The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell

Broadly, magical thinking describes the belief that one's internal thoughts can affect external events. Mythologizing the world as an attempt to "make sense" of it is a unique and curious human habit.

If you have ever felt like the world is filled with people who are actively deluding themselves into believing whatever they want ... this latest book from Wordslut author and linguist Amanda Montell offers some insight on why that seems to happen so often today and what any of us might do to understand an actively magical thinker or avoid becoming one ourselves. The antidote may start with her non-obvious recommendation to embrace our commonness and be willing to wonder indefinitely without always seeking an answer:

I think what I really want is to treat life less like a war. Wouldn't we have less imposter syndrome and fewer actual imposters if we just lowered our standards a bit? Modern productivity dogma encourages us to act fast and milk our exceptionalism for all it's worth. Under that kind of pressure, perhaps the truest rebellion is to embrace our ordinariness. In everyday life, if we could not only tolerate the discomfort but wholeheartedly embrace our own lack of expertise, then we might have a far better chance of showing others the same grace.

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.