For some time now, self-help books, and more specifically those that serve to improve your mental health and increase your self-esteem, have been on the rise. One of them is the power of words, a book in which they tell us that you learn how to change your brain (and your life), by talking.
Published in 2022, it remains one of the most sought-after books in stores, and no wonder. But what is the book about? Who wrote it? All of that is what we are going to talk to you about below.
Who wrote The Power of Words
The first thing you should know about the author is that this is not his first book. In fact, he already had a worldwide success with a previous one, The Secret Life of the Mind, and now he has repeated it again with The Power of Words.
Mariano Sigman, the author of the books, is a physicist and neuroscientist. He is quite curious, so much so that he asks questions about the human condition and all of this has led him to be a great researcher in various disciplines such as computing, physics, mathematics, anthropology, music, medicine, biology, art... And, of course, neuroscience.
What is the power of words about?
One of the keys to The Power of Words is that it does not remain just a reading book. It makes you think and reflect, yes, but also put into practice what is told in the book through exercises that help you better assimilate what the author is explaining to you.
Although he does so with his own experience, anecdotes and examples, many times you will feel identified and it will help you see several different points of view.
Here is the synopsis:
«Talk to yourself well. Manage your emotions and improve your life through the power of words.
Learn from Mariano Sigman, one of the most prominent neuroscientists in the world, how conversation is the most extraordinary factory of ideas for your personal development.
Our mind is much more malleable than we think. Although it may seem surprising to us, we retain the same ability to learn throughout our lives that we had when we were children. What we do lose over time is the need and motivation to learn, so we build sentences about what we cannot be: the one who is convinced that mathematics is not his thing, the one who feels that he was not born. for music, the one who believes she can't handle her anger and the one who can't overcome her fears. Demolishing these beliefs is the starting point to improve anything, at any time in life.
Here's the good news: Ideas and feelings, even those that are deeply ingrained, can be changed. The bad news is that to transform them it is not enough to propose it. Just as we conclude at lightning speed whether a person seems trustworthy, intelligent, or funny, our judgments about ourselves are hasty and imprecise. That is the habit we have to learn: talking to ourselves.
Luckily, the bad news is not so bad. We have a simple and powerful tool: good conversations. Mixing neuroscience, life stories and a lot of humor, this book explains how and why these good conversations improve decision making, ideas, memory and emotional life and, thus, can change your life.
What other books has Mariano Sigman written?
If you have already read The Power of Words and want to know other books by this author, know that he does not have many. In fact, He has two more books, but only one of them managed to catapult him to fame.
The brief period between the chicken and the egg
This was his first book, a series of science chronicles. However, It is not easy to get because apparently it is no longer for sale.
The only thing you could try is to look for it in second-hand stores and bookstores.
The secret life of the mind
This book was the first that made Sigman known. It's about a book that covers 20 years of neuroscience and places that, for the author, are fascinating and worth remembering, like the minds of babies, education, memory...
Of this we can leave you the synopsis:
“The secret life of the mind is a mirror journey that travels through the brain and thought: it is about discovering our mind to understand ourselves even in the smallest corners that make up who we are, how we forge ideas in the first days of life, how we shape the decisions that constitute us, how we dream and how we imagine, why we feel certain emotions towards others, how others influence us, and how the brain transforms and, with it, who we are.
The journey proposed in The Secret Life of the Mind is divided into the following five chapters:
1º- A trip to the country of childhood. Discover the intuitions and seeds of thought that leave lasting traces in our way of reasoning and deciding.
2º- A journey through the length and breadth of human decisions. Explore what defines the fine and blurry line of what we are willing to do and what we are not, the decisions that constitute us, or what predisposes a person to become corrupt.
3º- A journey to the most mysterious aspect of thought and the human brain: consciousness. In an unprecedented encounter between Freud and avant-garde neuroscience, the most mysterious questions with the most evasive answers of our own thinking appear. What is it and how does the unconscious govern what we are?
4th and 5th – Answers to questions about how the brain learns in the most common situations, from everyday life to education. Is it true that learning a new language is much more difficult for an adult than for a child? Why is it easy for some to learn music and for others it is so difficult? Why do we all learn to speak naturally and yet almost all of us struggle with mathematics? Why are some learning so simple and others so difficult?”
How many pages does The Power of Words have?
If you are wondering about the number of pages this book has, we will tell you right away that it is average of all books. That is, it has more than 300 pages. Specifically, and In the edition that has been released, there are 352 pages.
If the edition changes, there will most likely be more or fewer pages. For example, if they release the paperback version as happened in the author's previous book.
Now, even though you may think there are too many pages, the author is quite entertaining when writing and does not bore you, so you end up reading each one quickly and easily.
Have you read The Power of Words? What is your opinion about the book? Leave it in the comments to help other people choose, or not, this book.