Steeped in Science, Submersed in Story

Whew. I haven't thought about feelings for so long in.. well, ever, probably. There are a lot of feelings in this book. Basically, the key to Rising Strong from your face plant moments, according to Brene Brown, is to deal with your feelings. Your personal and professional feelings. Other people's personal and professional feelings. Guilt. Shame. Fear of failure. All that stuff. Feelings, feelings, feelings.

In all seriousness, Brown is very good at what she does. Through story-telling, she's trying to help us establish procedures, processes by which we can identify the self-defeating stories we're automatically making up, get past them, and rise strong and get past our failures. There's some stuff in here that I needed to hear. There's probably something in here that everyone needs to hear. But there are a lot of feelings.

As far as the science goes, it's really not my style. She makes a case for qualitative science over quantitative science, okay, but I didn't realize she was for excluding all quantitative science. Even when she has the opportunity because there's something that is proven that she wants to use, she goes for "this really famous psychologist at an Ivy-League school believes that A leads to B" rather than quoting any data. That just exactly how not to earn the trust of your average scientist. And she misuses physics, but that's common in this genre.

On the other hand, she's not trying to earn the trust of scientists. She's trying to give ordinary people the tools they need to be better at what they do and lead better life. And man, is she earnest. In a big way. I respect that. And I recommend her work, even if she didn't totally succeed in winning me over.

I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.