I have an inner critic who is incessantly telling me I’m not good enough, I’m not trying hard enough, or that I’m not meeting its expectations. Sound familiar? In “The Inner Game of Tennis,” Timothy Gallwey describes ways of calming that inner critic and what doing this can do for your tennis game and, ultimately, your life.

Why do we fixate on a few negative or critical comments, when we hear hundreds of positive ones? It seems one bad event, or even a not-so-great event, can discolor our day. Yet all of the positive and pleasant things go unnoticed or can’t be recalled, according to John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, authors of “The Power of Bad.”

What would you do in a plane crash? If your office building were filling with smoke, what would you do? Typically, we avoid these questions, but when we hear how others dealt with such a crisis, we tell ourselves that we would do better, that we would keep our wits about us.