling yourself to keep going under pressure together with others.

   • When you’re feeling isolated in your environment, how do you connect with others?

4. Make it harder to do the negative thing

   • In her book, Kyra Bobinet uses the example of trying to break a negative habit of eating too many carbs or cakes. The easiest way to make it harder is to buy fewer of them so they’re not in our line of sight, tempting us. For busy carers, if you’re eating something that’s great, I know how tough it can be to orchestrate the care routine and find time to organise a nutritional meal!

   • We try to put the things we use close at hand - this is probably why things are on surfaces rather than put away. How do you make your environment amenable to your care routine?

R – Reduce

Difficulty, intensity, complexity, cost, peer pressure, temptation

1. It’s hard to lower the standard of care.

   • It’s easy to frustrate ourselves trying to be and do all things. We’re not superheroes. When things are tough, encouraging yourself with a simple ‘you’re awesome, you managed today’ is really important! There is a continuous emotional labour that can wear us down. So it’s important to have self-affirmations and reminders.

   • Love can set impossible standards of care for us. Remember this when your inner critic is punishing you. It may help to say out loud, “I’m doing my best and what’s humanly possible. I’m NOT going to guilt myself about that.”

   • How do you reduce the perfectionism pressure?

2. Simplify the routine to the most important elements

   • Don’t berate yourself for getting convenience food or a takeaway when you’re exhausted and can’t cook. The same for housework. Forget about dusting rooms you don’t use! Resize your expectations and efforts.

   • What do you do simplify in your care routine?

3. Limit exposure to harsh comparisons

   • If you use social media, unfollow or mute accounts that make you feel you’re “not doing enough.” Keep voices that acknowledge messy, real‑life care. Limit your time with people who ‘don’t get it’ or create issues with their unsolicited advice.

   • Your time and energy are precious. How do you protect your mental wellbeing, and your loved ones, from drama-philes, unempathetic people and those who feel entitled to patronise or lecture you?

A – Add

Abundance, ease, variety, social support

1. Add micro‑pleasures into existing tasks

   • Play a favourite playlist while doing laundry or washing dishes. Pairing effort with small pleasant inputs keeps the brain from coding it as pure strain. Here are a few that may help.

   • Share what you do to appease the difficult tasks or counter the potential yuck.

2. Rotate small treats for yourself

   • Create a “GO TO treat menu”: tea and biscuit, 5 pages of a book, a silly video on YouTube. Choose one after especially draining episodes to mark “I got through that.”

   • What small reward treats do you do to keep yourself going after a particularly challenging episode or day?

3. Invite extra support for one recurring stress point

   • When you know you feel particularly low at a certain time of day or with a certain event, connect with others, e.g. online carer forums, text a friend

   • Who do you connect to as a recurring connection when things are bad?

T – Togetherness

Do with others, join groups, invite peers

1. Text one fellow carer honestly as a go-to support

   • Send: “Today my brain is saying I’m rubbish at this” to someone you trust, who’ll respond with empathy. Being met with “me too” turns private “failure” into a shared human experience.

   • Who do you contact and when?

2. Seek out examples of ‘what did they do when…’

   • Seek insights and learnings from others, to see if there’s an idea that could be adapted to support you/your care routine. More importantly, remind yourself that there are many others in similar situations

   • How do you discover new ideas, or feel less alone day to day?

3. Join one low‑pressure peer space

   • Seek out an online carers’ group, writing circle, or WhatsApp thread where imperfect stories are welcome. A go-to contact that you trust can normalise setbacks and add perspective.

   • Which forums or online groups have you joined?

E – Expectations

Remove secret deadlines, set flexible expectations, and expect to learn

1. Trade perfection goals for learning goals

   • Instead of “I have to get every morning running smoothly,” try: “Over the next month, I’ll learn what makes mornings easier for us.” The “test” becomes learning, not passing or failing.

   • How do you step down from perfection and do ‘good enough’?

2. Loosen hidden timelines

   • Notice thoughts like “I should have this sorted by next week.” Replace with: “I’m aiming to get this sorted. I can’t control everything (other people or my loved ones’ needs), I can do my best!”

   • Please make ‘should’ a swear word - it sets us up for failure every time. Instead, aim for smaller wins in a shorter timeframe.

3. Build in permission to change course

   • Write a simple rule: “If Plan A isn’t helping after two tries, I’m giving myself permission to drop it without calling it a failure.” This prevents the habenula from logging repeated attempts as proof you’re “not good at this.”

   • How do you ensure you recognise the pivots and adaptations you make during the day? The small wins. When you’re writing in your journal or when you’re washing the dishes?

S – Swaps

Healthier substitutions, similar sensations/emotions, feasible changes

1. Swap self‑attack for neutral description

   • Replace “I ruined everything” with “That didn’t work and I feel exhausted.” Same facts, less self‑blame, so the brain doesn’t stamp the whole day as a catastrophe.

   • How do you make sure you stick to facts and don’t judge yourself?

2. Swap one draining coping habit for a gentler one

   • If you usually scroll late into the night, experiment with 10 minutes of scrolling + 10 minutes of something soothing (audio story, breathing, warm shower) before sleep.

   • What do you do before you sleep to relax your brain?

3. Swap language from “always/never” to “today/this time.”

   • Avoid definitive language and mindsets. Focus on the here-and-now state of facts. When we set hard lines, we can put pressure on ourselves and create unrealistic expectations. Instead of ‘we have to’ or ‘it must’, it can be better to use ‘let’s try xyz today’. Building in flexibility can release the pressure on yourself.

   • How can you evolve away from definitives into evolutions and iterative experiments?

Anecdotes and a new collaboration

In the comments

• Share your thoughts and new ideas based on the prompts.

Tell us how you inspire yourself, or what sources of inspiration keep you going.

Please remember to ‘❤️’ LIKE the article to guide others to these resources

Share

I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?

Connecting with empathy and inspiration are at the heart of Carer Mentor’s mission.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to My 2025 List of ‘Annual ReReads’

2. CarerMentor’s Ten Annual Re-Reads

3. The Current Twenty books which are competing for a Top Ten listing

4. Caregiving Reference Books (2024)

5. Dementia Book Recommendations (2025)

6. Carer Mentor articles about these books

1. An Introduction to My 2025 List of ‘Annual ReReads’

My Annual Re-Read list is my Top Ten books I read yearly.

I started the list in 2017. I review and revise it every December based on what I’ve read that year. Many books compete for the top ten.

But this is more than just a list.

Some books have stayed in my Top Ten since I first read them. Every year, I learn something new with each read because my mindset and reading lens have changed. I may concentrate on a different part or draw different interpretations from the text.

The list marks a shift in my journey. Before 2017, ninety percent of my reading focused on advancing my business knowledge and leadership skills. I’ve kept a reference list of all those books, but they’re not my priority. The Top Ten books tend to have a broader life context.

My curiosity is a hunger that keeps me exploring new book sources, e.g. through podcasts, citations and organisations. Of course, now it’s hard to keep up with all the recommendations from other Substack publications!

Re-accessing insights and wisdom calls for a well-organised knowledge system. Events over a year may push me to read an old favourite and elevate it to a top spot. Having a system and dedicating a little time to reviewing book titles and my notes helps me generate ideas, expand my thinking, and grow. (I use Notion to interlink book references and lists)

At the end of each year, I review key book insights and use prompts to journal the nuanced shifts in my thoughts, perspective, and outlook. It’s a very different kind of end-of-year performance review from corporate life!

Books have become the milestones, tools, and backbone of my journey.

These are some of the reasons why I value my Top Ten list so much. It’s helped me navigate some of the most challenging times of caregiving, especially the shift from my ‘big’ corporate job to being a caregiver.

Do you have a Top Ten list? Has it changed over the years? What insights have you realised have shifted when you’ve reread a book?

Leave a comment

Back to Table of Contents

2. CarerMentor’s Ten Annual Re-Reads

Caregiving is fundamental to my life, and so is continuing to learn and grow my ideas.

This 2024 to 2025 Top 10 offers comfort, motivation, and ideas for Carer Mentor.

I’m sharing the list, not the reasons or criteria behind choosing each book. I prefer not to bias you with my thoughts and interpretation. So here is the list for you to explore.

The top two books have remained the same for several years. The two highlighted in bold were new additions in 2024.

1. Man’s Search for Meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust. Viktor E Frankl. Published 1946.

Viktor E. Frankl was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School until his death in 1997. He was the founder of what has come to be called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology)—the school of logotherapy.

2. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life. Susan David. Published August 3, 2017

   I wrote a series of articles about Emotional Agility in 2024

3. Braving The Wilderness. The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. Brené Brown. Published September 12, 2017

4. Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age. Bruce Feiler. Published July 14, 2020. Here’s the article I wrote.

5. It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand. Megan Devine.

   Resource: Megan Devine's 'How do you help a grieving friend?' Refuge in Grief Website & Book

6. Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It. Emily Kenway. Published April 27, 2023. Forensically referenced, this book was a cathartic read.

   *FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023*

   Introduction to Emily Kenway’s Book and her interview with Amanpour & Co (CNN)

7. A Manual for Being Human. Sophie Mort. Published July 8, 2021

   I wrote about Dr Sophie Mort’s book here

8. How Emotions are Made. The Secret Life of the Brain. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Published March 23, 2017

   I wrote several articles about Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work.

9. The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living. Russ Harris. Published January 1, 2007

   I wrote a couple of articles and linked to Russ Harris’ website here.

10. How Will You Measure Your Life? Clayton M Christensen. Published May 10, 2012

Back to Table of Contents

3. The Current Twenty books which are competing for a Top Ten listing

The last six books on this list may be recategorised to my ‘Reference’ list. They used to be in more active use, but not anymore.

In addition, waiting in the wings is a long list of books, ‘To Be Read (TBR).’

1. The Choice: A true story of hope. Edith Eger Published August 16 2018

   In 1944, sixteen-year-old ballerina Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Separated from her parents on arrival, she endures unimaginable experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. When the camp is finally liberated, she is pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.
   The horrors of the Holocaust didn't break Edith. In fact, they helped her learn to live again with a life-affirming strength and a truly remarkable resilience.

2. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Published March 4 2021.

   In seven short chapters (plus a brief history of how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible book reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You’ll learn where brains came from, how they’re structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience. Along the way, you’ll also learn to dismiss popular myths such as the idea of a 'lizard brain' and the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or even between nature and nurture, to determine your behaviour.

3. The Gifts of Imperfection. Be You. Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Brené Brown. Published November 30, 2010.

4. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Lori Gottleib Published April 2 2019

5. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Julie Smith. January 6, 2022

6. Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. Jill Bolte Taylor. Published May 11, 2021

7. Integrity. Henry Cloud. Published October 13, 2009

8. Resilient Grieving, Second Edition: How to Find Your Way Through Devastating Loss (Second Edition) Lucy Hone. June 25, 2024

9. The Artists Way. Julia Cameron Published November 5, 2020

10. Show your work. Austin Kleon. Published March 6 2014

11. The Squiggly Career. Ditch the Ladder, Discover Opportunity, Design Your Career. Helen Tupper, Sarah Ellis. Published January 09, 2020

12. Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential. 6th edition. Carol Dweck. Published 12 Jan 2017

13. The Power of Geography. Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography. Tim Marshall New Edition April 2025

14. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam M. Grant. Published February 2, 2021

15. Daring Greatly. Be All In. How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Brené Brown, 2013

16. Out of the Maze: A Simple Way to Change Your Thinking & Unlock Success. Spencer Johnson. Published November 13 2018

17. You Coach You: How to Overcome Challenges and Take Control of Your Career. Helen Tupper, Sarah Ellis. Published January 13, 2022

18. Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day. Amishi Jha. Published October 19, 2021

19. Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Tiago Forte. Published June 14, 2022

20. Atomic Habits. Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results. James Clear. October 18, 2018

Back to Table of Contents

4. Caregiving Reference Books (2024)

These are the books I recommend to others.

1. The Complete Eldercare Planner, Revised and Updated 4th Edition: Where to Start, Which Questions to Ask, and How to Find Help. Joy Loverde. Published 24 October, 2023

2. The Selfish Pig's Guide To Caring: How to cope with the emotional and practical aspects of caring for someone. By Hugh Marriott. EVERY Carer I talk to recommends this book. There are many memoirs about being a Carer, but, hand on heart, this is THE go-to reference book to feel sane, normal and seen.

3. The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive. By Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. Also, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. By Kristin Neff. Self Compassion By Kristin Neff. They have a wealth of resources on the website, which are offered freely. I used their guided meditations many times. There is a specific meditation and focus on caregivers here.

4. Palliative and End of Life Care in Nursing. By Jane Nicol and Brian Nyatanga. As we are expected to muddle through, I sought out this book. Paid carers or nurses are trained and have resources to leverage. Unpaid carers have no training and limited ‘tools’ and learn by doing through crises.

5. I recommend exploring the resources curated by

5. Dementia Book Recommendations

Back to Table of Contents

6. Carer Mentor Articles about these books:

Connecting with empathy and inspiration are at the heart of Carer Mentor’s mission.

I hope this inspires you to read one of these books, especially something from the Top Ten list!

Please press your heart ‘❤️’ to like this and guide others here.

Warm wishes to you and your loved ones.

Subscribe now

Dear Reader,

If you’re new to Carer Mentor, ‘Hi!’ I’m Victoria. I’m a Caregiver, Mentor, and Advocate. You can read more about me and the Carer Mentor mission here: Who Stared Carer Mentor and Why?’

A Mentor's Index and A Portal to Expert Insights

I’m highlighting the work of trained experts and concepts I’ve acquired that have supported me as a Carer and as a Mentor to clients navigating business/career/life challenges.

Table of Contents:

Carer Mentor concepts

Emotions and Emotional Agility

Misconceptions and Misunderstandings about Emotions

Communication, Language and Connection

Curiosity and a Growth Mindset

Self-Compassion and the Stress Cycle

Resilience and Resilient Grief

Change, Transitions, How we articulate our story and its impact on us.

Group / Team Dynamics

Victoria at Carer Mentor

1. Inspiration: 'The Timeline Exercise' for an up-to-date Frame of Reference.Putting events into perspective.

2. Inspiration 'Ten Annual Review Questions.' ARQsto give you pause.

3. Checkpoint: Are you setting yourself up for success? 2 Big questions and 1 Simple Exercise with powerful implications. The Bell Jar of Gratitude!

4. Inspiration '5 Sparks to Inspire a Fresh Perspective': to tease your brain into fresh spaces of reflection. A reframing to give you pause for thought.

Emotions and Emotional Agility

Dr Susan David: Emotional Agility. Dr Brené Brown: Vulnerability, Shame, Emotions, Belonging.

James Clear: Atomic Habits. Charles Duhigg: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change. Adam Grant: organisational psychologist & author

1. An Introduction to 'Emotional Agility'. Dr Susan David and Christina Congleton. (November 2013)

2. Resource: 'Dr. Susan David's TedTalk 'The Gift and Power of Emotional Agility.'(November 2017). 6 years ago, this was a gift to see and to feel seen. 'Sawubona'. Video and Book

3. Resource: 'Dr Brené Brown's TED Talk: Listening to shame' (March 2012) TED talk. Video and Book recommendation

4. Resource: Nathan Lozeron's Animated Summary of 'Emotional Agility.' Animation (Jan 24, 2019)

5. Resource: An Interview with Dr. Susan David about 'Emotional Agility' Train ourselves to live better lives with our emotions. (December 21 2019)

6. Dr Susan David 'Teaching Emotional Agility to Children' (December 21 2019) A short 6 minute video-interview.

7. 'Wholehearted living: Avoid Toxic Positivity and Rethink our beliefs around Emotions.' Showing up to our Emotions. Adam Grant & Susan David.

8. ‘Decoding Emotions and Experiences’.Emotional Granularity. Drs. Susan David and Brené Brown help us decode our emotions.

9. Resource: Dr Susan David's Concept of 'Stepping Out' (Oct 29, 2016) 2-minute video.

10. Resource: Dr Susan David 'Walking your Why' Interview with LeadersIn.(July 18, 2016).

11. Emotional Agility: 'Moving on' with the help of Piggybacking Habits.Values aligned action-habits. Dr Susan David, Charles Duhigg and James Clear.

12. In the moment- Emotional Agility in Action. An approach that helps me navigate forward through uncertainty.

13. Navigating with Emotional Agility: 'A map, compass and signposts.' Preparing for the onward journey.

14. Dr Susan David's Emotional Agility Quiz that gives you your own report!

15. Resource: 'RSA Animation of Dr Brené Brown's Connecting with Empathy' Video Animation

16. Emotional Granularity: Why I Recommend 'Atlas of the Heart.' Dr Brené Brown's book. Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

Misconceptions and Misunderstandings about Emotions

Dr Russ Harris : doctor, therapist, father, trainer of health professionals, and author of The Happiness Trap (plus eight other books). Dr Iris Mauss Research Psychologist. (Wiki page). Psychologist Thomas Gilovich

1. Part 1 'Misconceptions of Emotions: The Myths and Biases. Decoding Emotions. A new series of insights and resources. Dr Russ Harris

2. Part 2 'Misconceptions of Emotions: The Happiness Trap and a Paradox. Decoding Emotions. A new series of insights and resources. Dr Russ Harris

3. 'Why does pursuing happiness, make us unhappy?’ Appreciating the messiness of now, reflecting on joy. Dr Iris Mauss.

4. 'How can I feel happier or more grateful?’ Enemies of gratitude and how to cultivate a habit to feel happier and more grateful. Dr Thomas Gilovich

Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett

Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett: How Emotions are Made. is among the top 0.1% most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience.

1. How are Emotions Made?' An Introduction to Neuroscientist Professor Lisa Feldmann Barrett.

2. 'How do we construct emotions?' 3 videos by Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett. (Part 1)

3. 'Why are Brain predictions important?' A caregiver's telepathy and burden—putting predictions into a context. (Part 2)

4. 'What influences Brain predictions?' and how can we build better predictions? Solving for unpredictability as a caregiver. (Part 3)

5. 'An architect of my emotions?' Agency and curiosity & how we can rewire our brains for better predictions. (Part 4)

6. 'What is social reality?' What social constructs frame our lives and influence us? (Part 5)

Communication, language and connection.

1. Poet Ali:'The language of being human' by Poet Ali. Do you speak Caregiving?

2. 'Are you fluent in 'Caregiver?'' Conversational language tips from people in the know.

James Rhee: Red Helicopter a modern day parable

1. James Rhee: 'The value of kindness at work' (February 13, 2022)

2. James Rhee: 'red helicopter: a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math).'An example of 'walking your why.' Book release April 9th 2024.

Curiosity and a Growth Mindset

Professor Carol Dweck: Growth Mindset

1. Professor Carol Dweck: 'Developing A Growth Mindset'. Embracing The power of 'Not yet' (October 9, 2014)

Self-Compassion and the Stress Cycle

Dr Kristin Neff and Dr Chris Germer: Mental wellness, Self Compassion, Burnout and the Stress cycle

1. Resource: Managing the Mental Load. Understanding and Enabling Yourself.

2. Recommendation: 'Burnout and how to complete the stress cycle. Emily and Amelia Nagoski' Dr. Brené Brown's 'Unlocking Us' podcast.

Resilience and Resilient Grief

Dr Lucy Hone: Resilience and Resilient Grief

1. Resource: 'Dr. Lucy Hone's TED Talk 'The Three Secrets of Resilient People.' (September 25, 2019). A powerful video, strikes a chord

2. Resource: 'Grief is messy. It's not a tidy five-stage path.' Shankar Vedantam's interview of Lucy Hone offers us a broader context to her resilience research work and how she leverage her own work to navigate the grief of losing her daughter.

Change, Transitions, How we articulate our story and its impact on us.

Bruce Feiler: 'Life is in the Transitions.' 

1. Recommendation: Bruce Feiler's 'Life is in the Transitions'. Mastering Change at Any Age. TEDx Talk and Book. Free access to the video. Paid access to suggested prompts for generating your own insights.

Brad Stuhlberg: Mastering Change.

1. Recommendation: '3 Essential Steps to Master Any Change'.Introduction to Nathan Lozeron's summaries and 1 pagers. How do you digest new information?

Jonathan Adler: Narrative Psychology

1. Recommendation: Shankar Verdantam's Hidden Brain Podcast 'Change your story, Change your life' (Episode Released 30 October 2023). Script guide.

2. Insights: Shankar Vedantam's  Hidden Brain podcast: 'Change your story, Change your life'. Summary notes, generating Your insights, professional and personal actionable outcomes.

Group/Team dynamics

Bruce Tuckman's "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing"  to build a highly productive team.

1. Recommendation: 'Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing" model' as a Carer and Mentor. Mindtools and 'Psychologist Bruce Tuckman's concept. November 10 2014

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Table of Contents

• What is Notion

• Personal Context

• Key learnings/thoughts I share when I’m asked about Notion

• My Go-To Experts

  • #1 Thomas Frank

  • #2 August Bradley

  • #3 Tiago Forte ‘Building a Second Brain’

  • #4 Ali Abdaal ‘Feel Good Productivity’

  • Other Notion experts who I use:

• Conclusion on Notion

• A last word to my question ‘Productivity for what purpose?’.

What is Notion

From the Notion Website:

We like to describe Notion as a set of building blocks for creating things you love to use on your computer, such as:

• Documents

• Databases

• Public websites

• Knowledge bases

• Project management systems

• The world's most beautiful notes... 😉

Personal Context

Dear Reader, I am not passionate about project management or organisation tactics. However, it’s been one of my strengths out of necessity as a global director of teams, a curious researcher who loves learning, and a mentor of execs looking for bespoke resources.

When I started using Notion, I wanted to create a Knowledge Management System (KMS). I had a specific idea and created it. Next, I built a strategic plan for my mentoring business and then a third version of the Carer Mentor Website in Notion, leveraging the databases of the KMS. In January 2024, I constructed a Substack management system.

I use Evernote as an online system of notebooks. Each Mentoring client has a notebook, and we layer notes, highlights and comments. For the Carer Mentor Website, I make a post or article in Evernote complete with hyperlinks (but not images) and copy-paste the entire piece to a Substack Draft Page, where I finish edits for publication. Once published, a copy goes into my Notion database.

October 2023 to January 2024 Evernote was enough to build the base of the Carer Mentor website, version 4. However, from January onwards, the content and organisation reached critical mass and required an upgrade. So, I created a Substack Management System for myself a bespoke tool.

The Substack management system in Notion is interlinked with the existing KMS databases to interlink references and ideate for new articles. I’ve also created a Customer Relations Management database of my subscribers and a Production System to keep track of my ideas and articles.

Key learnings/thoughts I share when I’m asked about Notion

1. Notion is like Lego. There are infinite possibilities and combinations of functions.

2. Use a free account first. I don’t recommend a professional account unless you have team members, a large volume of content, or a website. The Team Space function is a whole other realm.

3. When you have a blank page and countless possibilities the best way forward is to research what the experts do, teach, advise and offer. Create a vision of what you want to do first. Then, play and experiment. My first idea was the KMS. (see the overview image below).

4. The Notion Academy has various guides.

5. The Notion Templates: 1000s of pre-made, free and paid templates. Your brain will boggle. My advice: play with a few, get ideas, test and experiment. The creators are amazing. Avoid spending hours reconfiguring a template or learning to make something from scratch.

6. Notion AI: I’ve used this for Notion Q&A but not for writing posts.

7. Essential Notion tools/functions I use every day:

   1. Databases: I create a master of all data, then create new views using different filters and sorts. E.g. On a separate page, I can paste a specific view and add data, which is automatically added to the master database elsewhere.

   2. Relations: This links the data from one database to another. I have a relation between my Knowledge Management System (KMS) database and my Carer Mentor Ideas database. So, I can search and link a resource/reference/book/media

   3. Extension: Notion has a Google extension & can auto-store key fields directly into your database after you’ve set up a template. Notion Web clipper .

   4. Properties: A database column = a property. The property ‘type’ can be many different things. For example, date, last edited time, a Relation, a multi-select, a single-select, or a checkbox. I use the multi-select to add ‘tags’ to the entry (the row). You can keep adding new tags

   5. Synched blocks. For example, I’ll make book review highlights. I create a ‘synched block’ copy and paste it on another page/content. If I edit it on the destination page, it will auto-edit the source block on the original page and every other location where it is referenced. You can see where it’s linked and jump to that page. You can also unlink the block. One truth evolves everywhere.

8. Warning: I could not easily export my ‘website’ from Notion. I cannot easily export a page with links because it’s anchored in Notion. I use it as a Library Vault and Company Archive and Resources System. My advice is to be clear on your ‘way of working’ so you don’t put everything in Notion and can’t export or copy-paste easily.

9. It’s easy to see how people get enthralled by creating habit trackers, organising tiny pieces of their system, creating ticks, checks, links, measures and a whole ‘BUSY-NESS’ out of Notion. Personally, I was grateful that my limited time dissuaded my use of self-fulfilling prophecies of productivity. (sorry, small soapbox). When life = obsessive measures, colouring different tags and organisation we lose sight of purpose and meaning. Plus Notion automatically colours separate tags!!

10. Play, try and do ‘enough’ to leverage all its wonders. I think I was running with databases within a week or so of starting. The KMS foundation was built in 1-2 months, as I tried, tested and edited 'The How’ I used it.

Go-To Experts

#1 Thomas Frank

I’d advise looking around his website to gain an overview before deep-diving into his vast work. Click here. I like his explanations; he’s articulate, fast-paced and practical.

YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/@Thomasfrank

For the Notion Playlist - click on the image:

Hot tip: Slow down the playback speed when you need to see things in detail or make notes.

#2 August Bradley

He has an intense system with lots of details and interlinks. See his page here. You can walk through every step in detail if you wish to.

August Bradley’s YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/@augustbradley

Hot tip: Slow down the playback speed when you need to see things in detail or make notes. AND speed up playback where he’s evangelising. I respect what he’s made here, but I’m only interested in cherry-picking to optimise what I need.

Click on the image:

#3 Tiago Forte ‘Building a Second Brain’

Tiago Forte’s YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/@TiagoForte

When anyone says, ‘I’ve built a second brain’, they usually reference Tiago Forte’s work.

‘Capture Organise Distill and Express (CODE) in a Perspective World’

Watch the whole video or jump to 8 Minutes 17 seconds.

Click this link for the other three videos. His PARA Method. PARA stands for Project, Area, Resource, and Archive. This is the basis for how many people use Notion. Click here to go to his website to read more.

I have no judgment on right or wrong here. It’s a personal preference and choice on how much or little you use. His CODE framework and PARA Method are logical and easy to follow. They are simple, well-structured ways to act and feel in control of information, a systematic approach.

It’s worth reading his ‘origin’ story to understand his motivation and ‘why’ he does what he does. It’s a compelling raison d’etre. Click the image to go to ‘Bookshop’

#4 Ali Abdaal ‘Feel Good Productivity’

Ali Abdaal’s YouTube site: https://www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal

Ali Abdaal, like Thomas Frank, is a YouTube influencer and has made a lucrative business. He started when he was training to be a doctor and switched to focus on what was a side hustle. His story begins with coding in his bedroom as a teenager…and now take a look at him.

He’s made a lot of videos, e.g. side hustles, passive income, and focuses on productivity. I haven’t read his book. Click the image to go to ‘Bookshop’:

“Ali Abdaal is a doctor, entrepreneur, amateur magician, and the world's most-followed productivity expert.
Ali became intrigued by the science of productivity while juggling the demands of medical training at Cambridge University and building his business on the side. While working as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service, Ali started to document his journey towards living a healthier, happier, more productive life on his YouTube channel and other social media platforms. To date, Ali’s evidence-based videos, podcasts and articles sharing insights into the human mind, have reached hundreds of millions of people all around the world.
In 2021, Ali took a break from his medical practice to focus full-time on his work popularising the science of human flourishing and high performance. In this book, he reveals everything he has learnt from a decade studying the secrets of feeling better and achieving more.” - Goodreads Review

Small personal note: Ali Abdaal is highly productive and has deservedly grown a lucrative business and team. I subscribed to his YouTube channel when he was a doctor and go back now and again to explore interesting tips, hacks and interviews

Here’s the ‘But’ I’m often left with the question, ‘Productivity for what purpose?’

Other Notion experts I use:

• Red Gregory

• Productive Dude

• The Notion Coach

Conclusion on Notion.

Thomas Frank, Tiago Forte and Ali Abdaal are 3 of the most influential Notion ‘players’. August Bradley is a deep expert on building a system.

When there are function updates, I check new videos from Thomas Frank and triangulate them with the other expert updates. I’m grateful that I researched and found these when I did. So, I hope these are helpful sources for you.

Notion continues to be a core component of my business and purpose.

A last word to my question ‘Productivity for what purpose?’.

Thomas Frank did an interview explaining how he burnt out, returned to his love of coding and got sidetracked into researching a particular piece (enter rabbit hole) for Notion users. He’s turned that passion piece and user demand into an income earner: passion and purpose.

Over the years, I’ve learnt more about myself. I nerd out on researching, learning and curating deep connections. Hence, I thrive being a caregiver, mentor, and advocate. We each have unique values, strengths and passions; what’s yours?

Here’s how I define my passion and purpose today

• my purpose right now is to be the sole point of contact and connection for all things related to the care and needs of a loved one

• my passion is advocating and supporting other carers, given the hidden crisis of care today (see ‘Who started Carer Mentor and Why’)

• my commitment is to pay forward the knowledge, resources & experiences I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to have. I do this by mentoring others.

So, my personal measures of success and productivity have been reimagined into, for example, small moments of joy as a carer, helping other carers and lightbulb moments with my Mentees. Intangible, qualitative feel-goods!

In Notion, I’ve cherry-picked what I need to build ‘enough’ elements to make my life easier and my resources accessible to flexibly support my passion and purpose. I’ve avoided rigidly ‘systematising’ everything.

I like to remind myself that Notion, Evernote and any project management system can be brilliant tools if they can unlock more potential and value for us. Mindful Productivity?

Enjoy playing with Notion and leveraging the work of these experts. My last word is to stay true to your passion and purpose, whatever that may be. ;-)

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A) Two recommendations.

1. Mindtools: A Wealth of resources for anyone interested in their self-development.

2. Bruce Tuckman’s 1965 model of ‘Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing’

B) A reframe to personal use, caregivers and family teams

Mindtools: (click here for the website)

I’ve used this website for self-development, leadership tips, and team building.

Bite-sized videos, articles and guides for team facilitation exercises. There’s always something to spark an idea. I recommend the site to my mentoring clients. I don’t subscribe but I delve in now and again.

From the website

Mind Tools is dedicated to helping you build on your skills and capabilities so you can enjoy the career you deserve.
Our on-demand platform contains thousands of resources in a range of formats designed to give you actionable insights to develop your personal and professional wellbeing.
Watch our short video to find out more before exploring our comprehensive Content Library.

2 Psychologist Bruce Tuckman's "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing" model gives you a great way to build a highly productive team. (2 minute video)

On the Youtube website: the video

To learn more about how to use Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing to build highly effective teams, read the article at: https://www.mindtools.com/abyj5fi/for...

Getting teams to work together effectively takes time.

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman's "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing" model gives you a great way to build a highly productive team.

To discover more career skills resources from Mind Tools, join the Mind Tools Club: https://www.mindtools.com/signup?utm_...

[1] Tuckman, B.W. (1965). 'Developmental Sequence in Small Groups,' Psychological Bulletin, 63(6). Available here.

[2] Stein, J. Using the Stages of Team Development [online]. Available here. [Accessed 30 October 2020]

Click on the image to read Tim Teinzer’s example.

I chose this article, mainly for the nice image! It illustrates the big dip that occurs as a team or I think this also applies as an individual in learning something new. In my experience, it is felt more as team because of all the dynamics - humans are messy, dynamic, unique individuals!

So, my caution here is that it’s not as neat and tidy as the article suggests! Let’s not forget companies and teams need to demonstrate achievements, be results driven and communicate progress. There are MANY smaller shifts within the one shown.

I like to think of this as an aspiration, with many eddies, swirls and dips and ticks, in duos, trios. This all takes time and guided leadership.

The goto initial reference in team dynamics for me is Patrick Lencioni’s, ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’. It’s a good place to start.

B) A reframe for your work, for caregivers and teams

Now that you’ve seen this video of Tuckman’s model how does this impact your work, your discussions at home, or with any team you’re a part of?

Personal reflection on ‘Starting care discussions with home-aids’ coming on Thursday 8th February.

I try to make full use of all the training, knowledge, communication tips, and coaching that I was given or learnt at work. Some skills are now instinctive. I think the trick is to think about all the different ways the knowledge or tips can be applied!

Perhaps it was an unconscious application of learnt-skills that helped me start a small mentoring business, but it was a very conscious journey of reflections, reframing and brain-teasing that enabled me to employ my coaching skills within our care routine.

Not just in my interactions with my Dad who had vascular dementia, but as his champion and advocate with healthcare professionals and in an emergency paramedics situation - a regular occurrence in the last 6-8 months of his life.

Now I want those same tools here on the website, to help you and others translate what’s helped me into potential tools to serve you, at work or anywhere!

This is one example of many that I intend to share.

Potential next step actions:

• Explore resources on Mindtools for self-development, and subscribe. You’ll see similar videos and articles, including coaching topics.

• Download the free pdf from the Mindtools website linked to Bruce Tuckman’s model ‘Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing’ video

• Read the article linked in the document for Tim Teinzer’s example

• Reflect on how Tuckman’s model could impact any team that you’re a member of

• Reflect on how these very human dynamics may influence your caregiving now, or how you would form your care team in the future.

Please ‘❤️’ LIKE the article & consider subscribing!

Above all Please share to help others.

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In ‘Recommendation: 3 Essential Steps to Master Change’ there are numerous ways to take in new information. Experimenting and identifying what works for you is a journey in itself. There, Nathan Lozeron provides an illustrated video summary of Brad Stulberg’s book.

You will see an article on this website called 'Insights: Hidden Brain's 'Change Your Story, Change Your Life';

Here, I’m sharing a podcast packed with information, which is artfully delivered by Shankar Vedantam. You can choose to ‘just’ listen, follow the guide whilst listening, or, as a paid subscriber, go over to the Insights article to use my insights to draw out additional value from Shankar’s work. Your choice. Whichever way you decide, you get some valuable information.

I want to offer you both free and paid options so that you can decide how much ‘value-add’ you draw from each of the resources I recommend. (Please note I’m still optimising the website *how*, so this may evolve in the future). In fact, you may choose to skip all this entirely and go directly to the Hidden Brain Website! Please do! I hope you explore the large volume of episodes in the Hidden Brain library. There are MANY gems!

Click here to the Hidden Brain website, and you’ll see the references for this podcast, too.

I hope to build on the value Shankar and other experts research/create by generating more insights and offering an integrated experience with the other articles I publish.

Shankar Vedantam interviews Jonathan Adler,  psychologist and researcher, at Olin College,

Hidden Brain podcast host, Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.

We all tell stories about ourselves, often without realizing we’re doing so. How we frame those stories can profoundly shape our lives. In the kickoff episode to our monthlong series on healing, psychologist Jonathan Adler shares how to tell our stories in ways that enhance our wellbeing.

Table of Contents

1. What is Narrative Psychology? (At 10.27 minutes)

2. What is a Redemption Sequence and a Contamination sequence? (At 11.58 minutes )

3. Why does it matter where we stop and start the different chapters of our life story? ( At 14:28 minutes)

4. Chicken and egg - what causes what? In which direction does the arrow of causation run? ( At 27:26 minutes)

5. What happens when events come along that challenge our preexisting narratives - What are the Four Principles of a Constructed Story? (At 30:05 minutes)

6. Accommodative processing over automatic assimilation of events into our lives. How do we reshape our story, our identity to accommodate new events? (At 30:10 minutes)

7. Agency: being able to direct your life. Passive subject or Active protagonist? (At 34:06 Minutes)

8. Communion and connection. 'I'm not alone' (At 38:29 Minutes

9. How do we make the story meaningful? Hedonic - feel good versus Eudaimonic - feels meaningful (At 41.05 minutes)

10. Our personal stories within a broader narrative ecosystem (At 42.55 minutes)

11. The Broader Narrative of Societies, Cultures and Nations (At 45:08 minutes)

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Narrative psychology

Jonathan Adler: You can't totally control the things that happened to you in your life. You have some more say about how you make sense of it. And it's important to remember, we're talking about stories here. So we know from research on memory that we're not very good at recording the objective facts of our experience. For a long time, that frustrated cognitive scientists. But in more recent years, it's become clear that our memory works like this for a good reason. If you think about why we have memory in the first place, it's not so we can hold on to every single thing that's happened to us in some heretical way. We have memories so that we can make sense of what's happening to us right now, and anticipate what might happen next. So if you walk by a cave and a bear jumps out, you don't necessarily need to remember that cave and that bear. But you need to remember that dangerous things might hide in dark places.

So the slippery reconstructive nature of memory is a feature of the system, it's not a bug. And stories are an amazing tool for holding onto the meaning of our past experiences. The objective facts of our lives are what they are. But the stories are about where we draw connections between things, where we place the chapter breaks of our lives. And those are narrative acts, not historical acts. And the way we do that can have big implications for our wellbeing.

Jonathan and Dan McAdams have found that one of the most crucial choices we make in telling our stories; and it's important to underscore that most of us make these choices unconsciously; is where we start and stop the different chapters of our life story.

Table of contents

Redemption and Contamination sequences

So stories that we narrate as starting bad and ending good, we call that a redemption sequence. And stories that start good and end bad, we call that a contamination sequence.

We're remembering these are stories. This is how we narrate the experience, not necessarily the objective facts of our lives. Because all lives have good and bad.

These are narrative interpretations that take on different thematic arcs, redemption and contamination. But these different ways of narrating our lives have different implications for your wellbeing. We find over and over that when redemption sequences occur in people's life stories, they tend to be associated with positive wellbeing, good life satisfaction, lower levels of things like depression, higher self-esteem. And it's just the opposite for themes of contamination.

Table of contents

Where you stop and start frames of your story makes a big difference.

If we end that story, end that chapter when I get back to college, it feels like a contamination sequence. But if I string it together with the things that came next ... spoiler alert ... It feels like a redemption sequence.

The effects of redemption and contamination stories: strong predictors of positive health outcomes

The objective facts of the story don't change, but the way you think of the story changes profoundly. You can see how powerful this is in a study conducted by William Dunlop and Jessica Tracy. They were researching the stories told by people fighting addiction. They found that people who told redemptive stories of their last drink were more likely to stay sober than people whose stories didn't contain redemptive themes.

For example, they talk about one participant who felt like the last drink for him really symbolized the low point. And it was the moment when he committed to really turning his life around, which he then goes on to do. And that is emblematic of many findings in the field: some that look at behavior, some that look mostly at mental health outcomes, where we find that the stories that we tell about our lives are strong predictors of how we're doing.

One study shows a connection between the themes in peoples narratives and biological markers of stress and ageing. Potential biological consequences of our stories, not just psychological ones

What was interesting was that the key narrative theme in this study was not redemption. It was a theme of integration, where we think about the extent to which participants were able to make sense of having had this challenging kid and integrating that into their own life story.

We found that among the chronically stressed parents, stories of integration were associated not only with their self-report of lower levels of psychological stress, but also with significantly less telomere shortening over 18 months.

As far as I know, this is the only study to show a connection between the themes in people's narratives and biological markers of stress and aging. But it suggests that there may be biological consequences of our stories, not just psychological ones.

Table of contents

Chicken and egg - what causes what?

Now, when you hear someone tell a redemptive story and you see that they are experiencing better mental health, there is a question that arises, which is: in which direction does the arrow of causation run? Are they telling redemptive stories, and therefore feeling better about their lives? Or are they feeling better about their lives, and therefore telling redemptive stories?

At one point, you followed a group of patients as they worked with a psychotherapist. You charted both the changes they experienced while in therapy and the stories they told about their lives, and also which preceded which. What did you find, Jonathan?

Jonathan Adler: Yeah, I became obsessed with that directionality question. In that study, I enrolled a bunch of people, adults ranging from ages 18 to 92. They were seeking individual therapy for a huge range of problems. There were folks with really significant psychopathology like depression, anxiety, eating disorders. But there were also people just wanting to do some work on themselves.

There was a woman who wanted to think through her own childhood as she was about to become a parent. There was a woman who was feeling lonely in retirement. So before they started with their therapist, we collected their stories and we measured their wellbeing, user standard measures. Then on the other side, we had nearly 600 narratives from across all these participants. And what we found was, first, people got better over the course of treatment. Which is good, because decades of research on psychotherapy suggest that it works.

And we found that people's stories changed in meaningful ways over the course of treatment.

And then the changes in the story actually came before changes in wellbeing, and not the other way around. Because it was as if people were narrating a new version of their lives, and then a week or two later, their wellbeing would catch up with the story.

As we go through our lives responding to ups and downs that come at us unpredictably, it can feel as if we are hostages to life events. This is why many people see the hand of fate in the things that happen to them. But everything looks different once we realize that we are not simply a beleaguered character in our life story; we are also the author.

Table of Contents

Four principles of a Constructed story

All of us constantly construct stories about our lives. Most of the time, this happens under the surface. We are not mindful about the narrative choices we make. Every so often, however, something happens in our lives that causes us to revisit our stories: a marriage, a divorce, the birth of a child, the death of a close friend. All of these take time to assimilate into the narrative of our lives.

At Olin College of Engineering, psychologist Jonathan Adler has studied what happens when events come along that challenge our preexisting narratives.

1 Accommodative processing over automatic assimilation of events into our lives

Jon, I want you to tell me the story of a physician named Annie Brewster. Can you describe what Annie's life was like when she was in her late 20s?

Annie was one of these unbelievably driven, successful students. She had done extremely well in medical school, landed a great residency, was working a million hours. But she had started to experience some tingling on one side of her body. She went to get it checked out. She was very well-connected in the medical sphere and waited to see the uber-specialist, who quite brusquely told her that she had multiple sclerosis.

I want to play a bit of tape here from Annie herself, talking about how she reacted to the news from her doctor.

Annie Brewster: It took me a long time to come to terms with that diagnosis, to accept it into my life. Really, it was difficult for me because I had always thought of myself as somebody who was really strong. My body had always worked for me, done what I wanted it to do. And to think of myself as someone with an illness, I really had to redefine myself and get over some denial.

Jonathan, you say that Annie was engaging in an internal process of accommodation. What do you mean by this? And is accommodation a good thing?

Jonathan Adler: Most of what we do most of the time, we call assimilation. We go on living our lives, and when new things happen, we just assimilate those experiences into the story that we've been telling, whether we do that consciously or not.

But sometimes something happens that really makes us question the story we've been telling. In those instances, the story itself needs to change to accommodate that new experience. And what we call accommodative processing is a key narrative variable in supporting our wellbeing. But it doesn't support our wellbeing in exactly the way redemption does, for example. But accommodative processing, it helps us feel like our life has meaning and we understand it, even if it doesn't always feel good.

Annie tells this story that once she did finally start to accommodate this experience, when she did really start to reshape her identity to include this idea of herself as having an illness, she stepped away from her very prestigious medical career. She went down to part-time and she founded a nonprofit organization called Health Story Collaborative.

I met Annie about a year into that process. She was going around and collecting other people's stories and curating them. And 10 years later, we have worked really closely together, developing programs that leverage the science of narrative in order to support storytelling in the highly fragmented and fragmenting medical ecosystem.

Shankar Vedantam: When we modify our life stories to accommodate new life events, those events no longer feel random and aberrational. The less we feel buffeted by random events, the more we feel like we are in control of our own lives. This leads to the next idea.

2. Agency: being able to direct your life. Passive subject or Active protagonist?

Jonathan has found that stories that give us a feeling that we are in charge of our own lives are linked to higher wellbeing:

Agency is a theme in people's stories. We assess it along a continuum: from being able to direct your life, and then down at the other end of the continuum, you're batted around by the whims of fate. Again, these are themes and stories. No one is completely in control of their lives, so it's the way you portray the main character in the story, i.e. you.

Shankar Vedantam: Jonathan cites the remarkable story of a woman named Layla:

In the last five years, I've been doing a lot of research focused on identity development among people who acquire physical disabilities. And Layla was a participant in one of my studies. She tells this story of having these horrible headaches, which gradually intensified to the point where she couldn't function. She spends time in three different hospitals in Nairobi, Kenya, where she lives. And no one can figure out what's going on.

She decides to fly to India to see a specialist, and he sends her right into surgery. When she wakes up, the pain is gone, but she also can't see. The surgeon had been able to alleviate the unexplained swelling in her head that had been pressing on her optic nerves, but the nerve was also irreparably damaged. So for a few months, everyone held out hope that her vision might return. But Layla was actually the first one to accept that it wouldn't.

She said, "I realized as soon as I started accepting it, I started becoming less frustrated and sad." And though it was incredibly difficult and scary for her, Layla gradually threw herself into the task of becoming a blind person. She shifts careers. She moves to the United States to get training and computer science, where she starts working on adaptive technology for other blind and low-vision people.

Layla: I think my blindness is the best thing that ever happened to me. Even right now, if a doctor came in and told me they have a cure, I would not take it. Because I think for me, it made me understand myself, and it gives these new challenges every single day. It presents me with something. And through those challenges, I'm able to understand myself.

Shankar Vedantam: That's a remarkable account, Jonathan. But as I hear Layla talking, I feel like I've heard the same thing in the deaf community. Many deaf people today say, "The real problem is not with deafness. I just happen to speak sign language. I speak a different language than you do."

Now we can all debate how and whether something should be considered a disorder. But I think the point you're trying to make here is that the stories we tell can either put us in the driver's seat or put us in the passenger seat. And Layla is clearly choosing to be in the driver's seat.

Jonathan Adler: That's right. Traditional models of disability in the United States have this medical approach, where disability is a problem to be solved or eradicated. Social models of disability or relational models really push back on that and say, "Disability is in the interaction between my body and the built and social environment around us."

In Layla's story, like you said, there's also this sense of agency. "Now that this is part of who I am, what am I going to do with it? How can I take control of this and use it for things that matter to me?"

Shankar Vedantam: You can see a theme emerging here. As you tell the story of your life, do you see yourself as a passive subject, someone to whom things happen? Or as an active protagonist, someone who is directing the course of her own life?

Now, as Jonathan says, every life offers lots of evidence that allows you to draw either conclusion. Given this, Jonathan is saying, choose narratives that put you in the driver's seat.

Table of contents

3. Communion and connection. 'I'm not alone'

Most of the narratives we have discussed so far have championed the idea of the individual. But it's also the case that no man is an island.

[The story of Antonio] Antonio is telling a story that says, "I'm not alone."

Jonathan Adler: Exactly. In this room full of people who did not look like him, Antonio found someone who did, and they really connected. He says, "Diego threw down this challenge. If you think there should be more people like us here, then come and fix it."

And Antonio says, "I'm a competitive guy. And the next fall I was on a one-way bus trip to Olin College."

4. How do we make the story meaningful? Hedonic - feel good versus Eudaimonic which feels meaningful

Shankar Vedantam: So Jonathan, one final feature of a constructive story is that it generates meaning for the person who tells it. You say we're not always able to tell a happy story about what happens to us. But we can try and tell a meaningful story. And there are benefits to telling such stories. Can you explain what you mean?

Jonathan Adler: Yeah. To pan back for just a second, when we think about the broad study of wellbeing, it tends to cluster in two domains, which get their cumbersome names from Aristotle. On the one hand, we have what's called hedonic wellbeing, which means it feels good. On the other hand, we have a kind of wellbeing called eudaimonic wellbeing, which means it feels meaningful.

These two domains of wellbeing are actually relatively uncorrelated with each other. If we think about our lives for a second, that makes sense. We all do plenty of things that feel good, but don't feel particularly meaningful. We might binge-watch TV or something. We can all think about experiences that feel meaningful, but don't feel particularly good.

So in my work with Health Story Collaborative in particular, we find that feeling good is not always an option for people. Telling redemptive stories, or stories high in the theme of agency and communion; that's not always possible. In those situations, we're often interested in the ways in which people can really think through the hard parts of their lives and find some meaning out of that. Even if the meaning doesn't ultimately feel good in that sort of happy sense, that meaning is still incredibly worthwhile.

Our personal stories within a broader narrative ecosystem

Shankar Vedantam: I am trying to imagine how someone who is going through a rough time might hear this episode, Jonathan. And I worry that that person might say, "I've just lost my job, I've just gotten divorced. I've just lost a close family friend. And now Jonathan Adler comes along and tells me that if I'm unhappy, it's because I'm not telling the right story about my life." How would you respond to that?

Jonathan Adler: I want to say three things to that person. The first thing is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that things are so hard for you right now. Of course they're hard, and of course you're not feeling good. The second thing I want to say is there are all kinds of ways of making meaning of these experiences. And so we might think about exploring themes of agency or communion. If you lost your job, are you feeling connected to your spouse or your kids? Or if something challenging has happened, might there be some growth that comes from it? So we might explore those themes.

But the third thing I want to say is our personal stories exist in a broader narrative ecosystem.

In the United States, there is an expectation that we can narrate challenging experiences in our lives with a redemptive spin. We Americans love the theme of redemption, and we expect people to be able to do it. I call this the press for redemption.

And in my work with Health Story Collaborative, we often find that people feel like they're having this double whammy experience where, "I'm sick and I'm not telling the right kind of story about it. My cancer didn't teach me that I'm such a fighter, or that people love me more than I ever would've realized if I never had cancer." No, some people say, "This just sucks."

And I think in those instances, we want to acknowledge that, and not try to convince them that it doesn't just suck. Let them know that there's a reason they feel like they're telling the wrong kind of story, because our culture puts a particular premium on a particular kind of story. And then to help them find other kinds of narrative roots that might lead towards a sense of meaningfulness, even if they can't make you feel better.

Shankar Vedantam: Many of the examples we've talked about here have involved individuals. But as we've started to see, I think towards the end of this conversation, we're slowly broadening out beyond the individual. Because of course, these ideas are relevant outside of individual minds as well.

Societies tell themselves narratives. Nations tell themselves stories all the time. Do you think ideas of narrative psychology speak to how nations talk to themselves, and perhaps how they ought to talk to themselves?

Jonathan Adler: I do. And this is really at the forefront of the field. My colleagues, Kate McLean and Moin Syed have written really compellingly about what they call master narratives. These are the dominant storylines in our culture that tend to be invisible, but also ubiquitous and sort of rigid and powerful. And we are always in a constant dialogue with the master narratives in our particular cultural contexts.

Families have narratives that guide the way relationships unfold.

And as you said, countries certainly do.

Again, narratives are not all good or all bad at the individual level, and they're not all good or all bad at the national level, either. But these national narratives are emergent from the collection of individual narratives that the members of that country tell.

[Reference to speech Barack Obama made at the 2004 Democratic National Convention].

Appealing to entrenched master narratives is a very strategic thing to do. And many, many politicians adopt redemptive themes in their speeches. Obviously, there are many wonderful aspects of that storyline, and as we've discussed, problematic ones too. But we see evidence of leaders serving as narrators-in-chief. They shape our narrative ecology as they model storytelling for us.

Table of Contents

The Broader Narrative of Societies, Cultures and Nations

Shankar Vedantam: We started this conversation, Jonathan, by talking about ways in which you came to understand the life events in your own life, and to tell stories about those life events in a way that was more positive than negative. I'm wondering, after all these years of studying narrative psychology, do you do this on a regular basis now?

Jonathan Adler: It's not that I am consciously going through my daily experiences and editing them into the kinds of storylines that I have learned are likely to support my wellbeing. But when difficult things happen in particular, I think I do pause. And I remember that there are different kinds of wellbeing. And that the way I make sense of those experiences will lead me to different kinds of wellbeing.

But I think for a lot of people, just the awareness that you are not only the main character in your story, but also the narrator, and that the way you choose to tell the story of your life really matters. That can be an empowering insight.

Jonathan Adler is a psychologist at Olin College.

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These days there are numerous ways to take in new information, via different media. Nathan produces short illustrated video summaries. This one is less than 8 minutes. He also provides a 1 pager pdf. as a free download. At my last review, he had done 75 book summaries.

In my opinion, this doesn’t replace reading the book itself, but it’s a great pre-read and the 1-pagers are a valuable reminder of the key takeaways. I’ve used them as a base for making more notes. Books by authors like Adam Grant, and Stephen Covey.

I’ve recommended some of them to my clients who optimise their drive-time listening to audiobooks, or as a quick food-for-thought stimulus pre-meeting or group discussion.

I’m rapidly posting this, as it sits nicely alongside the article I posted on January 1st, 2024 in the Carer Mentor Journey Newsletter: A New Year…with an outdated Frame of Reference?

The link to Nathan’s website is below.

1-Page PDF Summary: https://lozeron-academy-llc.ck.page/m...

Book Link: https://amzn.to/47g8Q2d

Animated core message from Brad Stolberg's book 'Master of Change.'

For collections of the best book summaries on life's essential skills + productivity courses, check out the Productivity Game Premium Membership: https://gum.co/UNgV

To get every Productivity Game 1-Page PDF Book Summary get here: https://gum.co/cmOOM This video is a Lozeron Academy LLC production - www.ProductivityGame.com

Nathan Lozeron’s website

How do you take in new info to optimise your learning and growth: audio, visual, for 'how long' and 'when' in your routine?

Do you have a diverse range of references and sources that you can tap into? You may prefer audiobooks over reading, kindle over hardcopy, bite-sized quotes or large tomes.

How do you digest the information you're taking in? Mindmap, notes, doodles? There is no wrong or right way, find yours.

Look out for other ‘Recommendations’ in the Mentoring section.