Ethan Kross

[4.25] One yardstick I often use to gauge the quality of self-help/personal growth books involves tallying how many notes I made during my reading. “Shift" scores high marks using this evaluation tool. I made more than two dozen notations, including a few appropriate strategies I’ll likely introduce in my college-level public speaking courses to help students cope with pre-speech anxieties.

Two key premises are highlighted early in this fact-packed book. First, managing our emotional show more lives is one of the greatest challenges the human species faces. Second, we do have mastery of our own emotions if we use specific techniques as regulation tools.

These tools are already inside us, including harnessing the power of sensation, being flexible with our attention and changing our perspectives. The author explores each of these tactics in a book that is remarkably well organized and easy to follow.

Kross emphasizes that “there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to regulate emotions.” He encourages readers to experiment with different strategies to determine what will work most effectively.

True, some tools do not fall into the “rocket science” category (example: if you receive an upsetting email, use incubation time to calm down before responding). But other tactics are enlightening. For example, Kross urges readers to scrutinize their five senses and gauge which sense is most powerful when it comes to regulating emotions. Like many other people, sound is a powerful “sensory shifter” for me. The author suggests creating a series of music playlists that are tailored to heightening or lessening certain emotions – and then having these playlists at our fingertips.
Employ “place-shifting.” Our physical environment has a direct effect on emotions. One common example used by psychologists involves the impact green space our mental outlook. Hence, use special places to evoke feelings of contentment, well-being and meaning. And place-shifting doesn’t necessarily mean jumping in a car and trekking 60 miles to a place of natural beauty. The author encourages us to carefully examine existing spaces and “curate" these spots to help foster positive emotions. This tip nudged me to clean up clutter in my home study to promote a calmer and more orderly mental mindset.

One additional takeaway (although there are others) involves harnessing the power of “mental time travel.” Reflect on the past or the future to help put challenging moments into perspective. One example is exemplified in the adage: “this too shall pass.”
The author has zeroed in on a timely topic. Data indicates that 40% of adolescents do not think they can handle their emotions. “If they don’t believe they can handle their emotions, will they even try?“ Kross asks.

The digital age has exasperated the problem. The book examines “digital social comparison," a phenomenon some experts have called “Facebook envy.” Studies have shown that we are prone to comparing ourselves with people who outperform us in some ways. That’s OK, but try to harness that comparison into an emotion that inspires you to succeed as opposed to feeling envy or resentment. In other words, turn this tendency into an asset rather than a liability.

Kross notes that school leaders in some regions are collaborating with scientists in to develop emotion regulation lessons for curricula. Given the pivotal roles emotions play in our well-being, we all should be asking a question that Kross has heard many times: “Why wasn’t I taught this in school?” show less

Identify, compartmentalize, and manage. That's the key to working with your own emotions, as put forth by Ethan Kross in this insightful, helpful book. "Shift" came to me at a time when I needed to do some radical self-reflection, which involved looking deep into the sticky tar of my emotions. I won't say I came out of "Shift" being able to skillfully shift my focus between emotions as the title requests I do, but I will say the book gave me a lot of food for thought and some very unique show more tools to help me begin to make sense of the tar-soup of emotions. "Shift" is very well-written at the sentence level as well: Kross can spin a good story to illustrate his points, and he does so with verve and occasional wit. show less

This book makes me think of the Inside Out movies (not to over-simplify it), in the context that all emotions, good and bad, are valid and that they are an internal guidance system.

Excellent, well-researched book by a university professor/psychologist and director of Emotion & Self Control Laboratory, illustrating that cognition is tied to emotion rather than the two working as opposites. Overall, the science of emotions has many, many varied opinions on how emotions work, and the book show more describes how emotions can work for you as well as the negative side of persisting emotional dysregulation.

Emotions are pieces of information, not something to be seen as good or bad, and even negative emotions can help you process your thoughts. Shift means being able to move from one emotional state to the other, and the book shows different techniques for doing so. It was also helpful to have many examples of how everyone has a different style of managing their emotions, including the difference in intensity of emotions, duration, and why some emotions are stickier than others.

I also appreciated the captivating storytelling bits - this read flew by, which isn’t always the case for more science-based books. I think everyone can benefit from this book, as it helps you become more conscious of your emotions and what they are trying to tell you.

Thank you to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are independently my own. show less

The concepts and techniques described in this book about learning to recognize, use, and shift your emotional state when it is not serving you were interesting and may be very useful. The author has a quick, explanatory, almost breezy style of writing that makes for easy reading. But I didn't think the frequent illustrative anecdotes were all that helpful, or usually even all that apropos—they seemed to serve just to lengthen the book and seemed like filler that I wished I could skip.