Become Who You Are: A New Theory of Self-Esteem, Human Greatness, and the Opposite of Depression

From the author of the international bestseller Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture comes an ambitious and counterintuitive guide to the good life.

After spending over a decade researching the psychology and philosophy of well-being, and even writing his first book on the topic, it took a struggle with his own mental health for Ryan A Bush to integrate the data he had studied to form a groundbreaking new psychological theory. Become Who You Are argues that the peak form of human happiness is determined, not by pleasure or pain, loss or gain, but by the admirability we observe in our own behaviors.

"From post-traumatic growth to postpartum depression, the many counterintuitive stories of happiness actually all tell the same tale. Our overall well-being does not correspond to the surface-level events to which we tend to attribute it. But it corresponds perfectly to something else-something going on beneath the surface of our external outcomes."

This philosophy-infused self-development guide takes readers on a kaleidoscopic journey through Stoic philosophy and neuropsychology-Nietzschean virtue ethics and evolutionary psychology-spiritual wisdom and psychotherapy. It offers a moving account of Ryan's own descent into depression, his climb back to flourishing, and the ambitious new framework this journey led him to that we can use to decode and direct our lives.

"The good life is not the sum of simple pleasure or the fruit of success. Its essence is not comfort, struggle, purpose, or even love. You don't need meaning. You need virtue."

Become Who You Are: A New Theory of Self-Esteem, Human Greatness, and the Opposite of Depression is Bush's best, most rigorous, and most personal work to date. The theory it presents will have radical implications for our understanding of the mind and countless individual lives. And it will provide readers with an invaluable guide for reaching the peaks of flourishing and a powerful call to personal greatness.

"Become Who You Are is an impressive blend of research and imagination that resonated with me and left me thinking well after I finished reading. The approach put forward in this book is promising, with the potential to help stimulate people to do the work to overcome their mental health struggles. Reading the book could help catalyze a person's search for values, the courage to pursue their highest aspirations, and the climb to reach their ideal self.

- Jonathan Rottenberg PhD, Professor of Psychology and author of The Depths