🪄 How to make good things happen: know your brain, enhance your life by Marian Rojas Estape - book notes

October 27, 2024 • 3 min read

Goodreads: Cómo hacer que te pasen cosas buenas: Entiende tu cerebro, gestiona tus emociones, mejora tu vida

*I’ve read this book in Spanish.

⛰ What It’s About

This book gives easy tools to help you understand your brain, manage your feelings, and make your life better. Marian Rojas Estapé is a psychiatrist and author who specializes in emotional well-being and mental health, offering insights based on neuroscience and psychology.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• “Hay que dejarse llevar, observar e intervenir si surge una buena oportunidad.”

  Translation: “Embrace the moment, observe, and take action when a good opportunity presents itself.”

• “Nadie va a venir a buscarte a casa para proponeros el proyecto de nuestra vida. Hay que ir a su encuentro.”

  Translation: “No one is going to come knocking on your door with the opportunity of a lifetime. You need to seek it out yourself.”

• “Frena para ver, observar y disfrutar.”

  Translation: Take a moment to pause, observe, and enjoy.

🧠 Thoughts

While I can’t say this book was a standout for me, it did offer a few insightful ideas that I’d like to bring into my daily life. Though the writing and examples didn’t fully resonate, there were some concepts worth reflecting on.

My three main takeaways are about:

• 🧡 the impact of kindness
• 😴 the necessity and importance of sleep
• 💭 Self-reflection and ideas to improve relationships

If we’d all be more aware of these things, I think our day-to-day interactions could be so much better. Would you agree?

🧡 The importance of being kind and friendly

I’ve shared before that my goal is to be kinder—not just kind, but to take it a step further. This hasn’t been easy. At times, I’ve struggled with patience or convinced myself that I didn’t have the time to go the extra mile.

Reading about kindness in Spanish, where it’s called amabilidad — a word that sounds similar in Romanian—helped me understand its significance better. Knowing its positive impact on lowering my stress levels gave me a fresh perspective. It’s not just the person receiving kindness who benefits I do too.

“Kindness generates endorphins — the hormone that reduces stress and anxiety — and increases oxytocin — the hormone of love and trust.”

😴 The necessity and importance of sleep

We often hear about the importance of sleep from people like Arianna Huffington or books like Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep. After personally experimenting with sleep—once even following a doctor’s order to be in bed by 10 PM for four weeks—I can confidently say I function better when well rested. I’m more focused, creative, less irritable, and make better decisions. But I keep forgetting these facts.

Marian Rojas Estapé highlights that:

• “Lack of sleep makes us more vulnerable to fears.”
• “When rest is lacking, the mind does not function normally.”

It’s hard to accept, but her insights remind me that late-night chats or watching YouTube often come at the cost. This has prompted me to prioritize sleep, once again. I finally downloaded an app called Rise Science which helps track my sleep debt, something I didn’t get from my Garmin watch. While the app isn’t perfect, it’s helping me confront my sleep needs.

🥱 Sleep Hygiene

“Be careful with emotional stimuli before sleeping (a conversation that leaves you unsettled, a dinner that ends in conflict, a heated argument with your partner…).”

I know this all to well, don’t you? Instead of falling asleep after watching a movie, my mind becomes more awake than ever. I might read a technical book or have a conversation that annoys me which makes it impossible to disconnect while in bed. I need to win that argument, don’t I? That’s why I started reading fiction before bed and I try to not engage in intense conversation neither offline or online before bed. It works like a charm!

💭 Relationships

What do you do for others? This question made me reflect, and I want to keep it in mind. It doesn’t mean I won’t prioritize my own needs. As they say, you have to put your own oxygen mask first before helping others.

How can we develop good relationships with others

• Show interest in people.
• ❗Make an effort to remember important details.
• Get to know them better—understand their lives, interests, and professions.
• Avoid judging.
• Help if you can.
• Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable in front of others or to ask for help.
• Speak well about others; avoid criticism.
• Remember that to receive, you must first give and take care of yourself as well.

What I Liked About It

Marian Rojas Estapé’s “How to Make Good Things Happen” is an easy read with helpful insights from neuroscience and psychology. I liked how the book gives simple, practical tips to be more self-aware, kind, and healthy.

What I Didn’t Like About It

I found that the writing style and some of the examples didn’t really resonate with me. They felt a bit off, and that made it harder for me to connect with the ideas.

How the Book Changed Me

This book made me realize how important kindness is and how it affects both me and others. When I rush and don’t take the time to be nice to someone, it impacts both the person on the receiving end and also myself. I also learned that if I get enough sleep, I might not feel so rushed, unfocused and irritable. I need to prioritize sleep because it shouldn’t be postponed! Lastly, relationships are more important than work or personal growth, and I want to do better in this area.

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