Additional information
by Annie McCubbin (Author)
This is a laugh out loud, narrative-driven self-help book. Think Bridget Jones gets a critical makeover. In Why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions, our protagonist Kat is learning that the philosophy of 'Believe-in-yourself-and Magic-will-happen' will not deliver her a better life. Her story, which recounts her hapless attempts to navigate scenarios disturbingly familiar to many readers, is presented with a companion account of the cognitive quirks that drive her faulty thinking and behaviour. This is neuroscience explained through the lens of a modern comedy; the buggy brain stripped bare in a laugh out loud take down of magical thinking and the goofy, delusional self-actualisation movement. Kat discovers that the simplistic advice to honour your intuition is not all it's cracked up to be. Despite practising Gratitude and Acceptance, she is still failing to lose the 5lbs that preoccupy her. Despite her Positive Thinking, her performance review leaves her limp with despair, and despite her assiduous application to making affirmations, her philandering Hipster Boyfriend leaves her (taking with him the remote control). In the companion explanation to each chapter, author Annie McCubbin explains to readers what drives people to behave in blindly optimistic and self-destructive ways. If only they could apply the critical thinking that our narrator suggests, smart women would indeed stop making bad decisions. It becomes clear to Kat, and in turn the reader, that positive thinking, meditation and magical thinking will not turn her life around. Instead, women should apply the narrator's advice and change the inherent cognitive flaws that run, and often ruin, their lives.
Author Biography
Annie McCubbin is an actor, writer, director and corporate communication consultant, coach and author of Why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions. In 2001, combining disciplines of communication, theatre practices, and critical thinking, she diversified into the corporate sector, writing, directing and performing in corporate dramas, and training captains of industry from professional services, engineering, pharma, food and finance. As the Director of COUP, the consultancy she founded with husband, David McCubbin, her corporate work is highly regarded as an outstanding synthesis of dramatic art, management consulting, and applied neuroscience. With a mantra of 'Less Drama - More Performance', she is able to deconstruct the most convoluted workplace narratives and help individuals, and companies, to function more successfully by exposing the cognitive errors and fallacious logic that lead to corporate failure. She does this through the delivery of keynotes, scripting corporate dramas, training and executive coaching. While her grander visions are about getting more women on boards, into politics and closing the gender pay gap, she's also hoping to see her son and daughter enjoy a future in which decisions that influence the lives of millions are made with reason, evidence and sagacity, rather than unconscious bias, woo and superstition.
