Book Review SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient
Thank you Penguin for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of ‘SuperBetter’ by Jane McGonigal
SuperBetter is a self-help book with it’s gamification approach. Super Better encourages change with every turn of the page. Using the seven ways we think and act when we play games, McGonigal devised a game called Superbetter. The book is filled with success stories, and quests to challenge the reader. Unlike what you might think, a power up might be something like connecting with a friend, and a bad guy to beat might be eating a healthy snack or avoiding a negative mindset. Jane McGonigal outlines a surefire way to gain mental, emotional, physical, and social resilience. The fact is: “game play supercharges self-efficacy, work ethic, and determination.”
7 rules of the game: Challenge yourself, Collect and activate power-ups, Find and battle the bad guys, Seek out and complete quests, Recruit your allies, Adopt a secret identity, and Go for an epic win.
McGonigal is the “first person in the world to earn a Ph.D. studying the psychological strengths of gamers and how those strengths can translate to real-world problem solving.” The end of the book features three quests and some of the scientific papers behind the work. There is also a pretty comprehensive list of the work behind the theory’s.
I recommend this book for any that wants to find another approach to stress, challenge, and pain.
In 2009, internationally renowned game designer Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion. Unable to think clearly or work or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a resilience-building game. What started as a simple motivational exercise quickly became a set of rules for “post-traumatic growth” that she shared on her blog. These rules led to a digital game and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. Today nearly half a million people have played SuperBetter to get stronger, happier, and healthier.But the life-changing ideas behind SuperBetter are much bigger than just one game. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the ways all games—including videogames, sports, and puzzles—change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting a more “gameful” mind-set. Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to real-world goals.Drawing on hundreds of studies, McGonigal shows that getting superbetter is as simple as tapping into the three core psychological strengths that games help you build:• Your ability to control your attention, and therefore your thoughts and feelings
• Your power to turn anyone into a potential ally, and to strengthen your existing relationships
• Your natural capacity to motivate yourself and super-charge your heroic qualities, like willpower, compassion, and determination
SuperBetter contains nearly 100 playful challenges anyone can undertake in order to build these gameful strengths. It includes stories and data from people who have used the SuperBetter method to get stronger in the face of illness, injury, and other major setbacks, as well as to achieve goals like losing weight, running a marathon, and finding a new job.
As inspiring as it is down to earth, and grounded in rigorous research, SuperBetter is a proven game plan for a better life. You’ll never say that something is “just a game” again. Purchase SuperBetter on Amazon.com
