Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions, Improve Your Health and Fitness, Make More Money and Live Life on Your Terms

by Mike Cernovich

Gorilla Mindset is an entire system, that, when coupled with specific mindset shifts and habits, will change the way you, think, feel and live your life. Gorilla Mindset will improve your health and fitness, your money and career, and help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. In Gorilla Mindset you will learn how to... Join the millions of people who have learned how to start believing in themselves by following the Gorilla Mindset principles today!

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Psychology, Personal Development, Philosophy, Business, Health

178 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2015

Reviews

[Shawn Stone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this on the endorsement of many good reviews, but after connecting the dots, I noticed that a large number of the positive praise came primarily from fellow bloggers familiar to, or affiliated with the author, along with the repeated inducements (pleas) of the author to his blog followers to submit positive reviews.

Whereas a book like “Fuck Feelings” or "The Antidote - by Oliver Burkeman" contains a trove of well written, actionable advice, this is mostly a culmination of recycled ideas and strategies lifted directly from the self-help and pop-psychology archives.

Cernovich tries hard to imitate the pithy sage, when really, this book amounts to little more than an “idea copy and paste” job and is an insult to anyone who’s ever cracked the cover of a Tony Robbins’ book before.

To top it off, it’s really. badly. edited. Laughably so in parts. For a guy that preaches living a life of excellence and healthy living, your credibility is in question Mikey.

Browsing his site, I saw plenty of photos of a silly looking, badly dressed, lispy fat dude. Not exactly a paragon of excellence, let alone someone I would be taking life advice or workout tips from.

In short, this book is fucking toilet paper and a wasted two hour read. Avoid at all costs.

[Henrik Akselsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, I had higher expectations for this. If you never did some serious work on yourself you might benefit from this book, but nothing in this book strikes me as profound or new in any way.

The term "Gorilla mindset" is just a marketing gimmick. A cool name, but has nothing to do with gorilla in any discernible way. A more accurate name would be "Winning mindset" or "Growing mindset".

Half of the book is advice on fitness and making money. You will get much better advice in other books.

One more thing I'd like to add: the constant 'disclaimers' by the author is pretty annoying. The book is loaded with "but again, this is YOUR life, I'm not telling you how to do it...just give it a thought, keep it in mind". It's allowed to have opinions mr.author.

[Maxwell Foley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Writing this a week after Trump has been elected US president, it seems like the rules have fundamentally changed. The idea that the president is a role for a dignified leader who is "intelligent" or "qualified" or "serious" or "not a sexual predator" has been thrown out the window. Perhaps these words don't mean anything other than what a certain elite class wants you to think they mean. Or perhaps we simply live in a Nietzschean world where sheer will to power is in and established systems are out.

Mike Cernovich has spent the past year on Twitter shilling for Trump helping him to get elected, but he is also a self-help guy who seems to promote a mentality that is uncannily similar to that of Trump himself. This mentality, it seems to me, is a powerful one. The fact that Trump was, for a whole year, the most hated, mocked, and defamed person alive, and yet at the end of the year he emerged the most powerful man in the world primarily through unwavering confidence, personal charisma, and "high energy" speeches is a truly staggering feat.

Cernovich's ascent to social media fame over the past year is a little similar but on a smaller level - he constantly publishes offensive and edgy content which earns him near-total censure from the norms of mainstream society, and yet his refusal to bend towards political correctness has rendered this censoring strategy rather ineffective. Cernovich often boasts about being more powerful than the mainstream media in certain regards, rubbing their inability to stifle his message in their face. He also constantly boasts about being happy, free and living well - and it does seem like his life position is somewhat more enviable than that of a standard paid journalist bound to the norms of institutional discourse.

So seeing that this "gorilla mindset" exemplified by Cernovich and Trump might be the way of the future, I decided to read this book.

Anyway, the book completely sucked. The book is just a poorly written and organized collection of standard self-help and pop psychology advice cobbled together from a bunch of other sources. Halfway through it turns into bland health and fitness advice (work out, eat your veggies). Other than the title there was literally no reference to gorillas or any sense of evolutionary psychology / primal reversion at all. There wasn't even any of the cackling politically incorrectness and white male identity politics that characterizes Cernovich's blog. Pretty much nothing in this book was interesting or worthwhile.

Apparently Cernovich has written another book, "MAGA Mindset", more directly about the Trump campaign, so I guess maybe that was more of what I was looking for. But after my experience with this one I won't bother.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like other reviews here, I failed to see anything new or enlightening here outside of a creative title. The book starts off like many self development books trying to sell itself in the first few chapters, by hyping itself up with claims before you get to any real useful information. Finally it starts off, begins with some great info, by stating to write positive affirmations about yourself no matter how wild... Ugh, yeah, that's a new one right?! Then further researching the author, finds he's a Trump supporter which says a bunch right there. Also has a book on juicing, though he has no evidence of his claims. Also appears he was the attorney for that GamersGate scandal discriminating against female game programmers.

[Josip Nad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! (It remainds me on Stuart Wilde's books)

There are six important messages inside:
1. Take care of yourself
2. Discipline yourself
3. Differentiate yourself
4. Choose yourself (instead of waiting to be discovered)
5. Invest in yourself
6. Visualize; be a master!

Final message:
Embrace the suck for the greater good!

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Good advice sprinkled amongst a bunch of feel good bullshit. Could've used an editor. Not really worth a read.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me start off with the cons, of which there was one very very big one. The spelling and grammar throughout the book. I've read a lot of self-published books and very few had as many errors as this one, sometimes several on the same page or at least every few pages. Some sections were up to an acceptable standard and others really looked rushed with silly errors.

Getting past that, the content itself was very good. I can see how this material would really benefit someone just starting out, perhaps I am a bit outside the target market as I've been reading books like this for 10 years now and am now in my 30's.

The book did cover a number of topics in sufficient detail that if all were mastered would really help someone reach high levels of success and happiness. Readers could then find more detail on any particular areas in which they may be interested.

The book covers a number of topics including:
Mindset
Managing your state
Focus
Lifestyle
Health
Posture
Finances
Vision

On the chapter on Focus, I particularly liked the examination of people who are so important and busy that they need to have their phone with them and keep checking it constantly...

Compare this with Richard Branson or Warren Bufffett. If they decide to turn their phones off for a few hours, they do. Are you more important than them?
The more you need to be glued to your phone, the less important you are and just a slave to others.

The author talks about the number of distractions we have in modern life and the importance of focusing on one thing at a time.

[Dennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quote: "An Aspirin a day keeps the doctor away."

[Mohammad · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is misleading.

the book starts by saying your mindset is the way you see things, your self talk, framing of the events, your focus, your mood. Then argues that your body and your mind are connected to each other and uses this argument as a foundation to cover a lot of topics that are not relevant to your mindset: health, exercise, weightlifting, fitness, breathing, taking cold shower, sleep, morning routine, lifestyle, your posture, food, diet, supplements, juice, digestion, ...
I mean what the hell!
Couple of useful tips is mentioned in the chapter on mindset and money.
And that's it.
It is more of a set of general rules for success or growing.
The content is ok but if you want something about mindset, look elsewhere.

Also, it has nothing to do with gorillas or guerrillas!

[Sundar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A practical guide to lifting oneself out of the rut of feeling low and resigned. In extra-ordinarily difficult situations many people tend to think the odds are totally against them, be it health, weather, work or relationships. This book comes around and says that the biggest factor ignored in such situations is oneself and what one can do regardless of external factors. With a simple shift of mindset, one can take control of their own emotions and realise that almost all the seemingly insurmountable external factors do respond to this change in mindset. The initial mindset shift takes a bit of leap of faith. But post that, all the practical recommendations are widely known neuropsychological tricks. The content is just a few blog posts that one can find online and the book is not high quality prose (not sure whether misspelled words are OCR errors in making the Kindle edition), but I'd still recommend getting the book. It's like having an one one one conversation with the author for a few days.

[GD · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok I guess, but very light. An only slightly atypical self help book. I didn't know who the writer was before I read it, but apparently he's a really divisive dude. Some people accuse him of being a rapist bro guy, some people as this Zen-like dude helping people be badass. From reading this book only, he doesn't sound like a rapist bro guy at all. I might check out the podcast though, seems like an interesting guy.

[Jeromy Peacock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books you need to reread every year. This is one of those books.

[Hans · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh, nothing very memorable here. But such a quick read that it wasn't a total loss.

[Gaetano Venezia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Brute Mindset: Generic Pop Psychology for the Apocryphal "Real Man"
Cernovich wrote this book for men who haven’t read many general purpose self-help books, wouldn’t read anything feminine (or at most would denounce it for childish reasons), and are fed up with liberal elites and their PC culture. He self-published the book and it shows. This was one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

An aside about my own bias: I was 99% sure I wouldn’t like this book based on the title, backcover blurbs, and self-published, manly-man aesthetic. I received this as a gift and so felt somewhat obligated to take a look; then I got sucked in by appalled curiosity and ended up speed-reading the whole thing. I actually do think there’s a place for the project of describing and redeeming the changing role of men in contemporary Western society, but it definitely needs a better proponent. So while lack of personal interest and resonance is one reason for the poor rating, another is an objective criticism of poor content and style, as you’ll see below.

Cernovich is self-aware enough to recognize that many will disagree with his system—his truth won’t be your truth (157). He also recognizes that he is prone to black and white thinking. However, he doesn’t use awareness of his biases to make his tone more readable or claims more defensible. He is dogmatically and unwisely unapologetic (157). He doesn't take criticism well.

For example, there’s apparently no such thing as credible accusations of selfishness: “People who accuse you of being selfish are twice as selfish as they claim you are” (77). This is an incredibly stupid defense mechanism that should have never left the playground. It basically means that you can never call people out for acting like selfish assholes and not thinking about how their actions affect others.

This lack of consideration for the other side's perspective and criticisms leads to page after page of attacks against straw-men and cliches, uncharitable and unrealistic claims that “no one tells you the truth” about said cliches (61), and answers via his watered-down collage of half-truths gleaned from his own experience and selective use of pop psych:
• He acts as if personal responsibility “goes against what we’ve all been taught” (9). I grew up in rural America where personal responsibility is a central tenet, so this claim makes no sense to me.
• He claims “no other ’self-help’ book has been targeted towards men like you” (16)
• “Somewhere along the way we were taught that money is evil” (141). Who actually says this other than fringe fundamentalist preachers? More to the damning point, this claim go against Cernovich's own condemnation of consumerist culture, which has taught us to find meaning in material things (9)?

I have no patience for this alt-right, reactionary-conservative, snowflake-victim mindset. They like to act as if everyone outside of their team is disingenuous and that liberal elites, corporations, and big Gov have completely obliterated all semblance of traditional social roles and values, all while commanding millions of followers and winning elections at the highest levels of government. They support the free market, free speech, and avarice up and until powerful actors in the market do things they dislike. See Roger Scruton, Robby P. George, or Andrew Sullivan for principled, defensible conservatism.

Even outside of value debates, Cernovich’s arguments are poor: Cernovich harps on other books and Wikipedia definitions for not sufficiently explaining concepts, but he does this same thing throughout Gorilla Mindset. Most egregiously, there’s only a half-page explanation of what the ‘gorilla' stands for in “gorilla mindset” (14). The explanation mainly regurgitates generic concern with aligning and body and mind. There’s no real connection to gorillas, except that they are great apes like us. But of course, Bonobos, that loving, feminine, matriarchal species is also among the great apes. Along with Chimpanzees, they are the closest living relatives to us, ahead of gorillas. And of course gorillas and other apes have no significant precognitive control, so there’s basically no analogous support for the use of gorillas in the book’s talk of mindfulness, self-talk, communication strategies, etc. As if that wasn’t enough, Cernovich goes off the deep end by saying that “the third eye in the gorilla recognizes we are great apes who seek enlightenment” (14). Wtf?

He has the gall to prescribe “a more active approach. . . to become fully mindful” instead of the well-founded meditation practices of Buddhist masters and researcher psychologists which he incorrectly describes as only “encourag[ing] you stop thought” (44, sic). Many forms of meditation foster certain kinds of thoughts or are framed in terms of allowing thoughts, but not attaching to them.

His criticism of Wikipedia is also unfounded. Definitions are meant to sum up an idea, Cernovich doesn’t offer anything more concise than these definitions and his exposition is more idiosyncratic and jumbled that the corresponding Wikipedia articles.

While Cernovich is mostly regurgitating standard advice found throughout pop psychology and self help books, he at least recognizes this fact and makes occasional references to research (the rest of the time he just says things like “countless studies have proven [x]” without any references (80)).

But even for the existing references, he improperly appeals to authority and shows his misunderstanding of the research. For example, he says Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow is about “going with the flow of life, rather than against it.” But if anything Csikszentmihalyi’s flow is about going against the flow of life which encourages passivity and consumerism in leisure time. Flow is meant to capture the active and difficult engagement with tasks that one finds meaningful where time falls away.

Cernovich's concept for self-talk and exercises for analyzing emotions could be better conveyed through the already established ideas and processes of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (30).

At one point Cernovich seriously recommends a baby aspirin a day without any qualification (besides the boilerplate, ie meaningless, note at the beginning of the chapter to consult a doctor first) (100).

His assessment and “cure” for anxiety and depression discount aspects of chronic pain, heredity, and existing cheap SSRIs because these don’t go along with his narrative (126).

I could go on but I'm sick of thinking about this book. See this overview of Cernovich's career for even more reason to ignore him as a liminal, grifting edgelord of the morass.

[Elf M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Since I'm an avid consumer of self-help books, I decided to finally go and get The Gorilla Mindset by the notorious alt-right talking head Mike Chernovich.

As self-help books go, it's insipid. You won't learn a single new technique in here that you won't get anywhere else. If you've ever read a single generalized self-help book, TGM is a bland repeat of everything you already know. "How to have a morning routine" is a staple of Medium.com. The chapter on Mindfulness apes any number of sloppy Silicon Valley business books— and like all the others ignores the very real Buddhist origins and significant consequences of going full-on with mindfulness, you know, stuff like compassion and patience and honesty and good will— you know, the stuff neither brogrammers or Chernovitch are particularly concerned about. The chapter on diet and exercise, when it's not delving deep into nutritionism, is basically "lift weights progressively heavier as you get stronger" and "eat food, not too much, mostly plants," you know, the stuff your doctor always tells you, all the while recommending juicing and supplements. His whole section on financial investments is what fits on an index card, only without the safety-net clause because, you know, having a backup is for sissies.

In the chapters on getting on with your life, the book focuses on making lists of people you know and getting rid of the ones who aren't helping. The one thing really missing from the book is a riff on Fox Cabane and Carnegie, but I guess making friends isn't nearly as important as learning how to ditch people who aren't profitable and expedient.

The only unusual thing the book does is give men— and this book ain't aimed at women at all— permission to use mantras, which is generally perceived as a feminine thing.

The book is basically too shallow to be useful. If you're going to lift weight seriously, a personal trainer is critical to tell you what you need to know to do it safely. You don't need supplementation unless your doctor says you do. If you get into mindfulness as more than a buzzword, you're going to enter into spiritual traditions that require more than lip service. In general, The Gorilla Mindset falls into the standard zone of "What it has to say that's useful isn't new, and what it has to say that's new isn't useful."

[Josh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Went into this for yucks knowing how much of a moron Cernovich is but this was so much weirder than I expected. Essentially the book's thesis is that when you have an emotion that you don't want to have (anger, sadness, whatever), you are inherently being cucked by your brain which makes you a loser. Cernovich then prescribes a bunch of weird counting and sorting exercises so that you can hide from your emotions with monotonous activities, lest you become a brain-cuck. This isn't even a re-hash of the "master your feelings" type self-help books, it's just straight up telling you to run from your feelings or you're a disgusting beta-male cuck loser. This is on top of the generic "don't slouch, eat with your mouth closed" type physical changes advice that a lot of no effort dunking on the kiddie hoop self help books fill their pages with.

[Ken Josef · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book and quick read. Easy to apply concepts and strategies.

[Jorge Rodighiero · Rating 1 out of 5]

Recycled ideas that you have read a thousand times, badly edited, and full of needless self-aggrandising claims

[Joshua Stephenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid, practical, and immediately useful

As a person who is looking to succeed in life and business, I found Gorilla Mindset to be a helpful book. Mike lays out how being mindful in multiple areas of life can help anyone cultivate a culture of success. I look forward to utilizing the supplemental materials so that I can achieve my goals and bless the people around me.

[Mohammad Asim Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on daily life living tips and mindfulness


A great book on daily life living tips and mindfulness that is being aware of whatever you do and feel. It has very good information on health, productivity and mindset.

[Simon Mee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This low effort book gets a low effort review. I can't imagine anyone checks the box that their review has spoilers for this one. We've all read it before in the words of more talented grifters.

I don't want to go into bat for Jordan Peterson, but 12 Rules For Life at least had a theory of philosophy underpinning it. A weird, semi-mystical, semi-coherent philosophy of struggle, but you could at least argue with it. This book exists to advertise Cernovich's podcast and his other books. It sells his brand and has no reason for existing outside of it. It's boring, poorly edited and repeats as new information things that have been common knowledge for years, such as visualising a basketball in a hoop is a good way to get better a shooting hoops.

One star for the context defying line "The third eye in the gorilla recognizes we are great apes who seek enlightenment"

[René · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically an overview of applied (buddhistic) mindfulness practices, presented in bro-dude-speech.
It's an okay read with not a lot of in-depth discussion of the practices, but might be helpful for those dissuaded by the usual esoteric packaging of mindfulness self-help books.

Stay away from other works by the author, it has gone downhill from here. Fast.

[Daron Yondem · Rating 4 out of 5]

A motivating read. I like the way how humble the author was, but honestly I would appreciate if he could provide some more practical suggestions and some research to back that up. The book feels more like a series of blog posts around a coherent theme. It's a dense short read.

[Dave Fernandes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a steaming pile of pseudo-psychology and pseudo-science, loosely weaved together into a semi-coherent mess.

[Solomon Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really surprised me, I’ve followed Mike Cernovich on twitter and YouTube for a number of years. Firstly it’s very easy to read it’s a relatively short book which gets you to the point he is trying to make. Short paragraphs with actionable things you can do. He covers mindset, health, posture and finances and how they all interlink. I have found the best thing I read was his way of framing anything in life. If you’re stressed or angry ask yourself how am I framing this and how can I frame it to be more empowering. His visualisation exercises to awaken your mind first thing in the morning are also very effective.
Overall a easily digestible and great read, actionable and to the point.

[Daniel GARCÍA · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the book doesn't provide anything out of the ordinary, it's a good start on the topic of mental health. For a moment I felt like not reading it because of one the comments saying that it was a copy paste work. Well, that happens in almost if not in every industry (such as music & software). The author also refers to references continuously so it's not like he's doing any plagiarism.

As for most of these type of books, it's just about taking what's valuable to you & discarding what's not.

[Alex English · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could overlook the frequent typos in the Kindle version since the material was solid. This book contains good advice, and I especially found value in the idea of self-talk.

[Jay Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and easy read for anyone looking to get a different outlook and some reminders that may have gotten lost throughout our years.

[Ahmad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook, I don't think it'd make a good read in book form. It has the same usual self help stuff. But it made for a fun and motivational audiobook en route to work.

[Russell Newquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may seem like I've done a lot of reading recently. In reality, I've just finished a lot of reading recently. I've had a lot of books (especially non-fiction) spinning all at once, and they've all kind of wrapped up.

Last week I finally finished reading Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich. This is one that I've been reading since the beginning of the year. That's pretty odd, because one of the great things about this book is how quick and easy of a read it is.

"Wait a sec," you say. "How does that work?"

This book took me a long time to finish because I was too busy implementing it. Even before I was halfway done, I knew there were things in the book that I wanted - that I needed to do. For myself, I decided to focus on a few things at a time rather than trying to make every change all at once. I've had good results with that.

Let me get this out of the way: I detest self-help books. Most of them are completely full of shit and aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Most of them give you advice that isn't all that helpful. Which is fine, because most of them are written for people who don't actually want to change. This book isn't like that. Mr. Cernovich actually wants to help you. For the typical self-help reader, that will make this a book they don't actually want. But for those looking to actually improve their lives, this is the rare self-help book that's actually worth a damn.

The frustrating thing about reading this book is how many of Mr. Cernovich's suggestions are ways that I used to live my life. I've let many of them slip. I had good reason to. I had some specific life circumstances that I had to react to. But those circumstances are long over, and it's well past time that I returned to my old mindsets. This book gave me the boot to the ass that I needed to do that. It also brought some excellent new ideas that have proven to be very helpful.

One other thing that's truly great about this book is that it's not wasting space on filler. A great many non-fiction books have a single great idea, cover that idea thoroughly in the first few chapters, and then spend the rest of the book repeating that same idea over and over and over. It's the reason why I have shelves full of non-fiction books that I've never finished. Once I got the concept, the rest of the book just wasn't worth reading. This book isn't like that at all. Each chapter is actually covering something different. Each chapter covers the basic concept, gives some examples, and then gives a checklist and some "homework" at the end. A few of them also have some interviews with experts. That's it - there's no wasted filler.

As Mr. Cernovich himself points out, not every piece of advice in here is for everybody. There are a few things in the book that I don't think will actually work very well with my own base personality. Take what works for you and apply it. As for the rest... see if you can apply the concept in another way. But if you can get through this entire book without finding two or three changes that will help your life in a major way, then congratulations on the amazing life you already lead. Keep living that life. For the rest of us, this book is a gold mine.

Gorilla Mindset gets five out of five stars. This book is an absolute must read.