The title of this book is certainly eye catching and Netflix even made a film of it. Oh well, I am attracted to the title especially post Covid where one's perspective on life certainly changes. Whether one's approach to life will change permanently post Covid or it is only temporary, only time will tell. Anyway, for me, this book does offer some insights or rather reminders on how we can approach life. I would think that everyone's take on life would be different and this Author just give you his take on his approach.
For me, this book is suitable for casual reading, e.g. while stuck in the airport or on a lazy Sunday afternoon just to remind us that sometimes, we don't have to take things too seriously. Anyway, as usual, the followings are some excerpts from the book which I find illuminating (Words in blue are mine):
1) A confident man doesn't feel a need to prove that he's confident. A rich woman doesn't feel a need to convince anybody that she's rich. Either you are or you are not.
2) Albert Camus: "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
3) "Don't hope for a life without problems. There's no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems."
4) True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
5) What determines your success isn't, "What do you want to enjoy?" The relevant question is, "What pain do you want to sustain?" The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame. (A lot of people trying out in either sports, business, career, etc. should remember this point. It is easy to enjoy things that you like but to be successful in any endeavour, it is how much you are willing to suffer for it.)
6) ......our struggles determine our successes.
7) If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
8) When we feel that we're choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.
9) .....we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. (Have you ever met people who blamed others for their lives with statement such as "If only my parents are rich, If only I am born taller, If only I have better superiors/bosses, etc.??)
10) Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.
11) Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things. You always get to choose the metric by which to measure your experiences.
12) Many people become so obsessed with being "right" about their life that they never end up actually living it.
13) ......weird but true: we don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. (An open minded approach to life?)
14) Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe everyone else is evil.
15) .....the more you try to be certain about something, the more uncertain and insecure you will feel. But the converse is true as well: the more you embrace being uncertain and not knowing, the more comfortable you will feel in knowing what you don't know.
16) The more we admit we do not know, the more opportunities we gain to learn.
17) "No, ma'am," Picasso said. "It took me over sixty years to draw this." (This is about a story where a woman asked Picasso for the napkin in which he was drawing on in a cafe in Spain. The woman said that she will pay for it and Picasso replied "Sure, it will be twenty thousand dollars.". Of course, the woman is shocked and said that it is too much for something which Picasso only spend like two minutes to draw it and the above is how Picasso replied. This of course, strikes a chord in me being in the engineering consulting business as many a time, people don't realize that certain skills require many years of experience, time and sacrifice before reaching the required level of competency.)
18) We can truly be successful only at something we're willing to fail at. If we're unwilling to fail, then we're unwilling to succeed.
19) If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something - anything, really - and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself. (Just do it!!!)
20) Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. (I have certainly seen my fair share of people who only wants to make good decisions. For example, their recommendations would be everyone should get good salary increments or bonuses so that everyone can be happy without offering how to do it within the reality of a fixed budget.)
21) Consumer culture is very good at making us want more, more, more. Underneath all the hype and marketing is the implication that more is always better. I bought into this idea for years. Make more money, visit more countries, have more experiences, be with more women.
But more is not always better. In fact, the opposite is true. We are actually often happier with less.
22) We are all aware on some level that our physical self will eventually die, that this death is inevitable, and that its inevitability - on some unconscious level - scares the shit out of us. Therefore, in order to compensate for our fear of the inevitable loss of our physical self, we try to construct a conceptual self that will live forever. This is why people try so hard to put their names on buildings, on statues, on spines of books. It's why we feel compelled to spend so much time giving ourselves to others, especially to children, in the hopes that our influence - our conceptual self - will last beyond our physical self. That we will be remembered and revered and idolized long after our physical self ceases to exist.
23) .......all the meaning in our life is shaped by this innate desire to never truly die.
24) How will the world be different and better when you're gone? What mark will you have made? What influence will you have caused?
In summary, this book serves as a reminder that we should truly live the life based on our own values and ask ourselves the question whether we regretted/enjoyed the way we live our life when our short journey/adventure in this life is coming to an end? We have to stop living the life based on other's dreams or what was shoved into our head by mainstream media, social media, marketing, etc. Sometimes, we just gotta not give a f*ck to those things which do not conform to our values. Happy living!
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