It's hard to be human thanks to five big design flaws of the self-sabotaging human brain, but there are also five big workarounds.

If they could study us the way we study them, other animals would be puzzled by our unique ability to inflict misery on ourselves. We expend a lot of energy replaying past anguish, anticipating future distress, and stewing in self-righteous anger. Other animals would call us out for being oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy while creating our own suffering, who struggle to adapt to a confusing world that we ourselves created.

In our defense, we haven't yet mastered our neuron-packed brains, whose incredible complexity evolved in somewhat haphazard ways over millennia in a very different world than today's, giving rise to the five big design flaws of the human mind.

This book corrals the best insights from psychology, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to reveal powerful strategies for the five big battles we each face in the war with ourselves. Other animals have a simpler life, but we can have it easier, too.