Top Highlights

• All too often, a mind’s chief disability is fear—and fear’s cousin shame can also make a menacing, damaging appearance.
• The strength-based model, which this book explains in detail, emphasizes first and foremost the search for what is good and strong and healthy in a person, then secondarily what is in need of remediation. First, look for strengths and talents, or potential strengths and talents. Then, and only then, take stock of what is amiss.
• By mastery, I do not mean that a person becomes the best at something, just that he experiences the wonderful feeling of making progress, rather than feeling constant frustration. By tenderly cultivating those tendrils and buds of an interest or talent, a person can blossom and achieve mastery. Then he is on the way to a better life.
• Our emphasis on promoting certain life experiences—mastery, interpersonal closeness or connection, practice and discipline, play, physical exercise, imaginative engagement with life, the development of a creative outlet, and others—separates what we recommend from the usual intervention that is offered, which is, sad to say, to diagnose and medicat...
• While medication remains a safe and effective component of the treatment of ADD, the search continues for safe and reliable alternatives. The best of these by far ought not to be considered an “alternative” at all: the identification and systematic promotion of talents and strengths. Also crucial are exercise, diet, sleep, meditation or prayer, coa...