Social Science

Here’s the go-to book for content creators to navigate what it truly means to have a platform: putting yourself out there, letting go of what others think, and claiming the power your authentic self has to offer the world.

Since the boom of social media in the mid-2000s, tens of millions of people have started their own platforms in hopes of creating success on their own terms. But with great visibility comes great vulnerability. We become riddled with self-doubt and trapped performing a version of what they believe will be acceptable to others—optimized for more external approval and algorithmic success.

What if the mere act of being followed—including the criticism, judgment, and expectation social media creates—could actually become a tool for your personal growth?

Enter Followed: The Content Creator’s Guide to Being Seen, Facing Judgment, and Building an Authentic Personal Brand. By embracing self-discovery through self-expression, you can learn to see exposure as an opportunity for personal development—and break free from the imaginary boxes that were always too small for you, anyway.

As a content creator and well-known business and life coach, Amanda Bucci has dealt with imposter syndrome, oceans of criticism, and multiple identity crises trying to fit into a box. Today, she’s successfully pivoted her brand to stay aligned with her purpose, having coached hundreds of clients, dozens of companies, and thousands of community members in their journeys of creating success while staying authentic.

Think you already own your brain? Think again. Your brain owns you. It pushes you around and insists upon getting its way, not yours. Rather than having your best interests in mind, your brain has its own very specific agendas and strategies the purpose of which is singular—to make it feel good. It doesn’t care that its goals are often at stark variance with your intentions or what you know is healthy and constructive in your life. Your brain is selfish, demanding, and devious.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Override introduces a new two-pronged theory of personality: serotonin types and dopamine types. Based on today’s breakthrough science into neurotransmitters—the chemicals that transmit signals through our nervous system—Override show readers how to recognize their own chemical imbalances, and what to do about them.

One of the key parts of developing these strategies is understanding the ways serotonin and dopamine are supposed to work, and which type you fall under. Equipped with this new information, the reader will learn to recognize and reshape their reflexive behavior and develop intentional self-control. With this book, nobody is doomed to remain trapped by their natural tendencies!

Override details the struggles of people, both D- and S-Types, and show how together with them the authors found a path to change that can start this minute and last a lifetime. Complete with easy-to-use questionnaires, strategies, and exercises, this book offers micro and macro thinking on iconic human problems, backed up by the latest scientific research into why we are the way we are.

Is it possible to do something more meaningful than mothering?

As a young Catholic girl who grew up in the American Midwest on white bread and Jesus, Erin S. Lane was given two options for a life well-lived: Mother or Mother Superior. She could marry a man and mother her own children, or she could marry God, so to speak, and mother the world’s children. Both were good outcomes for someone else’s life. Neither would fit the shape of hers.

Interweaving Lane’s story with those of other women—including singles and couples, stepparents and foster parents, the infertile and the ambivalent—Someone Other Than a Mother challenges the social scripts that put moms on an impossible pedestal and shame childless women and nontraditional families for not measuring up. You may have heard these lines before:
– “Motherhood is the toughest job.” This script diminishes the work of non-moms and pressures moms to make parenting their full-time gig.
– “It’ll be different with your own.” This script underestimates the love of nonbiological kin and pushes unfair expectations onto nuclear families.
– “Family is the greatest legacy.” This script turns children into the ultimate sign of a woman’s worth and discounts the quieter ways we leave our mark.

With candor and verve, Someone Other Than a Mother tears up the shaming social scripts that are bad for moms and non-moms alike and rewrites the story of a life well-lived, one in which purpose is bigger than body parts, identity is fuller than offspring, and legacy is so much more than DNA.