14 Days to Sustainable Happiness: A Workbook for Every Brain

by Loretta Graziano Breuning

You have power over your emotions, but it’s limited, so you need to understand it. Here is a simple explanation of the chemicals that make us feel dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin. You’ll find out what turns them on in animals, and how you manage them with the animal part of your brain. Then you’ll learn to rewire your happy chemicals by feeding your brain new inputs in a new way. We’ll do the same for the unhappy chemical, cortisol, too. It’s a step-by-step method with no jargon, based on the work of the Inner Mammal Institute. A more complete presentation of the science is in the companion book, Habits of a Happy Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels With one lesson a day for fourteen days, you will discover your power over your happy brain chemicals. This is not a checklist of activities. It’s a guide to the way your brain got wired long ago, and the way to add on new wiring. We humans get wired by early experience, so we all need updates. You can learn to blaze a new trail through your jungle of neurons to reach your happy chemicals in natural, healthy ways. Realistic expectations are the key. Our happy chemicals are not designed to flow all the time for no reason. They evolved to reward you for taking a step that meets your needs. Our brain defines “needs” in a quirky way, alas. You will learn about these quirks so you can design realistic steps toward your happy chemicals. You cannot rewire your whole brain in 14 days. You can build one new neural pathway at a time. You will learn to target the new pathway you want and the steps that will build it. It will build with repetition, so you will flow there as smoothly as you now flow into your old happy-chemical pathways. You can replace an unsustainable habit with a new habit designed by you. You’ll be glad you did! CONTENTS
Day 1 Your Power Over Your Brain
Day 2 The Joy of Dopamine
Day 3 The Safety of Oxytocin
Day 4 The Pride of Serotonin
Day 5 The Challenge of Endorphin
Day 6 The Pain of Cortisol
Day 7 Your Dopamine Past
Day 8 Your Oxytocin Past
Day 9 Your Serotonin Past
Day 10 Your Cortisol Past
Day 11 Your Dopamine Future
Day 12 Your Oxytocin Future
Day 13 Your Serotonin Future
Day 14 Design Your Sustainable Path


What is the Inner Mammal Institute?
It’s not really about animals.It’s not about happiness as your verbal brain defines it.It’s about the happy brain chemicals we’ve inherited from earlier dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin. These chemicals are designed to do a job, not to flow all the time for no reason. When you know how the happy chemicals work in animals, you can find healthy ways to stimulate yours. You can train your mammal brain and your verbal brain to work together. Nothing is wrong with you! Nothing is wrong with us! We’re mammals. Get the whole story at innermammalinstitute.org
This book is not intended as medical treatment. Nothing in this book is intended to support breaking the law. We all benefit from the rule of law.

"Loretta brings so much expert insight and wise advice - she provided a perfect combination of scientific discoveries, personal stories and practical actions for our community" ~ Dr Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness

Genres: Self Help

180 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2021

About the author

Loretta is the author of Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Endorphin Levels. She's Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. Dr. Breuning's many books, videos and podcasts explain the brain chemistry we've inherited from earlier mammals. She shows that our "happy chemicals" are not designed to be on all the time. They evolved to do specific jobs, so we always have to do more to get more. Dr. Breuning's work explains the natural way to enhance our power over these chemicals. Her nine books have been translated into sixteen languages. Before teaching, Loretta worked for the United Nations in Africa. Today, she gives zoo tours on animals behavior, after serving as a Docent at the Oakland Zoo. She is a graduate of Cornell University and Tufts. The Inner Mammal Institute offers videos, podcasts, books, blogs, multimedia, a training program, and a free five-day happy-chemical jumpstart. Details are available at InnerMammalInstitute.org.

Reviews

[Dimitar Trifonov]

Обобщена версия на другата й книга "Habits of a Happy Brain". Инфото ми вече беше познато, но все още главата ми експлодира, когато се замисля за всичките неща, които авторката споделя... Освен това пише за сложни теми като невронаука и еволюционна психология по много прост и разбираем начин, а затова книгата се чете много лесно и ми харесва много. 😎

Топ идеи:
- 4 основни хормона/химикала/невротрансмитера (не знам какъв е най-точният научен термин), които отговарят за това да се чувстваме добре -> ДОПАМИН, ЕНДОРФИН, ОКСИТОЦИН, СЕРОТОНИН.
- Не можеш винаги да се чувстваш супер добре, но можеш да се научиш да управляваш нивата на тези хормони, за да не попадаш в тежки състояния като депресия.
- Повече допамин = поставяй си цели и ги постигай
- Повече ендорфин = намери нешата, които те караят да се смееш, и се връщай към тях отново и отново
- Повече окситоцин = общувай редовно с хора и заформяй връзки с тях
- Повече серотонин = научи се да се гордееш с всяка твоя победа (дори и да е малка)

Знам, че така обобщено изглежда супер очевидно и нищо кой знае колко революционно /интересно, но в самата книга има много тънкости, които ще ти помогнат да разбереш това как работи мозъкът ти и защо тези неща са важни за теб.

[John Crippen]

This new workbook by Loretta Breuning is great! If it's the first thing you've read by her, you'll definitely want to also read her Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, Endorphin Levels. I've been enjoying her writing since 2015 and this short volume gave me some great ideas and makes me want to re-read her other books. She is not a medical doctor, but she is very good at explaining things. Her focus is on using our understanding of how the brain works to lead to a better life. She may need to sync up with Lisa Feldman Barrett on some of the newer findings in brain development, but the basic information she provides is amazingly helpful.

[Kevin Collins]

14 Days to Sustainable Happiness is one of my favorite books describing in simple terms how to apply neuroscientific findings to significantly improve the quality of one's life.

In under 200 pages, Lorretta Breuning has simplified and distilled for us all, her observations about how our normal senses, shared by all mammals, trigger our brain's neurotransmitters to generate emotional sensations that drive behaviors to ensure survival for all mammals, including earlier humans.

Breuning explains how the modern human cortex adds erroneous meaning to the emotional sensations generated by those very same neurotransmitters, resulting in unnecessary misinterpretations of one's status, quality of life, and resulting happiness or lack thereof.

This workbook explains our modern human brain's automatic misinterpretations of daily life and provides simple instructions for anyone to learn, one day at a time, how each neurotransmitter is driving our emotions and resultant behavior. And more importantly, how we can correctly recognize our mammal survival triggers, irrationally causing so many unhappy sensations and counter those with accurate interpretations of our reality, consciously focusing our attention on our actual survival fitness, delighting our mammal mind, reducing our fearful and angry neurotransmitter, Cortisol, and triggering our happy neurotransmitters; Oxytocin, Dopamine, and Serotonin.

Every modern day human should use this workbook to learn how this simple, erroneous functioning of the modern human brain causes each of us so much illogical and unnecessary fear, anger, and stress and then apply the simple steps within the book to accurately live our daily lives in ways that minimize erroneous mammal survival-based sensations and maximize our brain's awareness and celebration of all that is good in our lives, things our old mammal brain is wired to downplay or ignore altogether.

[Jay Best]

I think I have the wrong book, or it has been renamed?
I read the Summary of Meet your Happiness Chemicals via Quick Read.


Clearly and simply articulates how the happiness hormones work, and what steps to take and setup in your life so that you feel happy.

It stuns me that this didn't occur to me before, to literally just setup a life full of happiness chemicals.

* Read the free 15 page books summary by Quick Book, via Google Play Books. Has audio also.

[Barbara]

All her books are excellent. This one is the most succinct. FYI, the Kindle version is not actually a workbook.
evolutionary psychology - it explains EVERYTHING