This is installment two of my attempt to read more than one self-help book this year; installment one can be found here. Unlike Performing Under Pressure, Scott G. Halford’s Activate Your Brain aims to help readers take full control of their lives, push their brains to full power, and find more significance in their careers. In short, Activate Your Brain claims to change readers’ lives, just like every other self-help book I’ve read. However, Activate Your Brain is quite practical in its approach. By recognizing how the brain works and understanding the actions to help it perform optimally, we actually can change our lives. Through a combination of “research, anecdote, and inspiration,” Activate Your Brain shows readers that small steps toward better brain function and management can eventually lead to success on a whole new level.
The most important thing about Activate Your Brain is that all the steps Halford recommends readers take can be easily applied to one’s own life. A lot of self-help books offer advice that’s hard to follow, so most of the time, I end up not following any advice at all. However, Halford’s advice–which includes incorporating certain food into one’s diet for optimal brain function–is ridiculously easy. I actually changed a few of my habits after I read this book, so I can vouch for the Goodreads synopsis, which claims that Activate Your Brain is life-changing.
Activate Your Brain is the perfect length: long enough for a reader to be exposed to the research and methodology behind the book, but short enough before said reader gets bored by the repetition. Halford begins by detailing the three brains that are responsible for our automated, emotional and logical functions, and next describes how our brains actually work and what affects them. He also makes a crucial point that our brains dictate our behavior and thus are the most important thing we should learn about. But most importantly, Halford writes that we have a choice to improve the health of our brain and our body, that we predetermine our future. Most books claim that we cannot alter our future, but that we can alter our responses to it. However, Halford’s approach allows us to take full responsibility for ourselves and claim our own agency.
For once, a Goodreads synopsis is accurate. Activate Your Brain truly is a perfect balance between “research, anecdote, and inspiration.”
Rating: 9 out of 10
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press (May 5th, 2015)
Length: 248 pages (Hardcover)
ISBN #: 9781626341975
Source: Netgalley
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