Review: Shift

 Shift claims to be abook about managing your emotions. In reality, you can't manage your emotions. When they are aroused, they'll be aroused, and all you can do is to manage your reactions to your emotions so you don't do something dumb.

The book discusses various tricks you can play. For instance, you can reframe your view of the situation. An example in the book is when you see someone else succeed you can view that as inspiration rather than envy. Another approach is to call your friends to talk through your feelings. Here, the book does a good job of explaining that not everyone is going to be good for you to talk to, and how to split your friends into "people who will listen to me", and "people who will help me." There's even a category for "people who will listen to me but reinforce my bad behavior." 

Another way is to pre-emptively design your environment so your behavior is better. For instance, if there aren't chocolate chip cookies in the house you can't just eat. One thing that the author mentions is the use of music to regulate mood and emotion. It's not hard to do but it's hard to consciously do. Another point he makes is that if you don't regularly make phone calls to your friends it's also very hard to remember to do that when you do need to call, because you're not in practice. The practice of regularly staying in touch and calling your friends when you don't need to needs to be there to reinforce your behavior when you do need to talk to them. (He doesn't mention how to make friends, however!)

The book does unnecessarily name drop names and humble brags about the author's really privileged background. But that's ok. I still was reminded of really good techniques in this book. It's worth your time.