The author, Loretta Graziano Breuning Ph.D., a neurochemical expert, is clearly a bright master of her subject. Dr. Breuning shows that by observing positive things three times a day for six weeks, we humans can rewire our brains. This tool is this book’s single most significant, powerful, and useful feature. This book’s title should have been just this: The one exercise that will rewire your brain in six weeks and only minutes every day. No drugs, no exercise, no meditation required; just intention, presence, and mindfulness.
The author’s one simple, brilliant exercise can rewire the brain from the old decision patterns of seeing and focusing on negativity, some of it by the nature of the brain that the author describes has the inclination for the negativity that comes from mammalian brains and some from the learned behaviors of very young ages between two and eight and later in prepubescent years, both of which trigger instinctive behaviors based on fast pathways formed in these two stages. Her tool, the three times mindful observation of positivity each day can change the early-ingrained thinking and action patterns. What an awesome tool! It sounds simple, effortless, and effective and I am up for applying this tool.
For the rest of the summary, I want to break the nib of my fountain pen like the judges who condemn a man to death do after they sign the death sentence. I resisted writing this part of the summary because it is clear that the author inflicted injury upon herself and the publisher Simon and Schuster dropped the ball. They installed an overpromising title: The Science of Positivity. Wow.
The author’s contract with me, the reader who spent time reading the book, then questioned the gaps and reread it looking for the answers to fill the gaps, left me in disbelief. Really? The title promises content the book does not contain. Even more sadly, it dances around tangents that are interesting but irrelevant to the science of positivity that I expected to find in this book. The publisher, Simon & Schuster failed to deliver what the title promised.
To begin with science then, what is the definition of this variable: “positivity”? The author does not define it but instead leaves it for the reader to do so. She does not even give any guidelines, elements, or structure to help the reader. If positivity is undefined, then by scientific principles, how can the undefined state be measured for consistency or be replicated? The “Science” in the title does not compute.
The book speaks in some detail about the value and impact of Cortisol, Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Endorphins in human and animal lives. This discussion is one of the core fundamental pillars of this book. However, it mostly repeats high-school-science-level details. Rather than digging deeper into the connection of science, chemicals, (human) body, and positivity, which is what the title implies, the book shoots off into the animal world, with examples of how mammals, reptiles, and other species find safety, food, harmony, and mates. The interesting animal tidbits are tantalizing trivia for board-game parties, but they don’t connect the science to positivity.
The science I was looking for was, what is the science of positivity? What helps the formation of these key chemicals which influence positivity, where they are produced, what impacts their production, and do some people have excess and others have scarcity of them? Do slim people have more or less of these chemicals and how does that relate to positivity in comparison to obese people? Do these chemicals vary for men versus women, or older people versus younger people? Where does science stand on neurochemical parallel studies from the animal world to humans’ brains and the functional areas of the brains? From my general understanding, the studies about equating mice, monkeys, elephants, crocodiles, chimpanzees, and other animals are not sufficiently deep to make decisive claims of equivalence. I could be wrong. To learn more about these questions is precisely why I picked up a book with the title, The Science of Positivity, that did not connect the dots or if it did connect the dots, I was left questioning the relevance of the dots themselves.
Yet another set of questions left unaddressed was those of the conscious and unconscious minds. How does positivity fit into these two often discussed constructs and how do the chemicals impact them? Is there any scientific evidence of transformation in positivity? Do any scans of the brains show significant changes? For instance, the University of Wisconsin at Madison conducted research on compassion meditation and how just two weeks of guided meditation changed brain structures. It provided brain scans of trained monks and untrained control participants to show the impact of the meditation training. They produced scientific data. Where are the data here? This book percolates and provokes questions it does not answer. Instead, it abandons the curious reader to find his/her/their own path to discover the answers by themselves.
In the end, I felt that the author and publishers sold me goods that did not measure up to the promise of the title. It simply lacks data and scientific rigor. I felt betrayed because I invested the time to make sense of the missing links and tried to find the content or even references to fill the gaps.
Even with missing links and credible scientific foundations, the one tool that the author proposes might hold the promise of creating or increasing positivity. Although here again, the science, experimentation, studies with control groups, and verifiable results are missing. But intuitively speaking, I am keen to follow the author’s recommendation to improve my positivity.