How to Know Your Self

By J. Eric Oliver

Deal Ends: Mon 8th June

"Self-help you can use." —The Wall Street Journal"Captures the tone of the charismatic professor." —Kirkus ReviewsA thinking person's guide to self-awareness, How to Know Your Self also shows how you can use self-knowledge to live a happier life.Most of us live with a low-grade sense that something's off. A background hum of anxiety, regret, or dissatisfaction we can't quite name. We try positive thinking, adjusting our habits, the occasional meditation app. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, we rarely understand why.J. Eric Oliver, a University of Chicago professor who has taught a legendary course on the self for twenty years, argues that we can't fix what we don't understand. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology, and ancient philosophy, he maps the self as a layered system: each layer (biological, animal, linguistic, psychological) both defines us as humans and traps us in ways that undermine our happiness. Understanding this paradox is the first step in self-improvement.The goal of How to Know Your Self isn't self-knowledge for its own sake. It offers something more practical: better mental well-being, starting from a place of genuine understanding. The result is personal development grounded in how the mind actually works, not in wishful thinking.What you'll find inside:Why anxiety, regret, and self-defeating patterns are so hard to shake, and what's actually driving them.What meditation, yoga, therapy, and psychedelics actually do, and why some things work better than others for different people.How consciousness, language, and ego shape our psychology in ways we rarely see clearly.How to build the courage to stop running from discomfort and start learning from it.Why self-optimization is worth showing up for every day.How to Know Your Self isn't a book that promises to change your life in seven steps. It’s for readers who've tried those books and want to understand what they were actually doing. Review "A frank and seductive exploration of what it means to be you. Oliver’s tone is deceptively light, but his richly documented account of multiple influences on the self is seriously thought-provoking. " ― Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution"Over the course of his career, J. Eric Oliver has explored a host of questions of belief and identity . . . His new book reckons with another element of better understanding ourselves ― namely, the process by which we construct our ideas of a self and where that can lead us. Oliver drew on his decades of teaching at the University of Chicago to assemble this book, and it’s an intriguing addition to the literature of our inner lives." ― Tobias Carroll, InsideHook"[H]ow can the rest of us ever throw off the self-defeating thoughts, regrets and obsessions that replay themselves endlessly in our minds? J. Eric Oliver’s How to Know Your Self: The Art & Science of Discovering Who You Really Are offers some hope. . . [A] welcome alternative to much contemporary self-help literature . . . .How to Know Your Self is an enjoyable book that is full of wry wit." ― Andrew Stark, Wall Street Journal"This freewheeling tour of human history and psychic life…captures the tone of the charismatic professor. A restorative guide to living a life of self-awareness, acceptance, and taking responsibility for our own fulfillment." ― Kirkus Reviews"How to Know Your Self is a refreshingly engaging and honest attempt to grapple with the elusiveness of self-knowledge. Avoiding easy answers and soothing bromides, Oliver brings together insights from many fields to move us closer to the knowledge we both crave and studiously avoid." ― Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us"Finally, an owner’s manual for the one thing we use the most: ourselves! From subatomic particles to supernatural experiences, Oliver takes us on a tour of what it means to be a person that is both impressively deep and wide-ranging. A tour de force full of interesting facts and findings that your self will be happy to have read and won’t forget." ― Nicholas Epley, author of Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want About the Author J. Eric Oliver is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and host of the Knowing with Eric Oliver podcast. He has authored five books on subjects ranging from the politics of obesity to magical thinking in American life. He lives in Chicago.