Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain: How to Retrain Your Brain to Overcome Pessimism and Achieve a More Positive Outlook

by Elaine Fox Narrated by Karen Saltus

Overview

Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Glass half-full or half-empty? Do you look on the bright side or turn towards the dark? These are easy questions for most of us to answer, because our personality types are hard-wired into our brains. As pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox has discovered, our outlook on life reflects our primal inclination to seek pleasure or avoid danger-inclinations that, in many people, are healthily balanced. But when our “fear brain” or “pleasure brain” is too strong, the results can be disastrous, as those of us suffering from debilitating shyness, addiction, depression, or anxiety know all too well.

Luckily, anyone suffering from these afflictions has reason to hope. Stunning breakthroughs in neuroscience show that our brains are more malleable than we ever imagined. In Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain, Fox describes a range of techniques-from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy to innovative cognitive-retraining exercises-that can actually alter our brains' circuitry, strengthening specific thought processes by exercising the neural systems that control them. The implications are enormous: lifelong pessimists can train themselves to think positively and find happiness, while pleasure-seekers inclined toward risky or destructive behavior can take control of their lives.

Drawing on her own cutting-edge research, Fox shows how we can retrain our brains to brighten our lives and learn to flourish. With keen insights into how genes, life experiences and cognitive processes interleave together to make us who we are, Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain revolutionizes our basic concept of individuality. We learn that we can influence our own personalities, and that our lives are only as “sunny” or as “rainy” as we allow them to be.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Michael J. Fox
“Every day I send my kids out the door to school with this admonition, ‘you can choose to be happy.'  More often than not, they roll their eyes, but in Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain Elaine Fox (no relation) offers a scientific argument for my contention.  After much research, and in comprehensive, but comprehensible detail, Professor Fox provides a mental map to the sunny side of the street.  For optimists and pessimists alike, this fascinating book is a must read.”

Joseph LeDoux, author of The Emotional Brain and Synaptic Self
“Every experience you have, from the most trivial to the most significant, alters the brain.  Elaine Fox offers scientifically based advice about how to make the most of this, how to be in charge of changing your brain for the better.”

Publishers Weekly
“Drawing on a host of studies in neurobiology and genetics, as well as evolutionary and behavioral psychology, Fox explores the struggle between the parts of the brain associated with fear and pessimism and those associated with pleasure and optimism.... Fox introduces readers to many new concepts from experimental psychology and recent research on neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.... [A] welcome, if intellectually demanding, introduction to a key area of brain research.”

Kirkus Reviews

A psychologist looks at the influence that outlook--a tendency toward optimism or pessimism--can play in shaping the events in our lives. For the past 20 years, Fox (Head of the Department of Psychology and Centre for Brain Science/Univ. of Essex) has studied how "the diverse ways in which people interpret the world around them" are reflective of optimistic or pessimistic mindsets. She reports on experiments that differentiate between these mindsets in a variety of circumstances: the direction of a subject's attention to positive or negative images, brain scans that reflect the activation of different pathways in the brains, longitudinal studies that correlate personality type and life success. The author explains that the human brain has evolved two different circuits--the "rainy brain," which allows us to have a rapid response to perceived danger, and the "sunny brain," which directs us to pleasurable activities. Both are necessary to help us cope with our environment, but experiments show that the predominance of one over the other is observable in sunny-brained optimistic people compared with rainy-brained pessimists. The difference reflects the "delicate ebb and flow of circuits deep in our brain that shapes the contours and valleys of our personality"--e.g., while the pleasure circuitry of both optimists and pessimists are triggered by positive experiences, the activation will last longer for those with sunnier dispositions. Not only have optimists been shown to be happier, but they tend to be more successful in flexibly meeting life's challenges. While there may be genetic factors involved in the development of personality type, Fox suggests it is possible to adjust the "reactivity of these brain areas," although sometimes professional help is advisable. An insightful addition to the self-help bookshelf.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171357597
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	06/05/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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