This has been in my want-read-list for quite a while. And I’ve finished reading it in one and a half month, which is pretty fast from my standard. It truly lived up to my expectation. And here’s ideas I got from it:
- Pain is necessary. Choose which pain to suffer from is the question to ponder.
- Align your measure once in a while
- Take full responsibility in your life
- Don’t judge before you actually try it
- Never afraid of anything
- Pain is necessary. Choose which pain to suffer from is the question to ponder.
As I’ve already experienced, the greatest lessons come from negative moments. And pain is the only thing makes us a better person. Just like working out everyday made me confident, pain makes us stronger. But I cannot take all the pains out there in the world. I have to pick some.
- Align your measure once in a while
He talked about a guy who felt underachieved because it compared himself with the greatest. Comparing myself with somebody else would never take me to a better place. I have to align my goal with my values and what kind of human being I want to be.
- Take full responsibility in my life
This might be the greatest lesson I’ve learnt from this book. I was aware that we were all choosing in every situation…even when we feel like there’s no option at all. But sometimes, when the things went wrong, I tried to come up with reasonable excuses. I thought that was to protect myself. Protecting myself from severe pain. What I realized from reading this book was, excuses only make me more vulnerable. Excuses take away my power. Because it is same as admitting my life is out of my control. I definitely have to change that. So here’s the first step; whenever I make decision, I have a little debate in my mind to see if I can take responsibility of my action.
- Don’t judge before you actually try it
So this has been my mantra for a long time. And this time, I want to double down. As he says in this book, we don’t know what positive or negative experience is. It’s so hard to tell before I actually try it. And also in seemingly negative experiences, there’s one valuable lesson to be learned.
- Never afraid of anything
In the last chapter, he talked about his friend’s death. His point was, it’s just pointless to fear something because comparing to death, those are nothing.
“in the face of the inevitability of death, there’s nothing to ever give in one’s fear or embarrassment or shame, since it’s all just a bunch of nothing anyway”
I still believe I have to be bold, but not reckless though. Yes, death is the ultimate and everything else is kinda cute. But they still matter. For example, if I do too reckless thing like sexual harassment and get fired, would it be worth it in anyways?
So I think I still have to be careful where I become fearless.
Learning 5 things from a single book is wonderful. That shows how phenomenal this book is. I don’t usually reread same book, but I’ll definitely read this one again soon.
Nobu’s blog 