This very concise and petite little book of just 100 pages is a must read for everyone!
I was browsing through my favourite book store and when I was at the counter to pay for my book-buying binge, the owner of the store who has known me since my school days, insisted that I buy this book. Just one look at the book-cover and I was sold. It felt important to me right there and then.
And because it is such a short read, I finished my first read in just a couple of hours. And then it hit me! It’s so rare to find a book that pours wisdom and depth in a way that this one did and I had to re-read it and make notes alongside. I am glad that I did!
It feels like the author has written this book just for me, to give me advice and direction about how to live more fully. His anecdotes and struggles seem very relatable and real. One might not face any problem connecting with the book. We are all human, and we all need to put together our thoughts in a better way, or at least learn how to.
If you just take a look at the contents, viz the name of the chapters, you will understand how significant this book really is. And what’s more amazing is the fact that all the chapters are hardly 2-3 pages long. It doesn’t get any better than that!
The author makes one realise that our thoughts have the most important impact on our lives. We wake up with them, do our daily chores with them and even go to sleep with them. We are never deprived of them and it’s the content of these thoughts that determine our mood, emotions and decision making.
Through wonderful illustrations, examples and anecdotes, Foroux suggests that we can control what we think and with practice, get better at it. He argues that life is all about forming dots in our minds, by learning, doing, making mistakes, providing information to your brain and then, reflecting back, connecting these dots and making sense of things. Life, he says, is not linear and with so little that we have control over, it’s crucial to embrace uncertainty and have back- up plans. To be ready at all times to achieve our goals.
He recommends adopting a pragmatic method of living life and allow the thoughts of all nature to come but to not stay with them for a long time and learn to ignore them without getting all consumed up with them. Only when we acknowledge all our thoughts, will we be able to filter through them and decide what needs our attention.
One of the most interesting concepts that the book introduced me to was ‘cognitive biases’. Which comprises behaviours of confirming our preconceptions. How we will do everything to prove that we’re not wrong. For e.g. I used to believe that any friend that I get close to will eventually abandon me, because of my previous bad experiences. But that was not a fact! Rather everytime I would get attached to someone, I would try to test them to prove myself right. Foroux suggests that we avoid making decisions based on beliefs and have a pragmatic and neutral approach that leads to better informed decisions.
Towards the end of the book you would have learned that if we live our lives striving for doing and creating useful things that matter to others and actually make a difference, life automatically becomes meaningful.
I request everyone to read this book as soon as possible and thank me later.
Favourite Quotes:
- You become what you think about all day- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- The greatest use of life is to spend it doing something that will outlast it- WIliian James
- You don’t regret what you do in life, you regret what you didn’t do.
- It’s not ‘this’ or ‘that’ in life. You can have this ‘and’ that.
- Lack of self knowledge forces you to make wrong decisions.
- Familiarity is the killer of creativity. In order to achieve a breakthrough , you need to do something different.
- True is what works for you. And good things come to those who wait.
Actionable takeaways
- Always have back-up plans that work.
- Stress, worrying and making assumptions only wastes your energy.
- Do not be afraid to learn something new, that requires patience. Every Time to come across a wall, do not give up! Do not let fear overcome you.
- As humans we all make mistakes, and feeling guilty is only natural. But, we must not let shame override our thoughts.
- Focus more on the things that our in our hands, the things we can control rather than putting energy into worrying and stressing over things out of our hands.
- There is no such things are ‘best decisions’. There are only good informed and bad informed decisions. The more we keep on learning in life, the more self aware we become, the more well informed decisions we will be able to make.
- It’s crucial to differentiate between facts and assumptions. One helps us take better actions and one drains our energy.
- Drawing helps visualise your thoughts.
- It’s important to step back and look at the bigger picture, stepping outside the box.
- Having a set of basic rules makes life easier.
- Combining a few rules, develops a system and a system takes thinking part out of the equation.
- Look back at your life, but don’t stare too long. Life happens now.
