A myth-busting, science-based guide;that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess--from the bestselling author of Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices.; But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us? Acclaimed psychologist Dr. Ethan Kross has devoted his scientific career to answering this question. In Filled with actionable advice, cutting-edge research, and riveting stories, <Shift< puts the power back into our hands, so we can control our emotions without them controlling us--and help others do the same....

Autorentext

Ethan Kross

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“A revolutionary guide to mastering your emotional life.”—Charles Duhigg
“Brilliant, engaging, and deeply insightful.”—Lisa Damour
“A blueprint for navigating the emotional curveballs that life throws at us every day.”—The New York Times

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of Oprah Daily’s Best Self-Help Books for Personal Growth in 2025, Next Big Idea Club’s Highly Anticipated Books, and Adam Grant’s 10 New Books to Feed Your Mind

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A myth-busting, science-based guide that addresses the timeless question of how to manage your emotional life using tools you already possess—from the bestselling author of Chatter.

Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices.

But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us? Acclaimed psychologist Dr. Ethan Kross has devoted his scientific career to answering this question. In Shift, he dispels common myths—for instance, that avoidance is always toxic or that we should always strive to live in the moment—and provides a new framework for shifting our emotions so they don’t take over our lives.

Shift weaves groundbreaking research with riveting stories of people struggling and succeeding to manage their emotions—from a mother whose fear prompted her to make a spur-of-the-moment decision that would save her daughter’s life mid-flight to a nuclear code-carrying Navy SEAL who learned how to embrace both joy and pain during a hellish training activity. Dr. Kross spotlights a wide array of tools that we already have access to—in our bodies and minds, our relationships with other people, and the cultures and physical spaces we inhabit—and shows us how to harness them to be healthier and more successful.

Filled with actionable advice, cutting-edge research, and riveting stories, Shift puts the power back into our hands, so we can control our emotions without them controlling us—and help others do the same.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

Why We Feel

Matt Maasdam sat cross-legged, hunched in a concrete box the size of a small sewer drain. He’d been there for almost two straight days.

Matt and his cohort had made it to the last forty-eight hours of the U.S. Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) School, and no one had eaten for five days. At first, Matt had been plagued by fantasies of the food and drinks he desperately craved—carne asada burritos from his favorite hole-in-the-wall in Coronado, cranberry orange muffins, and Mountain Dew. But those cravings had subsided. His body was now in survival mode, breaking down its own cells. This left Matt ruminating about what losing fifteen pounds of muscle mass would cost him next week, in the next phase of his punishing training, when he would be swimming in Alaska’s icy waters. As a “new guy” in the SEAL teams, Matt was still proving himself, and knew he had to still somehow perform at his peak. He imagined pulling on his dry suit and feeling it loose against his skin from the weight loss, staring out at the two-mile swim ahead of him. He was a strong swimmer, but even in a dry suit hypothermia creeps up fast in thirty-degree water if you don’t have enough muscle mass to insulate you. Every ounce helps. Not to mention that when sharing waters with sharks, killer whales, and squids the size of small cars, you definitely don’t want to be any slower than usual.

As he sat crunched in his cell like a human accordion, his frustration began escalating. He could feel his heart racing and his jaw clenching. At times there was an angry buzz of electricity along his skin that made him want to start kicking at his cage, screw the consequences. The “guards” weren’t allowed to beat the prisoners too badly, but they could use open-handed slaps, and if you made noise or called attention to yourself in any way, they could drag you out of your cell and bounce you off the concrete. Matt and his cohort had heard that a previous group of SEALs had broken out of their cells and taken over the camp, making a joke of the whole thing. They’d been warned— severely—not to attempt it.

SERE School wears you down; it’s designed to. Plenty of people don’t make it through the training. They either drop out or want to quit and get talked back in. There are the freezing desert nights; starvation; the physical torture of the claustrophobic cells; waterboarding; periodic beatings; and the loudspeaker playing a constant soundtrack of babies crying, tank treads grinding, boots marching, and Russians chattering.

It was a simulation, sure, but the scenario it was intended to prepare them for was very real. As SEALs in the field, they would face an enormous amount of risk and uncertainty. It was quite possible that one day they’d find themselves in this very same situation, except that everything would be real—the cell, the guards, and the physical violence they faced. They were being pushed to their physical and psychological limits, because if they broke, maybe they didn’t belong.

It takes an unusual kind of person to survive SERE School. But Matt was determined to make it. No breaks. No tapping out. And frankly, he’d gone into the “prison cell” portion of the exercise hoping to learn something and thinking it would be relatively easy after going through SEAL training. Chill in a cell for a few days? No problem. I got this.

Now, the thing about being alone in a cell for two days is that you get closely acquainted with your own inner experience. Matt was acutely aware of seemingly every feeling and thought that arose as he sat, muscles burning, doing his damnedest to practice staying still, calm, and focused. There were blips of fear: What if I pass out during the cold test? There was frustration: Get me the hell out of this microscopic box! And mixed in with all that were warm feelings of happiness and excitement when he thought about the person in the cell across the…