42 pages • 1-hour read
How to Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness.
Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis: “Manifestation Gone Wrong”
Berner and DeSorbo argue that realizing one’s dreams starts with believing in oneself. Like happiness, becoming the person one wants to be begins with looking inward. The authors offer examples from their own lives to illustrate how self-confidence can make dreams come true. This kind of manifestation routinely features in self-help works—most famously in Rhonda Byrnes’s The Secret. However, where many books on manifestation make pseudoscientific claims about the mind’s power to alter reality, Berner and DeSorbo focus on practical action as an extension of belief in oneself.
Berner and DeSorbo have both manifested their dreams by maintaining a positive outlook and by staying in tune with themselves. For Berner, breaking her journey to success into a series of smaller, achievable goals has been a useful method for self-realization. She uses the imagined goal of achieving an Oscar as an example. To do so, the individual would first have to take acting classes, post videos, get an acting coach, and audition for roles. For Paige, writing a list of seemingly unrealistic goals has been a successful method of manifesting her dreams. She encourages the reader to do the same, providing a workbook-like section where the reader can list goals and imagine the associated action steps.
The authors also offer examples of manifestation “mistakes” they’ve made. Berner tried manifesting success by staying in a bad job but eventually realized that this action step wasn’t right for her and quit. She holds that changing paths mid-course isn’t a bad thing: She had to be in tune with her needs and emotions to make this choice. DeSorbo suggests that naivety played a role in her success: Sometimes, she holds, simply being confident can help the individual make their dreams come true.
Chapter Lessons
- Imagination can lead to realization, so people trying to achieve a dream should let themselves imagine success.
- Making lists of what one wants can make goals less intimidating.
- While having goals is good, it’s also important to stay open to the possibility of changing paths or leaving bad situations.
Reflection Questions
- Identify a seemingly impossible dream and then break the dream into a series of smaller goals that you can achieve one by one on your path to success. Does this method make your dream appear less impossible?
- DeSorbo emphasizes the power of writing down impossible goals to make them less intimidating. Try this exercise, naming the five most ambitious things you’d like to do. How does the exercise of recording your dreams help you see these goals differently?
Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis: “High-Functioning Anxious Girlies”
Berner and DeSorbo emphasize the power of accepting one’s emotional tendencies and channeling them into new outlets. For Berner and DeSorbo, making a comedic podcast has been a positive way of dealing with their life-long anxiety. Anxiety manifests differently for each of them, but the authors hold that it’s a facet of their humanity rather than a sign of deficiency.
Berner experiences anxiety in the form of overthinking, obsession, and a desperate desire to please others—tendencies she’s had to overcome via a change in mindset. She has developed various methods for coping with her anxiety, which she encourages the reader to try, too. Calling her mother or confiding in a trusted confidante is one way that she’s learned to voice her fears as they’re happening. These conversations help her to release stress and achieve a new outlook. She also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging one’s likes and dislikes. Once she learned that she didn’t like big parties, she was able to find other activities that better suited her personality. Discovering comedy has been a way for her to avoid catastrophizing small instances of embarrassment or failure. She has learned to stay true to herself and combat her fears in these ways.
DeSorbo’s anxiety has manifested in panic attacks, which she’s learned to confront by relying on friends and acknowledging her fears. She describes a particularly bad panic attack she experienced before one of her and Berner’s tours. She called her parents, talked to Berner, and took a beta-blocker. She now knows how her body responds to stressful situations and knows the steps to take to overcome this anxiety.
Although both Berner and DeSorbo highlight the struggles their anxiety has caused, their overall emphasis is not on “fixing” it but rather on learning to live with it. This reflects trends in both contemporary psychology and personal development, with practices like mindfulness encouraging nonjudgmental awareness of thoughts and feelings and works like Ethan Kross’s Shift discussing the adaptive value of “negative” emotions. While not grounded in theory itself, How to Giggle implicitly aligns itself with this discourse.
Chapter Lessons
- Acknowledging and claiming one’s insecurities is a sign of strength and maturity.
- Staying in tune with one’s physical and mental responses to stress can help one find healthy coping mechanisms.
- Asking for help, articulating fears, and relying on loved ones are positive ways of combating stress.
Reflection Questions
- What parallels do you notice between your stress responses and Berner’s or DeSorbo’s? How might you apply their coping mechanisms to your own experience?
- Both Berner and DeSorbo stress the importance of human connection in managing anxiety. Whom do you turn to during periods of stress, and where else might you look for support?
Chapter 6 Summary and Analysis: “Social Media Rules”
In a cultural age defined by social media, Berner and DeSorbo offer accessible guidelines for conducting oneself in an online setting. They acknowledge the positive and negative aspects of being on social media and offer six ways to navigate this ever-changing digital sphere.
The authors’ first rule for being online is not to cry in Instagram stories. They argue that doing so is attention-seeking and disingenuous. Saving these displays of emotion for more private settings is a healthier way to express oneself. The second rule is not to over-edit one’s photos. Manipulating one’s face and body online can distort how one sees oneself. The third rule is not to post too many images of one’s boyfriend. They argue that too many images of a significant other can detract from one’s personal online presence and establish unrealistic relationship standards. Their last three rules are to embrace flirting, to avoid leaving mean comments on other people’s pages, and to post often.
Berner and DeSorbo’s social media rules promote positive self-image and kindness to others amid a social media industry that can create toxic environments that threaten the individual’s mental health and stir up conflict between users. How to Giggle thus joins a number of recent works of self-help and popular psychology that scrutinize the impact of social media. However, where many of these books (for instance, Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus) paint an overwhelmingly negative portrait of social media and digital culture broadly, Berner and DeSorbo urge readers to embrace it, with guardrails. This reflects the realities of internet usage among millennials and Gen Z, the book’s target audience. However, the assumption that readers have both the desire and capability to devote significant time and energy to social media may limit the book’s relevance; for instance, readers with disabilities or with limited leisure time may find it hard to post regularly. Similarly, the authors’ recommendation to avoid posting many photos of one’s boyfriend speaks to the fact that their assumed readership is cis-heterosexual women like themselves, though the point could be expanded to include any significant other.
Chapter Lessons
- When posting stories and images, people should avoid weaponizing their emotional experience to get attention or to hurt others.
- Social media users should prioritize positive self-image, authenticity, and kindness to others
- Those overwhelmed by social media can try regarding it as a tool for career advancement and community creation.
Reflection Questions
- How does your social media presence compare and contrast to the authors’? How do their opinions of social media offer you a new way of interacting with the platforms you use?
- Berner and DeSorbo list six rules for being online. Which of the rules do you agree and/or disagree with, and why
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