A review by zhliu0124
Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, & Endorphin Levels by Loretta Graziano Breuning

3.0

The book includes two parts. The first half part of the book explains how our emotion system works to control our feelings to the world and to ourselves, which I found it’s very interesting and quiet inspiring. The chemical system we humans share with the other mammals is helping us survive in this complicated world. It drives us to seek new sexual partners, food, and good relationships with the others by guaranteeing us happiness. To make ourselves happy, we have to do these things it motivates us to do. This creates a huge side effect because these things are too easy for us to get in our modern society. We often find us overeating, surfing porn websites, and addicting to video games and social-network websites not because our bodies need them but because we want us to be happy. To make it even worse, this chemical system is designed to challenge our satisfaction all the time. We get bored easily and have to pursue more to keep us happy. Many of us is trapped by this “vicious circle”. It helps us better control ourselves by understanding how this system works.

The second half part is, more or less like the other self-help books, about how to make a new habit by repeating. I could not find anything new.

Though I appreciate the author’s idea and her taste of good books (there is a list of books about mind, consciousness, and society). But I don’t like the powerpoint slide-like style, and I am sick of the author keeping saying “You… You… Your…You.You.You…” Come on.