Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Neuharth, Dan.  Secrets You Keep from Yourself: How to Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Why is that we sometimes, maybe often, find ourselves doing things that are not truly in our best interest?  Why do we undermine our success?  Are we just messed up?  Sort of.

Psychotherapist Dan Neuharth, in his book Secrets You Keep from Yourself, finds the answer in fear.  Especially, it is fear of emotional loss.  As he puts it, “Bottom line, fear is why we get in our own way.”

Much of the book is directed toward helping readers identify their fears and confront them.  As Neuharth points out, there is a lot of false logic in fears.  For instance, he says that our fears make us feel that a situation will go on forever, that feelings are innate within ourselves and that they are totally pervasive.  He responds that in truth most situations change (emotions are especially fleeting), our feelings are often triggered by external events or even random and our problems don’t affect every part of life (or don’t have to).

Another way our fears trick us is through false accounting.  Our internal accountant hates emotional loss, and so will put great weight on even the slightest potential for loss.  In addition, he discounts potential gains, making them seem less worthy and valuable.  When he weighs the costs and benefits, he keeps his thumb on the scale so the costs always outweigh the benefits.  Because of this, fear can freeze us in inaction or prompt us to take action contrary to our interests; the internal accountant has no interest in taking risks.  As with other feelings of fear, identifying what we fear losing and taking a balanced look at potential losses and gains can help us take reasonable action.

I took a lot of notes while reading this book.  I normally take a few notes while reading nonfiction books to help me write reviews for this blog.  In this case, however, my notes are mostly exercises and personal insights from the book.  It prompted me to spend some time thinking about what I fear, what I want and what I can do about it.  I was surprised to see some of my unproductive behaviors identified and explained.

These exercises can help you identify specific fears and desires.  Neuharth categorizes the most common fears and wants and provides simple tests to help the reader see which ones apply.  You won’t be left hanging with vague feelings of unease; you’ll be able to put your finger on specific fears.  Armed with that knowledge and with other tools from the book, you’ll be able to confront them.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

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Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni

In a previous job, I worked in the field of industrial safety.  This is partly a matter of regulation, so there was often great concern about the rules. Though it was necessary to follow the rules, I also wanted to people to think. If they were going to be safe in reality, they needed to be aware, use their imagination, solve problems and ask for help.

I found a parallel to this in P. M. Forni’s approach to civility. As he put it in Choosing Civility, “Consideration is imagination in a moral track.”

In the early chapters Forni considers the notion of civility and how it relates to courtesy, politeness and manners. He wrote, “Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect and consideration into the fabric of this awareness. Civility is a form of goodness; it is gracious goodness.” Civility is the art of living well with others.

The second part of the book includes brief chapters on the rules of civility. In some cases, Forni prescribes some behavior, but in mostly this is an exploration of how awareness, respect and consideration of others can practiced in various ways.

I think a few of these worth highlighting. The first of Forni’s rules is to be attentive. Your attention is one of the most important and valuable things you can give to someone. Paying attention to others is the starting point of showing respect and acting in kindness.

Related to attention is listening. Careful listening is a skill. When practiced well, it can build understanding and rapport between people. It requires focus, generosity, responsiveness, restraint and cooperation.

I think Forni’s admonition to avoid complaining is especially worthy. We have legitimate concerns that we should speak up about, but often complaints are just a way to drag people into a negative outlook or some minor problem that is not theirs.

“’Nice’ is something that must be built, something that doesn’t simply happen or come to us out of the blue but instead requires work," P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility

P. M. Forni also wrote The Thinking Life.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Forni, P. M. Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002.

Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi

For some, the promise of technology for easy access to information that was supposed to make us more free has devolved into constant distraction that can feel like enslavement to a cell phone. Even people who have less extreme views might still feel that it is too easy to get lost in games and social media, browsing online instead of being present, procrastinating instead of getting things done.

 I’m in that camp. I’m not an obsessive user of my phone, but I have found it easy to reach for it in quiet times when I have nothing pressing. That used to be time I spent staring into space. That could be very relaxing time. More importantly, I came up with some of my best ideas in those times or shortly afterward. My brain was hard at work behind by vacant visage, but now it is hard at work scrolling Facebook or watching YouTube videos.

 Manoush Zomorodi took this problem to the listeners of her WNYC podcast, Note to Self, and challenged them to be more aware of their use of technology and wean themselves from it to some degree. That experience, with some refinements, is described in Bored and Brilliant, and Zomorodi hopes it will extend the challenge to a wider audience.

 I expected Zomorodi to focus on how technology has captured our attention and eroded our ability to concentrate. She touches on this. However, the theme of her book is that we need boredom for deeper cognition and creativity. In order to reach their most creative states, our brains need a break from stimulation—we need to get bored.

 The benefit of boredom, in addition to training us to handle tedious tasks, is that it put our mind into its “default state.” In this condition, our minds wander. We daydream. We can imagine things and make connections that would not be available to us if we were concentrating on something or stimulating our brains.

 The default state isn’t universally good. We can fall into ruminating on problems and failures, berating ourselves. That is not useful.

 However, for most of us daydreaming is positive. The lives we dream up for ourselves in such moments, Zomorodi refers to it as “autobiographical planning,” can help us identify what we want, solve problems and see ourselves as more capable.

 Zomorodi presents seven challenges to her readers. The idea is that readers would do one challenge a day for a week. Some of the challenges are adaptable for continued or periodically repeated practices. She describes how several Note to Self listeners responded to the challenges and made them their own.

 Bored and Brilliant is not about abandoning technology by a long shot. It is about making space in your life to think in different ways, especially for the daydreaming that arises in the dull, unstimulating moments in life.

 Zomorodi writes in a journalistic style. The book is not loaded with notes, or even a bibliography, like a more scientific text. However, she sites research, interviews with specialist and other books within the text. The benefits of boredom are documented. If you want to research the subject deeply, you might skim this book for other sources. If you want to loosen your ties to you cell phone or tablet, get out of the mental rat race and give your brain space for a deep breath, try the challenges in this book; it is a good place to start.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Quiet by Susan Cain

 Zomorodi, Manoush. Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Frank, Thaisa, and Dorothy Wall. Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Thaisa Frank and Dorothy wall take an organic view of writing. It begins with the voice.

Voice is not something abstract. They mean a person’s actual, natural voice. It is our native instrument of communication and expression. Like a musical instrument or a singer’s voice, it can be mastered by practice and the developing skill of the instrumentalist or vocalist.

The early chapters of the book are devoted to getting to know your instrument. This is your raw voice. Voice has the advantage of being uniquely yours and fitted to you. Using your raw voice is more than just doing what comes naturally. Like mastering other instruments, one learns is range and the variety of notes and timbres it can produce. Several exercises are offered to help you get to know your raw voice and to explore all you can do with it.

The voice of the story is more like that of a composer. It understands the instrument, the raw voice, but it also engaged in making decisions about key, tempo, and amplitude over an entire piece and each movement and how it all fits together. The raw and story voices work together as the writer works, making writing improvisational, like a jazz musician using his instrument spontaneously while leaning on a mastery of scales, techniques and musical conventions.



Frank and Wall cover many of the things one might expect on a book on fiction writing: character, plot, point of view, tone, revision, and the writing life. In their book, voice serves the source and context of all these things. They spring forth from the raw voice of a person and are developed as a story by the polished voice of a writer. The craft of writing is developed on the job, working the materials supplied by the voice into stories.

Even in revising, there is an organic sense of spontaneity, improvisation and creative working within constraints. Revising is not a process of simple mechanics. It is a chance to creatively reengage a story, testing it with the creative force of raw voice and the helpful voice of internal editors who understand the workings of a story, a beautiful turn of phrase and how to get things write. Writers can easily get stymied at this stage, as they might at others, but frustration here is often an opportunity to take a story to a better level.

I should have given this book more time than I did (it was due back at the library). It’s a class for writers and, like most classes, getting the most out of it requires doing the homework.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith

“It is impossible to explain how a successful—that is readable—book is written,” wrote Patricia Highsmith in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. As an alternative, she offers her own thoughts and experiences from writing her novels. It is not a how-to book; it is reflections with less experienced writers in mind.

 Something that comes through is that writing is something of an organic process. Books grow from a seed of an idea to a full plant. The writer must tend its growth, sometimes pruning, to make it beautiful and fruitful. This isn’t a metaphor Highsmith uses, but she frequently mentions how she enjoys gardening, so it seems fitting.

 As this suggests, writing takes time and effort. Highsmith’s normal path involves two drafts and revisions requested by her editor or publisher. In some cases, she rewrote parts of a book more than that before it was finished. Even an experienced writer is unlikely to produce a finished book on the first draft. There will be things to correct, improve, fill in and cut. It is part of the work.

 “I create things out of boredom with reality and with the awareness of routine and objects around me. Therefore, I don’t dislike this boredom which encroaches on me every now and then, and I even troy to create it by routine,” Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

 One of the few specific recommendations Highsmith offers is for beginning writers to outline a book chapter by chapter. This will keep them focused on what will advance the story. It takes practice to learn to portion out the parts a book and discipline to make sure every part serves the story. These are skills a new writer may not have, but can develop.

 The book is short and easy to read. Fans of Highsmith’s novels might enjoy a peak behind the curtains. Aspiring writers might find some encouragement is seeing that the things they struggle with are part of the process of writing; they can be overcome with focus, persistence and humility.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Good Naked by Joni B. Cole

How to Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan

How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

No Plot? Not Problem! A Low Stress-High Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Write Naked by Jennifer Probst

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Writing for Comics with Peter David

 Highsmith, Patricia. Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. 1983. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1990.

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Do you want to live a good life?  Try engaging in some good thinking.  The quality of our life, work, and relationships, our happiness, depends of the decisions we make.  We make better decisions through good thinking that is both creative and analytical.  Such thinking can be difficult if we live in a near constant state of distraction.

P. M. Forni points out in his book The Thinking Life that we live in an age of distraction.  The Internet, cellular phones, and ubiquitous media have made it possible for us to be in an almost constant state of stimulation.  In a diet of constant feeding, our minds have no time to digest, so much of what comes in passes out mostly unchanged.  We can find information in an instant, but it takes more than an instant to take it in and retain it.

Excellent thinking, reflection, introspection, and deep learning, take time and energy.  Not only that, they require some devotion and discipline.  I think one of the most useful points Forni makes is the importance of attention, the opposite of distraction.  I have read the works of memory experts that suggest that we do not remember things because we did not pay close attention to them to begin with.  If we want to know what is going on around us, especially with the people we care about, we have to be attentive.  If we want to remember something, we have to pay attention when we experience it.  If we want to do some serious thinking, we have to attend to some thoughts and put aside others, at least for a while.

Fortunately, our power of paying attention, and other abilities important to thinking like decision making, can be improved with practice.  Throughout The Thinking Life, Forni provides advice on how to develop your thinking abilities.  Each chapter ends with specific questions and exercises aimed at helping you increase your ability in some area of thinking.

In his argument for the benefits of thinking, Forni draws on an ancient Greek philosophy known as Stoicism.  Famous Stoics include Zeno, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca.  Forni doesn’t suggest that we be stoical.  He suggests that we practice moderation and self-discipline so that we can set aside time and energy for the important task of thinking, which leads to better decisions and more happiness.

Moderation and self-discipline are virtues, something the Stoics held in high regard.  Another virtue that Forni encourages is humility.  I think humility is one of the greatest virtues.  Humility is a condition for honestly assessing our place in the world so we can see where we need help, see where can help others, and learn.

These comments scratch the surface of Forni’s short book.  He addresses a problem in our culture with thoughtful advice and concision.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard (illustrated by Tomie De Paolo)

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Forni, P. M.  The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction.  New York: St. Martin’s, 2011.

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