The Upside of Your Dark Side

Why Being Your Whole Self - Not Just Your "Good" Self - Drives Success and Fulfillment

By: Todd Kashdan, Robert Biswas-Diener

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

In The Upside of Your Dark Side, two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way. Sometimes, they can even hold us back. Emotions like anger, anxiety, or doubt might be uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are also incredibly useful.

For instance:

• Anger fuels creativity
• Guilt sparks improvement
• Self-doubt enhances performance
• Selfishness increases courage
• Mindlessness leads to better decisions

The key lies in what the authors call "emotional agility," the ability to access our full range of emotions - not just the "good" ones - in order to respond most effectively to whatever situation we might encounter. Drawing on years of scientific research and a wide array of real-life examples including sports, the military, parenting, education, romance, business, and more, The Upside of Your Dark Side is a refreshing reality check that shows us how we can truly maximize our potential.

©2014 Todd B. Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company

Much Better Than I Expected!

One of the things the author talks about is on having agility: social agility (being able to handle social situations as they come), mental agility, and emotional agility (being able to handle negative and positive emotions as they come).

He also talks a lot about something called "comfort addiction" and why this is bad. The more materialistic items we have the less happy we are. There is no feeling of achievement or accomplishment when getting something we want with little to no required effort.

According to the author's, we should spend 33% of our time facing adversity and dealing with and endure pain. Overall he talks about having willpower and why it's important to do the things you don't like to do.

He gives some great tips on how to do that but you'll have to read the book to find that out yourself. There's a lot more to it than that and I highly recommend you check it out.

Hope this helped. Happy Reading and Cheers!

Live Your Best Life, No Matter What

This book was an excellent read! It was so helpful in guiding me to realize the importance of my journey through life. Certainly, it can help anyone learn the value of going through "good"and "bad" moments in life.

Great concepts for people

Interesting concepts and perspective regarding wholeness and harnessing your emotions. However I will say a lot of it was not new information for someone who works in health care. Overall a very good book and I'm happy I read it.

Not What You Might Expect

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It went a different direction than I was anticipating and it was enlightening. This will definitely be one of those books that I listen to again every so often, not just for the reminders, but for motivation too.

love love love

It's nice to know that been my Good and Bad self makes me a Beter person.

Valid points

Jeff made some good points in this book. Gave I 3 stars because I felt some of it was a bit repetitive and the message could have been made more succinctly. Regardless, definitely with the read or "listen".

good

narration was good, interesting prespective; not sure I'd re-listen though. sometimes struggles to pay attention & would zone out while listening to this one...

All New Agers must read for Cognitive Dissonance.

This is a refreshing dose of reality for those that overvalue comfort positivity and happiness. The results are in and it seems much better to be whole than happy. Embracing all emotions and accepting their gifts allows us to make better decisions, be better people and generally get more out of life

Big Mindfulness fan

I am interested in Mindfulness and liked his book. It felt like the circle was completed.

The narrator did not do the subject justice. To me he came across sing song and a little silly.

Still a good book for seekers, and worth a credit.

A topic of compelling interest killed by the narrator.

This book attempts to address a behavioral science topic of real interest. What to do with bad feelings. How should we handle our negative emotional states, our “down side”. I was really into this topic. I really want to know how to handle my “down side”. But I just can’t handle any more narrative from Jeff Cummings. Sorry, I just do not get where he is coming from!

How can people manage negative feelings and moods like anger, regret, embarrassment and resentment. The book proposes a different perspective on negative feelings. They present various types of research, experiments and studies and then go on to draw conclusions and observations on findings associated with the supporting studies. The conclusions drawn from the data are too often extremely subjective and do not indicate causality, or even any direct link to what their data supposedly “showed”. That’s OK because The psych experiments are interesting and the conclusions are opinions ...that’s fine! I also agree with the authors about Teddy Roosevelt, he was an amazing and very unique man who used his best qualities incredibly well and to the benefit of our nation.

The biggest problem with this book is the narrative. I just can’t handle his style. I’m sorry it’s nothing personal but he has a disingenuous, conjured and contrived emotional style that is very distracting. It just bugs!

The narrator makes it hard to hear what the authors are trying to say. I dreaded trying to get through another book which I found subject matter very compelling but also difficult because of narrator.