Camila Williams | Living Well CBT

Book Review: The 5 Second Rule

by

The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins pleasantly surprised me. I honestly thought it was a gimmick and just another pop culture self help book, but there was a lot more substance to it. Mel did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the research in psychology and human behavior and condensing it into short and easy to understand take away points. Psychologists get caught up in psychobabble, and their research articles are dense. It’s nice when someone else does the work for you and gives you the cliff notes version.

Mel defines the 5 second rule as:

“The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must [say to yourself] 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and physically  move or your brain will stop you.” When you start to think, your brain wants to pull you right back to the safe familiar zone, so just go and do!…read more

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Book Review: The One Thing

by

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller is intended for an audience of business employees who are trying to be more productive and thus hopefully more successful. This book was recommended to me when I was starting up my private practice. I felt like I was being pulled in so many directions with so many things that needed to get done. This book helped remind me to prioritize my tasks and focus on the one thing that would help me advance my private practice the most. This helped with my decision making and task list. If you’ve ever stared at your To Do List and had no idea where to start, start by reading this book.

Keller’s message is in the same vein as McKeown’s message in Essentialism; however, I felt it was easier to apply Keller’s message in the moment. As a psychologist, I love it when authors present things within a cognitive framework. Keller starts his book out with “The Lies.” These are dysfunctional thoughts that derail us and keep us stuck. He then follows that up with “The Truth.” These are healthy thoughts, that allow us to move forward. He backs these thoughts up by summarizing the research in this field (examining the evidence is the primary task of thought challenging in CBT). For example, Keller reviews why the belief that we can multitask and depend on willpower to get things done are lies. The truth is our brain can only genuinely focus on one task at a time, and our willpower is finite and it runs out (which is why resisting that bowl of cereal late at night is so hard when you’ve put in so much effort throughout the whole day to be good). The topic of willpower comes up in a lot of these types of books, most notably Mel Robbin’s The 5 Second Rule, where she talks about why we’ll “never feel like it” when it comes to doing things we know we have to. The overarching message here, is that we can’t rely on willpower and need to learn to create habits and routines to keep us on track and to basically parent ourselves.

A visualization Keller uses about the importance of choosing the One Thing right now that is the most likely to help your project, job, goal, move forward is of dominos:…read more

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Book Review: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

by

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown is another great reminder that our society today is too cluttered. To many things demand our attention from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. McKeown clearly summarizes the research and uses examples to demonstrate that we can all truly accomplish more by doing less. The lesson that stuck with me the most from this book is the graphic below:

We can progress a little in a lot of different areas of our lives, or we can progress a lot more, and achieve a lot more by focusing on the one area that is essential. Of course, this can bring up fears…read more

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: , , , ,