Dr. Lee's Books

Are you eager to take a new direction in your life? Behavioral science expert Kristen Lee shares invaluable insights and research-based tools to make change happen. 

You’ve got changes you’re eager to make. But the empty canvas is daunting, and simplistic advice like “#boss up” and “just do it” doesn’t help. So how do you begin—and follow through? 

Meet Kristen Lee. She’s devoted her entire career to helping people make change happen. She’s not your average stuffy award-winning Behavioral Science professor—she’s also a psychotherapist comedian who uses her funny bone, fresh insights, and research-based tools to help build your capacity to succeed with change. It all starts by activating what she calls “a clean slate mindset.” 

Hailed a “witty, easy-to-follow approach to positive transformation…” by Kirkus Reviews,

Clean Slate is a reader-friendly guide for making life changes accessible, achievable, and even fun. With her seamless blend of grounded psychological research and compassionate humor, Lee reveals a flexible strategy for releasing the burdens that make our goals feel unreachable—and building a doable, “chip away” approach for attaining the change you seek. Join her to explore: 

• The “fresh start effect”—why intentional resets work, whether we’re making a resolution or responding to life’s latest curveball 

• Proven methods for dealing with momentum-breakers like anxiety, distraction, sunk cost fallacy, and a sharp-tongued inner critic 

• Communication skills—How to set clear boundaries and develop confrontation resilience 

• Taking humor seriously—why playfulness, laughter, and joy can be your best tools for change

• Self-care without guilt—how to make resting and recharging part of the plan for achieving your aspirations

• A wealth of versatile tools, evidence-based practices, reflection questions, resources, and creative approaches to making change happen

Change can become a lot less daunting when armed with the right tools. By activating a clean slate mindset, you’ll creatively connect your desires to behavior. No more beating around the bush or beating yourself up. Clean Slate is a practical and uplifting guide that you’ll return to any time you need support for taking a new path in your life.

Whether you’re looking to make a big life shift or going for a modest goal, change can be loaded. With Clean Slate, Kristen Lee provides research-based tools and grounded support for making change accessible, achievable, and even fun. A treasury of versatile tools, evidence-based practices, resources, and much more.

Named a Next Big Idea Club nominee and Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medalist, and selected by Google for employee learning , discover the rewards of strategic risk-taking―an award-winning behavioral scientist shares a practical guide on using small, intentional acts of courage to build resilience, confidence, and connection.
 

We’re bombarded by messages about how dangerous the world is―from both real and fake news. Yet when we hunker down and try to live in a bubble of safety, we can cut ourselves off from the richness and joy life has to offer. In Worth the Risk, Dr. Kristen Lee shows us that by “microdosing” small acts of bravery and connection, we can regain the self-confidence and resilience we need to live full and meaningful lives. “We are hardwired for risk-taking,” she says. “As we become more comfortable with the uncomfortable, our nervous system changes to support us in experiencing a bold, adventurous, colorful life.”
 

In each chapter of Worth the Risk, Lee provides a solid dose of brain science combined with practical actions to build confidence and sustain yourself through challenges. With a blend of stories, composite sketches, science, ancient wisdom, behavioral science, and practical exercises, you’ll explore:
 

• What is courage? Debunking the myths and discovering the power of everyday acts of bravery
• Why feeling overwhelmed doesn’t make you a “snowflake”
• Tools for understanding and regulating your emotions, anxieties, and habits of avoidance
• Healing practices and guidance to increase your resilience to trauma, acute stress, and PTSD
• Insights and strategies for navigating the unique challenges of our polarized, media-saturated culture
• How to own your “Personal Legend” and become an active liberator―for yourself and others
 

Risks are a part of life―and “playing it safe” can end up diminishing the very qualities that allow us to adapt, create, and serve our purpose in life. Worth the Risk guides you through a powerful approach to taking small, values-aligned chances that increase your ability to thrive. “You are not your trauma, labels, fears, or raw emotions,” Lee writes. “You are wired for resilience. Your human spirit is indomitable.”

One of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves is rethinking what we've been taught, because thoughts become behaviors. The same mind that gets us stuck is the same one that can set us free. It's time to rip up the script society hands us, breathe deep, and reclaim a healthy definition of success that doesn't compartmentalize your mind, body and soul. We need a new organizing framework that allows more flexibility and moral grounding―one that lets science, emotion and spirit to fuse.

Too often, life's disorienting moments can leave us tumbling into messy, downward spirals. We lose clarity, and are held hostage by blind spots that keep us from thriving. We fall into common mindless behavioral traps which lead to perpetual patterns of shutting down, numbing out, binding up and staying stuck. In this uniquely liberating book, Dr. Kristen Lee teaches us how to apply a process of behavioral change using a series of different lenses, to steer our brains to overcome blind spots and cultivate Upward Spiral habits.

A leading expert on resilience and behavioral science, Dr. Kristen Lee developed this new psychology of thinking model from over twenty years of clinical practice, the latest neuroscience, and her own research findings. Mentalligence [men-tel-i-juh-ns] is a sage guide that will help you build meta-awareness by emphasizing an impact-driven rather than a performance-obsessed mindset and adopt a model of 'collective efficacy' that is less I-focused and more we-focused, to facilitate positive social impact at a time when it's desperately needed. This is what psychologists call 'The Good Life'―living mindfully and consciously.  Rather than falling for predominant definitions of 'success' that leave us boxed in, depleted, and oblivious to ways we can work together, Mentalligence helps us find the thinking and behavioral agility to work towards better outcomes for all.

RESET was named Motivational Book of 2015 Winner and a Finalist in the Self-Help and Health and Wellness categories by Next Generation Indie Book Awards. RESET has been called "a breakthrough model that reframes our ideas about stress", and "an excellent guide chock full of practical strategies, insightful stories, and wise advice for anyone who experiences stress in their daily work".  

There are far too many 5-step, simplistic models of stress reduction to go around. Reset offers a fresh perspective that is not only backed up with years of research and clinical practice, but presented in a way that allows each reader to take into account their own circumstances and develop a plan for well-being that actually works. 

When you feel the negative effects of stress and anxiety, RESET's components will help you get your bearings and recalibrate: Realize. Energize. Soothe. End Unproductive Thinking. Talk it Out. Whether you know it or not, you're already responding to stress-either constructively or destructively. Read RESET to develop a plan that is unique to you and your circumstances to better equip you to respond to the challenges before you and make the most of your stress.

“Lee’s fusion of neuroscience and humanity is compelling and timely… a bold blend of science, story, humor, and wisdom that helps us reimagine fear and embody courage, creativity, and positive contribution…A must-read for anyone wanting to shine brighter without burning out.”

- Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., Host of The Psychology Podcast 

"With great candor, spirit, and expertise, Dr. Kris shows us that small acts of courage aren't small at all."- Agapi Stassinopoulos Author of Wake Up to the Joy of You

"Dr. Kris Lee has written a truly remarkable book about bravery, connections, and resilience. While these themes have always been of importance, they have assumed even greater urgency in a world in which the ramifications of COVID have intensified anxiety, depression, uncertainty, and loneliness. Kris not only shares with the reader thoughts about the significance of courage and resilience, but very importantly, she describes realistic “microdoses” we can initiate to realize our value-driven dreams and goals…”

- Robert Brooks, Ph.D., part-time Faculty, Harvard Medical School/Coauthor, The Power of Resilience

"Every chapter is a therapy session that teaches in elegant but easily understandable language several logical but pragmatic strategies to increase your resilience. And once you start reading this book, you can't put it down..."

-Dilip V. Jeste, MD, Former President American Psychiatric Association   

“Practical strategies, insightful stories, and wise advice for anyone who experiences stress in their daily work…”--Carol Pelletier Radford, Ed.D., CEO of Mentoring in Action and author of five mentoring books including Mentoring in Action: Guiding, Sharing and Reflecting with Novice Teachers and The First Years Matter: Becoming an Effective Teacher.