Intentional: How To Live, Love, Work And Play Meaningfully

by David Amerland

Live your life the way you want to. Manage stress better. Be more resilient and enjoy meaningful relationships and better health. We all want that. Such life leads to better choices, better jobs, loving romantic partners, more rewarding careers and decisions that are fully aligned with our aims. What stops us from getting all that is the complexity of our brain and the complicated way in which the external world comes together. The misalignment between the internal states we experience and the external circumstances we encounter often leads to confusion, a lack of clarity in our thinking and actions that are not consistent with our professed values. Intentional is a gameplan. It helps us connect the pieces of our mind to the pieces of our life. It shows us how to map what we feel to what has caused those feelings. It helps us understand what affects us and what effects it has on us. It makes it possible for us to determine what we want, why we want it and what we need to do to get it. When we know what to do, we know how to behave. When we know how to behave we know how to act. When we know how to act, we know how to live. Our actions, each day, become our lives. Drawn from the latest research from the fields of neuroscience, behavioral and social psychology and evolutionary anthropology, Intentional shows how to add meaning to our actions and lead a meaningful, happier, more fulfilling life on our terms.

218 pages, Hardcover

Published June 23, 2021

About the author

Hey Goodreads peeps, drinks are on me. I’d love to be able to do this face-to-face, hear why you’re reading this over coffee (or a beer) and talk about my obsession with sensemaking, and how books rewire our brains and change the world.

Unfortunately, face-to-face is limiting and, most times, impossible. This is why I love Goodreads. Not only do I get to exorcise some of my demons by using my blog here
as a form of therapy, but I also get to answer questions you ask and post my latest news. The books I write take apart the mechanics of human behavior and analyze the building blocks of this world, though some readers interpret them as being about, search, the web, popular culture, and elite soldier mentality.

I believe that everything we do that is sustainable answers a specific need we experience at a basic human level. Search is information retrieval which is needed to help us make sense of what we see in the world (and there is a version of it inside our head), social networks answer our need for social connection and culture is just behavior that is driven by values, filtered through perception and modulated by context.

Digital technology does what technology has always done: augment existing human abilities and amplify human traits. It is no different, in that respect, to the car or the airplane. It challenges us right now because it is new, fast-moving and it impacts many of us at once. It attracts us because we sense the potential it offers for everyone to matter. For lives that are mostly invisible to feel that they belong. That they make sense.

My books are quoted by academics in research papers and used by universities as primers in classes. I try not to take this too seriously otherwise I won’t be able to write another word. What keeps me writing and evolving are the questions you have too: Why? Why are we the way we are? Why is the world the way it is? Why can we not all be better? Why is the struggle we experience so real? Why is everything just so difficult?

You can keep track of what I write by visiting my website.

You can ask me almost anything here and I hope you can join me as I go looking for answers to things that matter to us all.

Stay true and keep on reading,

David