CONNECTION

Positive psychology researcher Klussman offers workarounds for modern ennui in this debut motivational guide.

Between smartphones, instant messaging, and social media, many people in today’s society are more connected than ever before. Why, then, do many of us feel so alone? “Our modern culture encourages us to be disconnected from our inner truth at every turn and instead encourages us to be enchanted by shallow pursuits,” asserts Klussman in her introduction. She’s developed a theory of well-being to help others try to get around these isolating tendencies, including one inspired by her work with terminally ill patients who, she notes, “were usually not suffering much emotionally—they were in a heightened state of awareness, in touch with the deepest parts of themselves, and living those truths every day.” In this book, the author lays out her “connection theory,” which seeks to counter the rises of anxiety and depression in the digital age. By identifying the causes of one’s unhappiness, she argues, one can work to become more connected to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our communities, and to the world. She lays out the many different forms of connection, most of which involve a reorientation toward the self and one’s beliefs, emotions, and physicality. Klussman’s prose is soothing and often personal, illustrating her arguments with examples from her own life, as when she discusses returning to figure skating as a form of physical activity despite her fears she was too old for the sport: “I pushed past the voices and signed up for weekly group lessons at a nearby rink. I was nervous at first, but soon the sensation of gliding and moving across the ice had me giddy and feeling like a kid again.” The author’s background is in clinical psychology, and her work marries the heft of academic research with more zeitgeist-oriented notions of self-care and motivational culture. Her advice ends up being similar to what one can find in many other self-help books, but the ideas behind it are particularly insightful and well articulated.

A rigorous and highly accessible work on forging better connections within oneself and with others.