The Daily Dad

In Bad Advice, relationship expert Dr. Venus Nicolino—a.k.a. Dr. V—takes a blowtorch to the shrink-wrapped, “feel good” BS that passes for self-help these days.

When you’re heartbroken, what do you hear? You can’t love anyone until you love yourself. When someone’s hurt you? Nobody can make you feel bad without your permission. When you’re just a little too positive? Expectations lead to disappointment.

Pop culture noise gives Bad Advice the varnish of truthiness and inspiration. But it’s not truth; it’s not inspiration. It’s bullshit. And at its root, all Bad Advice operates off the same lie: Emotions are optional. In Bad Advice, Dr. V delivers a bracing truth serum, in the form of Good Advice—an antidote to the bullshit, from “Just Be Yourself” to “Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last,” that teaches you to live your life in a way that honors who you are, what you need, and how you feel.

Smart and irreverent, Dr. V fuses the brains and insight of a nerdy Ph.D. with the heart of a doting Italian Mother and the artful profanity of a Philly trucker. Dr. V’s signature combination of humor, hard science, and heart make Bad Advice an iconoclastic course-correction like no other. A fiercely sharp wake-up call that tackles some of self-help’s most damaging truisms, Bad Advice is a never shy guide to tapping into your full potential.

The world around you is pulling your strings, shaping your private thoughts and innermost instincts. And you don’t even realize it.

Every day we overlook the enormous power of situations in our lives. We fail to appreciate that life’s basic details—where we are, whom we’re with, and even whether we’re in a hurry—affect how we think and act. Sommers argues that understanding the powerful influence of context forces us to rethink how we see ourselves and makes us more effective at work, at home, and in our daily lives. He describes the pitfalls that we should avoid and offers compelling suggestions on how we can make better decisions and smarter observations about the world around us. Insightful, engaging, and readable, Situations Matter is a primer on the importance of context in our lives and on what really makes people tick.