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Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success [Hardcover]

Chip Conley
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

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Book Description

January 10, 2012
Using brilliantly simple math that illuminates universal emotional truths, Emotional Equations crystallizes some of life’s toughest challenges into manageable facets that readers can see clearly—and bits they can control. Popular motivational speaker and bestselling author Chip Conley has created an exciting, new, immediately accessible visual lexicon for mastering the age of uncertainty. Making mathematics out of emotions may seem a counterintuitive idea, but it’s an inspiring and incredibly effective one in Chip Conley’s hands. When Conley, dynamic author of the bestselling Peak, suffered a series of tragedies, he began using what he came to call “Emotional Equations” (like Joy = Love – Fear) to help him focus on the variables in life that he could deal with, rather than ruminating on the unchangeable constants he couldn’t, like the bad economy, death, and taxes. Now this award-winning entrepreneur shares his amazing new self-help paradigm with the rest of us. Emotional Equations offers an immediately understandable means of identifying the elements in our lives that we can change, those we can’t, and how they interact to create the emotions that define us and can help or hurt our progress through life. Equations like “Despair = Suffering – Meaning” and “Happiness = Wanting What You Have/Having What You Want” (Which Chip presented at the prestigious TED conference) have been reviewed for mathematical and psychological accuracy by experts. Conley shows how to solve them through life examples and stories of inspiring people and role models who have worked them through in their own lives. In these turbulent times, when so many are trying to become “superhuman” to deal with our own and the world’s problems, Emotional Equations arms readers with effective formulas for becoming super human beings.

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Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success + Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow + The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Rarely has a CEO bared his soul in a book as Chip Conley has in Emotional Equations. This powerfully authentic story makes for a compelling read and an invaluable operating manual for life. Chip’s stories are used to create emotional building blocks that define how we can understand and navigate our internal weather and emotions."

--Tony Hsieh, Zappos' CEO and author of Delivering Happiness

“If you want to understand (or persuade) your boss, sister, neighbor, or teenager, it helps to have an emotional equation. Chip Conley built one of the most innovative, customer-inspiring businesses of the last 20 years. He’s a leader who clearly understands the value of analyzing emotions.”––Chip Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Emotional Equations offers a splendid menu of rules-of-thumb for a satisfied, meaningful life. Chip Conley has tried what he advises; his equations to live by are clever, useful, and profound.”––Daniel Goleman, author of Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence

“In this remarkable book, one of America's finest entrepreneurs shares the wisdom that’s helped him find personal and professional renewal in the face of some devastating life events. Chip Conley's equations are powerful tools for helping to make our emotions work for us, rather than against us, in business and in life.”

-- Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive

“Chip Conley makes the case that great business leaders don't have to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Rather than superhuman, the best leaders––at work and at home––are simply super humans who know how to use their internal resources effectively. Emotional Equations offers practical advice so you can make your emotions work for you rather than against you."––Marci Shimoff, author of Love for No Reason

"Emotional Equations is a fresh, original guide to an authentic and fulfilling life. Every line is based on good science and lived experience and rings truthful and invigorating. There ought to be a law against successful CEOs writing such good books...where does that leave the rest of us?"––Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow

Emotional Equations is a masterpiece by a master teacher. Philosopher/CEO Chip Conley peels away the thin veneer of let’s pretend organizational life and introduces us to the very raw and tender emotional core of our human experience. While reading, I felt joy, delight, curiosity, insight, inspiration, amazement and, most of all, a much deeper understanding of my own inner life. Simple, yet profound...you really must read this book.”

-- Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge

“If you’ve struggled to understand how to get control of your emotions, Chip Conley’s Emotional Equations is the book for you. Conley makes elegantly objective the subjective realm of feelings through the prism of simple mathematical formulas that offer fresh insight into how we can more effectively manage our emotions.”

-- Anne Kreamer, author of It's Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace

"It's incredibly rewarding to see one of my former psychology students evolve first into a very successful businessperson and then into a thoughtful observer of human nature. Chip Conley's Emotional Equations is challenging, thought-provoking, insightful, and, ultimately, very practical."

-- Phil Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, author of The Time Paradox

"You may scoff at the idea that all the complexity and subtlety of human emotion can be reduced to a handful of arithmetic operations. Scoff all you want, but read the book. There is something important to be learned from every chapter. Chip Conley has written a book that is both welcoming and challenging, simple and complex, abstract and concrete. Read this book and take it to heart and your emotional life will never be the same."

-- Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice

About the Author

Veteran CEO Chip Conley has created more boutique hotels than anyone in the world. Founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he grew into America’s second largest boutique hotel company, he speaks around the world on how to find meaning at the intersection of business and psychology. The author of several books, including Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, he was named the Most Innovative CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area, which he calls home. For more information, visit EmotionalEquations.com and ChipConley.com.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Atria Books; First Printing edition (January 10, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1451607253
  • ISBN-13: 978-1451607253
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #226,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

At age 26, Chip Conley started out as a rebel entrepreneur, building one of America's most successful boutique hotel brands, Joie de Vivre. As the company's leader for 24 years, Chip was honored as the "Most Innovative CEO in the Bay Area" by the San Francisco Business Times in 2007 and JdV was named the "2nd Best Place to Work in the Bay Area" in 2008. He is the author of three books including the bestseller PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, where he illustrates how he created an enlightened business model focused on his employees', customers', and investors' highest needs.

One of the world's leading practitioners of emotional intelligence in business, Chip has shared his philosophy from the main stage at TED, to the creative studios at PIXAR, to the country's top academic institutions -- challenging today's leaders to count what really matters in business and in life. No longer a Chief "Executive" Officer, Chip is now a Chief "Emotions" Officer and in his new book, EMOTIONAL EQUATIONS: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success (January 2012, Free Press), he explains how being proficient in both psychology and business is the smartest means of being successful as a 21st century leader.



Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
(53)
4.5 out of 5 stars
I read a lot of books, but nothing has hit me this hard in quite some time. Matthew E. May  |  14 reviewers made a similar statement
Some of this is in his earlier book PEAK and I highly recommend it. Srikumar S. Rao  |  11 reviewers made a similar statement
The writing style makes it easy to read and follow along. Cindy Brock  |  15 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 49 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple Math, Simply Amazing November 26, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Chip Conley wrote one of my favorite business books...ever...PEAK, exploring how great companies get their mojo from Maslow. Changing Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs into Transformation Pyramids for employees, customers, and investors, Conley, Founder and then the CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second largest boutique hotel group in the country, delivered a recession-tested road map for transforming companies.

If you are expecting Conley's latest offering, EMOTIONAL EQUATIONS, to be more of the same you may be disappointed. In fact, he has an emotional equation for that: Disappointment = Expectations - Reality. In fact, Conley has written an ambitious, courageous book that is a logical extension of the emotional intelligence he displayed in PEAK.

This is a genre-busting work...it's a business book, no it's a self-help book, no it's a psychology text, no it's faith based. It happens to be all wrapped into one.

Conley explores emotions in a fresh way, using mathematics to tap into a deeper understanding. This is a thought provoking book, best read when you have the time to explore and consider your own reactions and feelings.

Here are some of the equations:

Happiness = Wanting What You Have/Having What You Want (division)
Regret = Disappointment + Responsibility (addition)
Authenticity = Self-Awareness x Courage (multiplication)
Wisdom = The Square Root of Experience (my personal favorite, and a bit of higher order math)

The book is divided into four major sections, "Dealing With Difficult Times", "Getting to Most Out of Your Work Life", "Defining Who You Are" and "Finding Contentment." Feeling anxious? Go to that chapter. Curious about Integrity? There's a chapter for that as well.

My favorite chapter deals with Happiness. Happiness = Wanting What You Have/Having What You Want. Conley explores the hedonic treadmill, studies that suggest that up to 50% of happiness is predetermined genetically (Jonathon Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, calls is the "cortical lottery"), and the powerful role of gratitude plays in determining happiness.

Conley draws from the ancient philosophers, the positive psychology movement, and the works of Barry Schwartz (THE PARADOX OF CHOICE, another must read) to help validate his own thoughts and musings. As an author he is definitely working without a net. At times, the emotions that arise from circumstances from his life, give the book a raw feel. His examples of famous and infamous people also help define the math behind the emotions.

Don't dismiss this book as too "touchy-feely." Understanding, controlling, and changing emotions is tough work. What Chip Conley has done in EMOTIONAL EQUATIONS is offer, as the subtitle states, "Simple Truths for Creating Happiness & Success."
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Equations are just the beginning December 9, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
I was intrigued by the book's premise - working with equations in a mathematical way. However, the author simply proposes relationships that seem fairly arbitrary; it's not clear why some relationships are set up as they are.

Additionally, the formulas might clarify the concepts for some readers, but don't really introduce anything new. The equations seem to make these ideas more simplistic rather than generate insight and thought.

Conley illustrates with some examples of news stories from the media. I am always a little skeptical when writers take stories as written; for instance, in writing about Lisa Nowak, the failed astronaut, he refers to the stories about her driving with NASA-issued diapers. Some reports suggest these details were exaggerated and it's not clear why we need them anyway. He goes on to say that jealousy = mistrust/self-esteem. That's a fairly arbitrary decision; why mistrust? why not wishful thinking? And hasn't the role of self-esteem been questioned? Most important, what new insights do we get from setting up the challenge as an equation?

Maybe I'm asking too much of the book but when I see a premise formulated in terms of mathematics, I expected some rigor of thinking.

I'd rather have learned more about Conley's own experiences and background, where he'd have something truly unique to offer.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Equations to Live By January 8, 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
The principles of emotional intelligence have long informed my coaching and consulting work. I've seen emotional intelligence attached to all kinds of things and used in all kinds of ways, but equations? I just couldn't see the connection. And, being math aversive, I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but, still, I couldn't resist picking up Chip Conley's Emotional Equations. And then I couldn't put it down.

Conley has created a series of what I might call formulas rather than equations that make it easier to understand what constitutes seventeen emotional responses. Understanding the components makes it easy to see what needs to be reinforced or changed to shift an emotion. Consider the difference between disappointment and regret. Conley writes that Disappointment = Expectations - Reality, while Regret = Disappointment + Responsibility. I found these two equations very helpful in considering how to help clients better understand how to shift these negative emotions. If one considers the role of reality in disappointment, it becomes much easier to engage in an exploration of how we each define reality - and whether that definition holds true. As Conley explains the equation, it becomes clear that he is not suggesting that we all set low expectations, but, rather, that we periodically reflect on them and adjust as needed. In a similar fashion, the difference between accepting an unsatisfactory outcome and being mired in regret can be adjusted by examining one's perception of responsibility for that outcome.

I expect to come back to this book many times. I've already recommended it to everyone I know. I'm glad that my curiosity led me to read this and I'll end with my favorite equation - Curiosity = Wonder + Awe.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring Book - Creating Happiness by Equations
Emotional Equations is quite interesting. I had to read this book twice to fully understand it. I found I got confused in some parts but after slowing down and thinking about it, I... Read more
Published 9 days ago by Marisa Nitsch
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book!!!!
It's so amazing to be able to see emotions from this perspective. It requires slow reading, and deep analysis to incorporate the concepts, and really be able to manage your... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Li - Pi
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Premise, Much Insight, Sometimes Misses
Perhaps because I am mathematically minded, this premise of the book is, at once, both an asset and detriment to this book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Gabriel's Buddy
4.0 out of 5 stars His insights are wonderful, but too systematic for some
I enjoyed Conley's book and appreciated his insights. However, for some more intuitive, or less systematic people, it is possible that he is too systematic. Read more
Published 3 months ago by chicitysue
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
Interesting book-- a little complicated at times but really makes you stop and think about emotions in a new way.
Published 3 months ago by Jacob Steele
5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success
Great book! This is the first book by author Chip Conley that I have read, and while the title may give the impression that it could be overly simplistic, I found this book to have... Read more
Published 4 months ago by In the AmaZone...
3.0 out of 5 stars Controlling the Uncontrolable - Ok Lets See It
The Author (Chip Conley) uses math and various formula and equations to explain various life situations and offers theories on how to control outcomes based upon some basic... Read more
Published 6 months ago by C. Hargrave
3.0 out of 5 stars Equations, without math
I started out prepared to engage and enjoy this book, and I got bored along the way. I felt like I was being lectured to; that there wasn't a whole lot of room for my own,... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Karen Tiede
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, I'll be giving this book to several people as gifts
Chip Conley offers a great look into positive psychology and has made it palatable for engineers and math lovers. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Just Me
5.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars for the content and 1.5 stars for the innovative...
I had read quite many books about emotions, psychology and self development. Yet, this is by far the most innovative one I read, that the presentation of ideas through equation not... Read more
Published 9 months ago by ServantofGod
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