The Feel Good Effect

While certainly not a cure-all, this has some very reasonable approaches to overload and achievement stress. The author also nicely clarifies thinking like perfectionism vs comparison, and others. The book is meant to be very practical, and it is. Readers will find some helpful approaches here.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

I found Robyn's podcast a few months ago and eagerly devoured almost all of them within a matter of weeks. I was cautiously excited for her book, as I was unsure of how her practical episodes would translate to a longer format.

Expectations met! The book was grounding and practical. I appreciated her setting the stage for her method and lengthy discussion of the dangers of perfectionism and the importance of self compassion. I wasn't surprised to see a decent chunk of the book dedicated to mindset, and I think that laid the stage for her practical method of how to FEEL GOOD.

I received an advanced electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

"You have only one life, it is only so long. I hope you'll spend it feeling good."

Sometimes a book comes at just the right time and is exactly what you need to hear.

I don't know Robyn and do not listen to her podcasts (I clearly should!) I took an online class with her and Ali Edwards. And while the class was good, I took it at a time when it didn't resonate with me as much as I wish it had. So I am not sure what drew me to this book. But I opened it up on Saturday morning just to read a few words and I ended up not moving from my chair until I'd finished it.

Robyn's voice and her ability to break down concepts resonated 100% with me. This book is chock-full of information but it's explained in an incredibly accessible way. The book has three parts: mindset, method, and life. Mindset is about ways of thinking and why it's crucial to reframe your mindset where she explains the Feel Good Mindset. Method is where she talks about the four strategies and habits that help you get lasting results. And finally Life is where you take action and incorporate it all into your life.

For me, this book was like a good friend who is also very smart and kind explaining to me why all the ways in which my striving and my all-or-nothing thinking are not here to serve me in creating change in a lasting way. Robyn explains a lot of what I knew in a practical, consumable way and the best thing about this book is that it makes sense at my core and it gives me small, tangible ways to work towards a way to practice having the kind of life I want for myself.

Robyn's book really resonated with me and satisfice might become one of my new favorite words.

with gratitude to netgalley and Crown Publishing for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

Run, don't walk and grab yourself a copy of this book! Don't forget to have a notebook handy while you are reading it. Robyn doesn't just walk you through the different kinds of mindsets she gives you actionable strategies and exercises at the end of each chapter to help you make a shift. Reading and doing the exercises makes you stop and think about what how you can find your "Feel Good Effect".

This book is a game changer for the health and wellness industry! Unlike most "new" methods, 30-day cleanses, etc. this is a realistic approach to real, sustainable long-term wellness. What makes this book so different is that Robyn starts by explaining the mindset that blocks us from being consistently healthy (in the real sense of the word!) and once you understand how your thought process, not your actions, is at the basis of it all it changes EVERYTHING! After this, she takes you through to how to change these mindsets by doing small shifts and counteracting the previously negative thought patterns we have with movement and food. This book is about long term changes, self-acceptance, enjoying the process and showing that self-compassion is NOT being lazy. Backed up with research, I feel I can now enter a lifelong journey and relationship with wellness that is ACTUALLY healthy!

Quick book with inspirational and beautiful words of wisdom and quotes. Basically I cannot wait until this book goes on the market I need it in my life and the only reason I am disappointed is that I cannot fill it with all the journal prompts and ideas NOW and I have to wait. This books is AMAZING. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The Feel Good Effect is a voice of reason in the often chaotic and overwhelming wellness world. Research backed, yet completely approachable, this book is both practical and inspiring. Robyn brings the same sense of calm, level-headed thinking and explanations to this gem of a book as she does in her amazing podcast. Each page is jam-packed with actionable tips, step-by-step mindset exercises, and encouragement along the way. I'm so excited to put this book into practice and The Feel Good Effect in my own life!

I absolutely loved this book! I’m a recovering perfectionist and learning that gentle is the new perfect was life changing. I found Robyn through her podcast and haven’t stopped listening or supporting since!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge, your heart, and your mission! Your wisdom is a treasure and this book is one that will be read over and over again.
Your process is easy to understand and WANT to do!

Thank you again! Wonderful book.

Xo.
Stephanie Diehl

Such a great read! Robin not only gives you the scientific research to back her strategies for improving your life, she also gives practical steps and insightful exercises you can do to propel yourself into action. I loved her writing style and the practical lay out in how to apply the feel good method realistically in your own life. Her methods and practices can literally be applicable to anyone as she stresses the principle of making the framework fit you and your priorities. I sometimes come away from self help books feeling anxious and overwhelmed. But this book will leave you feeling inspired and equipped to make positive change in your life.

“The Feel Good Effect” by Robyn Conley Downs is a how-to manual for enhancing your health and wellness. I subscribe to her podcast of the same name, and was excited to have Robyn’s simplified wellness advice in book form. Robyn’s approach is doable - she advocates for small changes that, over time, combine to make a big impact. “The Feel Good Effect” is a collection of customizable, science-based behavior shifts and habit changers that helped me develop a mindset of grace over perfection.

This is a beautiful book for anyone trying to make improvements in their life, big or small, simple or complex. This book gives you a beautiful dose of reality and helps you understand why you don't have to beat yourself up for not being perfect right away. It's a the perfect balance of motivation, smart planning, and mindset to help you achieve your goals, and even just get by these days. I appreciate that Robyn is a real person who embraces the ups and downs of each journey and reiterates that real life is NOT perfect. I love that she works a full-time job and strives to do more for herself and her family. I am so thankful that she has done so much research and presented scientific studies on how we can make meaningful, attainable change for the sole purpose of being happy. This is truly such a gift and I hope other we see its value as I do.

Thank you Robyn for being real. This book gives practical advice on how to live in the moment. She helps you realize that any movement counts, eating doesn’t have to be so complicated and you deserve to be gentle with yourself. She helps you understand how to Feel Good. God has blessed her with insight and a way to share it so it makes sense.

I have followed the Feel Good Effect podcast for several years now. The advice Robyn gives for streamlining things like your morning routine, meal mapping and just simply putting a post it note up on your mirror that says "good morning, I love you" are like a talk with your best friend. You hear it and feel like she's speaking to YOU. Her suggestions are a breath of fresh air!

I am a perfectionist who never feels like they hit that perfection bar. Something I read today, "good enough IS good enough" really struck me as true. My breath caught when I read that and I thought, you know what? She's right! I've read so many "self help" books that promise to give me better habits, or increase my productivity, or tell me to just do it! But that isn't what this book is at all. Robyn is genuine and thoughtful; she created this book from her own struggle with perfection and striving and it shows. It's about doing what really matters and living the Feel Good Life.

The suggestions and exercises are real, relatable and do-able. They are backed by science and research, not the latest fad to get you to do more. This is about consciously making new habits in your own life that resonate with YOU. This book will be a staple to give as gifts to my girlfriends.

A refreshingly simple, realistic take on making things easier on yourself, without the usual self help overwhelm. Robyn strings together simple actionable items, making you feel incredibly supported, in a down to earth way, while helping you implement big changes in your life to actually feel good. Her gentle yet straight forward approach teaches you how to do it for yourself by shifting your perspective to reframe your mind all while sprinkling in relatable side notes so that this book can relate to anyone reading, no matter where you are in your life. All the while every word has been scientifically backed by concise research.

If you’re ready to let go of the extreme pressures our society and life put on you and take charge of your life, this book is for you. I will keep this book close to read and re read over again through various walks of life. I have no doubt in my mind this will not be the last you hear from Robyn. After reading this book you will feel like you made a life long friend in her and the bonus is she has an incredible podcast where you can get more. I see big things for her and her work in years to come.

I have been listening to Robyn’s podcast “Feel Good Effect” for over a year and look forward to it each week. I was equally as excited to read her new book. This book does a great job of explaining a simple framework of steps you can take to address wellness, as well as examples that make it both digestible and easy to implement. I found it especially beneficial that Robyn addresses the cognitive distortions that can get in the way of staying consistent with new behaviors. I believe this book is a great read for anyone who is looking to elevate their life to “feel good”!

This book provides a fresh approach for wellness, self care and goal setting. Easy to read with lots of practical advice and examples backed by research.

This book is an amazing resource for anyone who wants to shift their focus from lofty, unachievable wellness goals and the mindset of “I’ll be happy once I [fill in the blank]” to a clear and simple focus on crafting habits that will help you to feel good RIGHT NOW, no gatekeeping or life overhauls required.

Robyn does an incredible job at breaking down all of the common cognitive challenges/distortions that keep us stuck not just in wellness or health habits, but in every area of life. She also goes further than that and provides simple tactical exercises and tips to help people clarify their vision of what feeling good really means to them beyond weight loss or the hour-long morning routine they feel like they should do. These exercises provide a road map for people add simple daily practices into their lives that will help them feel good, more often.

I think that this book will be a game-changer for people who are done with the “just be more disciplined”, “no pain no gain”, blame-and-shame approach to health and wellness that is so tired and just does not work, plain and simple. Robyn’s book reads as a manual for how to throw the “just try harder” rule book in the trash and practice radical self-acceptance, self-care, and self-compassion instead.

My only small critique of this book is that I wish that she had taken a stronger stance against intentional weight loss and dieting. Although nutrition and weight loss are often the very first things that most people think about when it comes to health and wellness, just like all of the other parts of toxic wellness/diet culture, they’re built on a “just try harder” foundation that doesn’t work, and even worse, can cause a ton of damage to people’s mental health and relationships to food. I understand that this can be a controversial topic especially in the health and wellness sphere, and there may simply not have been the space to cover this subject appropriately, but it feels like such a natural extension of the rest of the messaging in the book that I wish it had at least been covered a little. Other than this small complaint, I think that this book will be an amazing resource and a total game-changer for anyone who reads it. As a long-time follower and fan of Robyn’s, I am so proud and excited for her for creating this amazing resource.

Great book and one I will refer back to again and again! Full of so much goodness when it comes to wellness and making it a habit. I love that it all comes down to making small changes over time instead of drastic change all at once. It’s so doable and applicable to real life. It doesn’t feel out of reach. Consistency, flexibility, grace, and self-compassion are key.

Reading Robyn's words are like having a conversation with your wisest friend, giving you the push you need to make the small shifts to change your life. The pushes are gentle, backed with science and research and make sense. Robyn's book is beautiful, easy to understand, and I know I will return to it, time and time again. Implementing the small shifts on day one of reading, and layering up, as it fits your life, has provided me with habits I'm certain will stick.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is trying to live a more satisfying life. This book is beautifully broken down into each to graph concepts and fun to follow practices. I appreciate that Robyn uses research and practical guidance. I have lived with a striving mindset since I was a teenager and Robyn has given me the tools to see what areas in my life I'm really succeeding it and how to make practical changes that actually fit my life. I really enjoyed reading through each chapter and the book has the perfect amount of information to give you the tools to understand yourself better and what you can do going forwards. What I truly love about Robyn's approach is its about small changes, that take into account my life and what really matters for me.

This book was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. It was great to hear the author’s story, to learn about mindset .. and learn new things about myself as I read along. I found the book to be really reader friendly, giving a great easy to follow introduction to each topic, with examples, clear bright visuals, packed with tips and exercises that can be simple to achieve and are unique to each reader in supporting them in feeling good. I’ve already started to incorporate what I’ve learned from the book and I will share my new found knowledge in my role as a Health and Wellbeing Coach. This book is now an essential in my feel good kit, thank you so much Robyn.

WOW! During this quarantine I have used this time to work on myself and truly focus on me. This work is not easy by any means. I had finally gotten to a good place mentally but still felt flustered. I would make plans the night before for the next day and just wake up in a fog. I would sit around for hours until it was the end of the day, had nothing accomplished, then would have to rush around to get everything done. Since reading this book, it has honestly put EVERYTHING into perspective. From not trying to be “It” all, whatever “it” is. Understanding what YOU truly want is more important than anything. I’m so blessed to have come across Robyn on IG and just so happen to jump into her ambassadorship program for this book. I ordered a copy before I even knew about this. I will definitely be reading this again and making ALL KINDS OF NOTES when I get my hard copy. I can’t wait!! Robyn, I’m so proud of you! Thank you for writing something that we didn’t quite know we needed.

The Feel Good Effect is such a practical and easy-to-use tool. Whether you struggle with comparison, FOMO, procrastination, or any number of other less than ideal mindsets, this book can help you. I learned many of these tools by listening to Robyn's podcast of the same name, but it is so nice to have a hard copy to refer to any time I am in the need of a mindset shift. I know 2020 has left many of us feeling like we need a reset, and this book is coming to our rescue at just the right moment. Highly recommend.

This book is a breath of fresh air. I began following Robyn on Instagram, @realfoodwholelife, around two years ago. I remember having an "aha" moment when I first saw her share the mantra "gentle is the new perfect". This book was full of so many more "aha" moments. Robyn not only breaks down the science behind "the feel good effect" to be completely digestible, but she consistently provides activities and practices that articulate how exactly you can implement the given tools and skills into your own life. This book shows that wellness can be accessible and doable, rather than intimidating and overwhelming. As a perfectionist trying to pursue an ambitious post-grad, my mental health is so grateful for this book. Moral of the story, you need this book in your life.

In THE FEEL GOOD EFFECT, Robyn Conley Downs shares hard-won wisdom that she earned the hard way, by living the prevailing stories of striving, pushing and shoving yourself around to create and maintain the illusion of effortless perfection. Her excellent book and gentle suggestions to align, integrate, and rethink the way you live felt like a long conversation with a wise, kind friend over a cup of tea. By the end of the book, I was stronger, wiser, more clear about what I value and what I genuinely want to accomplish. This clear, well-crafted guide to change is one of the best books I've read in a very, very long time. My deepest appreciation to Downs, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing me the chance to read an advance reader copy of Downs' book in exchange for my unbiased review.

The Feel Good Effect by Robyn Conley Downs is a self-help book written to help the reader simplify all the current research and practices that improve wellness and life and provides a framework for that research. The author opens with her background and breaks down many of the myths and unhelpful approaches to wellness, which was so simple but is frequently ignored in other books. I appreciate the author understands the reader will not follow each aspect perfectly all the time and instead encourages the reader to "take what you need and leave the rest". The writing is easy to read and the infographics included in the chapter were visually attractive yet easy to read. As a researcher, I can tell she is well-read and knows how to make helpful figures. I also appreciate the author includes a challenge at the end with a guide that provides a structure for a book club for those interested. Overall, I enjoyed and recommend this book!

Many thanks to the publisher Ten Speed Press and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I have never read a book that provides as many specific, tactical ideas and approaches to change in your life as this one! Robyn Conley Downs has done an incredible amount of research along with taking a hard look at challenges in her own life to write this book that provides so many research-based ideas to approach issues that we want to change in our own lives. I have followed her blog and real food-based recipes for years, even having the incredible opportunity to take a barre3 class with her in Portland, Oregon, and as much as I've always been impressed with the work she puts into the content she creates through recipes and her podcast, this book is incredible beyond belief. I want to read it again and again to help me develop concrete ideas for sustainable change in my life. Thank you, Robyn! You are going to impact so many people as a result of the amazing work you have created with this book!

This is the book I have been waiting for - a self-help book based on science with actionable steps - and I loved it.
I have been following Robyn's blog and listening to her podcast for a number of years and have enjoyed watching the evolution of her strength and messages. I am also a scientist and I really appreciated the tone of her writing and her detailed explanations. I struggle with a lot of the topics in this book, especially the "all or nothing thinking" and I can't wait to get started with some of her strategies. I highly recommend this book!

I am a project manager, a wife, a mother, and my own woman. I feel like I don’t get enough done to take care of everyone, I feel overwhelmed, and those things that I want to do for me, I didn’t do, because other things were more important. Robyn’s podcast came into my life at the perfect time and the book didn’t disappoint. A perfect combination of science and a conversation with your best friend. Robyn adds in direct and helpful exercises to help you make progress on your goals. I’ve felt more at ease and i know that I can invoke change in my life. Small shifts have meant everything. Thank you Robyn.

Stop whatever you are doing and read this book! The current approach to wellness and health is not working. If you are ready to get off of the hamster wheel and start making changes that are sustainable, The Feel Good Effect is the approach you need.