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Description
The #1 UK bestseller that presents a funny, honest, and engaging look at the craziness of modern life, explaining why we're all just a little bit out of our minds. In Sane New World, Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health advocate - shows us just how our minds can send us mad as our internal critics play on a permanent loop tape 'Don't do that.. why you... you didn't... should have... but you didn't...'. Ruby knows those voices well. She has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. In Sane New World, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work and how we can rewire our thinking - often through simple mindfulness techniques - to find calm in a frenetic world.… (more)
User reviews
At times this book was overwhelming and I had to take a break to read a fiction title, but it was totally worthwhile making it to the end. Near the end there are exercises to help. Well work a read.
I would have preferred a little less detail on what parts of the brain do what, and more on how to achieve 'mindfulness'. From what
Although this book has a chapter on Mindfulness, it is served up in small bites. A lot of the rest of the book looks at how our brains work, including the physical effects that positive thoughts have on the brain, and the effects of negative internal chatter on our well being as a whole.
Whilst this book is again written in Wax's trademark chatty, sardonic, self-deprecating style, somehow this time around it didn't grate on my just as much as it did first time around when reading Frazzled.
I read this book as it had been bought for me as a present rather than because I was looking for any kind of mental support from it. For anyone suffering from depression or other mental illness such as low self-esteem I don't expect this book will be a magic bullet, but I do think it could be a useful book to dip in and out of to recalibrate at times when the negative internal thoughts are outweighing the positive ones.
4 stars - a refreshing mind re-tuning manual