Amy Alkon presents Unf*ckology, a "science-help" book that knocks the self-help genre on its unscientific ass. You can finally stop fear from being your boss and put an end to your lifelong social suckage. Have you spent your life shrinking from opportunities you were dying to seize but feel "That's just who I am"? Well, screw that!
Transforming yourself takes revolutionary science-help from Amy Alkon, who has spent the past twenty years translating cutting-edge behavioral science into highly practical advice in her award-winning syndicated column. In Unf*ckology, Alkon pulls together findings from neuroscience, behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and clinical psychology. She explains everything in language you won't need a psych prof on speed-dial to understand. She debunks widely accepted but scientifically unsupported notions about self-esteem, shame, willpower, and more, and demonstrates that:
Thinking your way into changing (as so many therapists and self-help books advise) is the most inefficient way to go about it.
The mind is bigger than the brain, meaning that your body and your behavior are your gym for turning yourself into the new, confident you.
Fear is not just the problem; it's also the solution.
By targeting your fears with behavior, you make changes in your brain that reshape your habitual ways of behaving and the emotions that go with them.
Follow Amy Alkon's groundbreaking advice in Unf*ckology, and eventually, you'll no longer need to act like the new you; you'll become the new you. And how totally f*cking cool is that?
We live in a world that’s very different from the one in which Emily Post came of age. Many of us who are nice (but who also sometimes say “f*ck”) are frequently at a loss for guidelines about how to be a good person who deals effectively with the increasing onslaught of rudeness we all encounter. To lead us out of the miasma of modern mannerlessness, science expert and bitingly funny syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon rips the doily off the manners genre and gives us a new set of rules for our twenty-first-century lives. With wit, style, and a dash of snark, Alkon explains that we now live in societies too big for our brains, lacking the constraints on bad behavior that we had in the small bands we evolved in. Alkon shows us how we can reimpose those constraints, how we can avoid being one of the rude, and how to stand up to those who are. Forgoing prissy advice on which utensil to use, Alkon answers the twenty-first century’s most burning questions about manners, including: • Why do many people, especially those under forty, now find spontaneous phone calls rude?
• What can you tape to your mailbox to stop dog walkers from letting their pooch violate your lawn?
• How do you shut up the guy in the pharmacy line with his cell phone on speaker?
• What small gift to your new neighbors might make them think twice about playing Metallica at 3 a.m.? Combining science with more than a touch of humor, Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck is destined to give good old Emily a shove off the etiquette shelf (if that’s not too rude to say).
