How We Are is the first part of the monumental How to Live trilogy, a profound and ambitious series that gets to the heart of what it means to be human: how we are, how we break, and how we mend.

In How We Are, Vincent Deary explores the power of habit and the difficulty of change. As he shows us, we live most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of comfortable habit, unless an outside force compels us to adjust. Over decades of psychotherapeutic work, Deary has helped hundreds of people cope with change-teaching them to understand how they get stuck, how they struggle with new circumstances, and how they can finally transform for the better. Drawing on a staggering range of cultural and literary references- from Jacques Lacan to Mad Men, Marcel Proust to Chicago dance crazes-How We Are shows us how much of our lives are lived according to beaten paths, and explains why we are so resistant to conscious change.

Part psychologist, part philosopher, part novelist, Deary paints a mesmerizing universal portrait of the human condition and helps us to see how to break free of routine to make our actions and our lives more fully our own.