 What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel's all about mental health. So if you got mental health stuff that you're trying to improve, like myself, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And yeah, I thought about this for a little bit and I wanna do a series of videos because if you're like me, all this coronavirus stuff being everywhere makes you a little anxious. So those of you who don't know me, I've been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder and every single day it is a challenge managing that anxiety, right? Like I'm a father, so I have my son, I have parents and older people are the ones who are most susceptible to the coronavirus being potentially fatal, right? But we also have a lot of people who are panicking right now. And so many of us are struggling with anxiety and I know it's not doing a lot of us any favors. So I wanted to do a series of videos kind of discussing managing your mental health while all this stuff is going on. These videos don't get monetized, but it's whatever. I'm gonna make a playlist. Just so anybody if you need to, you can go check them out. But anyways, I've been having some back and forth with people on Twitter because like somebody like me should be freaking out right now. I should be losing my mind on a daily basis, but I'm not, all right? And I don't want to minimize what's going on right now, but for somebody like me who deals with anxiety on a regular basis, it is important for me to manage it, all right? And I think we gotta find this middle ground between freaking out and minimizing it, more than we should. And I think this segment from John Oliver from last week tonight, this little clip right here, it explains it very nicely. And at this point, you may be wondering, how scared should you be? And the answer is probably a bit, a bit. Look, I don't want to be alarmist here, but I also don't want to minimize what we could be facing. It's really about trying to strike a sensible balance. Basically, if you're drinking bleach to protect yourself right now, you should probably calm the fuck down. If you are, say, licking subway poles because you're certain nothing can hurt you, maybe don't do that. So yeah. Anyways, I want to discuss eight books that I suggest you read if you are having a lot of coronavirus anxiety, all right? So the first one is The Power of Bad by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, okay? So Roy Baumeister, he is a psychologist. He originally started in philosophy, but then he got into psychology and his research has cited a lot in a lot of the books I read. But anyways, his brand new book, The Power of Bad with John Tierney just came out, I think like the last day of 2019 or earlier this year, and I'm actually gonna reread it along with a lot of these books on this list just to help with my anxiety. But anyways, The Power of Bad, it is all about our negative bias, all right? Most people know that our brains have a negative bias. We are genetically and evolutionarily predisposed to focus more on the negative than the positive. Like positive events, they just slide off our memory, like Teflon, and with negative events, it's like Velcro, right? And this can be an issue when we're seeing all this coronavirus news. So I highly suggest that you check out The Power of Bad and this book as well as the rest of the books on this list, these are going to help you in a wide range of different mental health aspects aside from just the coronavirus anxiety, all right? So book number two is Good Reasons for Bad Feelings by Randolph Nessie, okay? This is one of my favorite books I've ever read in my entire life and I can't wait to reread it again. This book is all about the evolutionary psychology of mental health issues, all right? Primarily depression and anxiety, but he also talks about addiction, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, but anyways, it talks about evolutionary reasons and like this book is so important because it helps you understand that there's nothing wrong with you. Like if you're experiencing anxiety right now because of the coronavirus, there's nothing wrong with you, that's completely normal. But this author does a great job explaining why we get anxious about certain things and not others, right? Why our mind has a natural response for getting anxious around certain things, right? So for example, for example, one of the reasons that the anxiety around the coronavirus is so huge, whereas it's not as huge around other issues that are killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people each year, like it explains why we get anxious about one but not the other, right? Because I keep thinking about this. We are a very resilient species, right? We have made it through a lot, okay? So when this thing passes, we're gonna be stronger because of it. But anyways, like the coronavirus, the reason it causes so much anxiety is because it's this infection, this virus, right? And that's something that we are biologically designed to fear, okay? So these next two books are from Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner, all right? And the first one is Freakonomics. A lot of you have heard of this book. Some of you have read this book. This is like a huge best-selling book. But the reason why this book is so important, like this book is a lot about economics but not the traditional economics that you're thinking or that we traditionally think of. This is all about different statistics over the years and how we thought it was this way but it was really this way, right? And it helps you just kind of switch the way you look at situations and that's what helps me the most. Like a lot of these books have helped me just look at things from different angles that I would have never looked at them before, okay? Freakonomics, like if you get any book on this list, you need to get these two books from Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The other book that I had to read right after I finished Freakonomics was Think Like a Freak, okay? Because I was so fascinated and intrigued with how they looked at these different things that have happened throughout history and how we got them so wrong. Like a lot of this is people got it wrong. The experts got it wrong, right? And I'm like, okay, well, how do you do that? Like what's that thought process? And they wrote an entire book to help you start looking at these situations in a different way. So that's Think Like a Freak. Like the best thing I could relate it to is REBT, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. A lot of these books will help you with that. But anyways, like even if you're not in therapy, like Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, which is one of my favorite forms of therapy that I do with my therapist, it helps you think rationally, all right? And I think some of these books helping you look at things from different angles and understand why you feel the way you feel and kind of understand why the public is doing what they're doing. Like I think it's really important to be able to look at these from different angles, all right? The next one is Hive Mind by Sarah Kavanaugh. And I've been really fascinated with like Group Think and kind of like tribal mentality, mob mentality for a long time now. And this book came out, I think fall of 2019. But anyways, Sarah Kavanaugh is a professor as well. And this book will help you understand this, the kind of mass hysteria and panic around this thing, why groups act the way they do. This book, as well as like The Power of Bad will help you understand why the media focuses so much on the negative, how that spreads and goes viral on social media and all of that, all right? And there's also some sections in there about conspiracies and things like that. But anyways, it helps me understand like when I'm on social media and I see all these things going on, the people I interact with and understand and I'm like, how come they're not noticing these things? And a lot of it has to do with that Group Think and mentality of being in a group, all right? The next book is a book I'm currently reading right now which you need to get. Like you need to get it right now. It's called How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich. All right? So I was recently rereading a book, one of my other favorite books, it's called The Righteous Mind and the author, Jonathan Hyte referenced work from Thomas Gilovich. And when I hear like a psychologist who has a really interesting study or some research, I'm like, huh, I wonder if they've written any books. And this book actually just came out in 2019, but I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely love this book so far. And basically what it's about is like understanding why our brain has so many biases that we don't even recognize, right? Like it's easy to sit here and be like, oh, I know all about confirmation bias and all these other things and da da da da, right? But this book has done such a great job at 20 out of things that we don't notice, right? A chapter I just finished was like about relationships and why our relationships make us focus on these negative things rather than the positive things. But it's also important to understand why we're focusing on some aspects of the coronavirus news and not others. So check that book out. The next book is Super Forecasting. Now, I highly recommend you read this book. For me personally, there was only so much that I could relate to myself and my own mental health, but the reason we all need to read this book is because the author, Philip Tetlock, he is referenced. And just about all of the books I've listed, Philip Tetlock is referenced in almost every single one, almost every single one. Why is that? It's because he did the longest study, the longest study I believe it spanned two decades, okay? And what he did was he gave dozens of experts things to predict, right? About the stock markets, about wars, about all these things. I think he even had him do forecasting about predictions with like pandemics like SARS and H1N1. And what he's found through his research, like listen to me very carefully, what he's found in research is that experts, experts are no better predicting than your average person. Experts are correct, they're accurate, roughly 50% of the time. Something he talks about in this book and one of the reasons he had to write this book is because like one specific line of his research has been just used everywhere and it's true because like I said, these other books reference his research but they say part of his research said like, experts predicting outcomes is no better than a chimp throwing dots at a dartboard, right? But anyways, he dives deeper into this. He actually has discovered who's better at forecasting who isn't like they have found that super forecasters what he calls them is actually better at predicting things than like the CIA. Like that's nuts. So although a lot of examples in this book are talking about like like global conflicts and wars and predicting things, I think it's important to read this book because right now there's a lot of experts and I don't mean to discredit them in any way. Like we need them to tell the truth, we need them to explain what's going on and why we should be worried or aspects that we shouldn't be worried about. I've had a lot of people recommend the Joe Rogan podcast recently where he had an infectious disease expert on there and there were some things on that I didn't know. For example, healthy children are pretty much not at risk. They are not contracting this thing and having as severe symptoms and it's not as deadly for children and they don't know why, right? As a father, that's very helpful but reading super forecasting, it helps me listen to the experts but also listen to them with caution because some of these other books that I've mentioned discuss all the different biases that we have and one of the biggest misconceptions that we have is that experts are not bias. Experts are completely objective, right? And that's not the case. All experts have their own biases and unless they are working very, very, very, very hard to acknowledge those and talk to their peers and getting groups, something that's part of the super forecasting group, their biases are gonna get the best of them and their biases, which they are unaware of can influence the way they are speaking to the public. You see what I mean? So that helps chill my anxiety out because I can sit there and say, okay, how accurate are their predictions? How many different forms of bias are affecting what they say? And it helps me chill out a little bit and take what they're saying, take it in and then start adjusting my life around that, all right? So the last book on this list is Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. This book was recommended when I watched a video from Dr. Mike. It's actually how I discovered the other author I mentioned, Jonathan Haidt but Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. I am really into books, not only about psychology and mental health and all that, but again, like rational mode of behavioral therapy, I love books that help me think better, right? Because a lot of mental health issues are psychological, okay? So you have the biopsychosocial model. You have your biology, right? Your genetics, chemical imbalances and all that. You have social, how things are happening in your life, different events, different circumstances, who you're hanging out with, but then you have the psychological model, okay? This is one of the reasons why therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy, rational mode of behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, they help you think better, okay? Like, and that's why I love Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. A lot of this is about making better decisions, recognizing your biases, recognizing almost like the title of that other book, like why you think you know what you really don't know. You know what I mean? And I really wanna reread this book too, because it helps me look at things from different perspectives. And one of the best things that we can do for our mental health is look at things from different perspectives. Anxiety, for example. It is this intense fear of what hasn't happened yet. You know what I mean? We call it future tripping. We are freaking out, right? And like we learned from Super Forecasting is, a lot of our predictions of the future are inaccurate. They're blown out of proportion. So Thinking in Bets I think is a good book if you are struggling with coronavirus anxiety. All right, but anyways, those are the eight books down in the description below. I'll have all the books linked. I would appreciate if you use the links down in the description, down in the pinned comment. Those are affiliate links. So, although videos like this are not being monetized, when you use those Amazon affiliate links, a little bit comes back a very little bit, comes back to help to support the channel. All right, and to wrap up this video, I'm gonna read a comment from the last video, and then I'm gonna ask you a question to comment on down in the comments below. All right, so this one, like my last video was about love is blind and I got a bunch of random comments. I get this comment a lot, so I thought I'd just talk about it real quick. So it says, damn, your views have dropped LMAO. It must be wild going from 80 to 100K to not even being able to get 1,000 views anymore. Yes, it is wild, or should I say it was wild. So another reason I read these books is I start to understand human nature, right? The human experience, and something is hedonic adaptation, okay? We are always going to adapt. If you get a million dollars tomorrow, you're gonna adapt to it, and that million dollars is not gonna feel as good as when you first get it. Same thing happens with losses. Losses are gonna hurt, but over time, they hurt less, okay? So it's been a year since I've stopped getting as many views and everything like that. Doesn't affect me as much. Hedonic adaptation is one of our best friends and worst enemies at the same time. So thank you, Wildflower, for leaving that comment. But anyways, for this video, down in the description below, I wanna hear from you. What are your favorite mental health books? Have you got any books about anxiety, or if you have any books that you think might be beneficial for people struggling with coronavirus anxiety? Personally, I am always looking for new books to read. So let me know down in the comments below, and you might be in the next video where we read a comment, all right? So anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing, as well as everybody who buys my mental health books from therewiredsoul.com and who supports the channel by getting the Rewired Soul merch. You are all amazing, all right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.