27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
True Things, May 27, 2006
Why don't people like to see themselves in the mirror? Because they don't like what they see... One true thing. Step parents and step children will both be happier if they let the birth parents be the disciplinarians...another true thing. When long married couples divorce, it's often because while they have grown and changed, they couldn't find a way to stay friends...
So many authors of advice want to push their ideas onto you... to convince you or persuade you that theirs are the real truths. In contrast, Dr Livingston says "based on my many years in psychiatric practice, these are what I think are truths;" then it's up to the reader to consider his thoughtful and gentle advice.
There are thirty 3-5 page chapters, each a little essay and observation. Some you will like, some you will disagree with; but at the end of the book you will probably have found at least one new truth about yourself to take to heart, and in my book that's worth the price of admission.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"ah ha" observations, June 27, 2008
The reader gets the benefit of the author's years of experience sitting with hundreds and hundreds of patients and his synthesis of their problems, his observations and potential remedies. I found this book to contain a number of insightful observations however it falls short of answering: "ok, so now what does one do?" In many of his lessons, Dr. Livingston digresses in his views on war and politics which seem to be detached side-pockets to the core message he is trying to convey. I found that this book fell short of the author's prior work ("Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart") but nevertheless contains a series of very insightful observations - including my favorites below:
Chap 7
It is better to be spent than saved
I frequently ask patients, "What are you saving yourself for?" People spend a lot of time conserving energy, usually while they wait for some event outside themselves to trigger their taking action...Passivity is the enemy of progress in therapy...I prefer to challenge people to relinquish passivity, stop waiting for answers outside themselves, mobilize their courage and determination, and try to discover what changes will bring them closer to others and to people they want to be.
Chap 17
We all live downstream
Most of the threats to human existence derive from the desire to bend the world to satisfy our need for rapid gratification. This, of course, is the basic philosophy of a consumer society. Look at the message conveyed by the advertising with which we are inundated. Over and over we are presented with images of people who are clearly enjoying life more than we are. They are younger, more attractive, with more friends and apparently an inexhaustible supply of leisure time. And how can we be more like them? By spending money, of course...At some level, all of us are sensible enough to know that what we have and how we look are going to keep us off the pages of People magazine indefinitely. Still, a chronic sense of dissatisfaction pursues us, and it is hard to live in a world in which we imagine that most other people are happier than we are. What this creates is a kind of disposable society that elevates a desire for the "new and improved" version of everything to a level of desirability that can never be satisfied. The state of mind encompasses both greed and envy; they're called deadly sins for a reason. If our relentless pursuit of the latest thing is the engine that drives our consumerist culture, the by-products and side effects are worrisome and include a perceptible decline in the environment in which we must live, and ultimately in the quality of the lives we will lead.
Chap 27
Happiness Requires an ability to tolerate uncertainty
"Those whose are willing to improvise do better than those who imagine they are working from a script. Put another way, if we think of ourselves as (largely) the authors of our own life dramas, we are likely to enjoy the trip more than those who rely on others for instruction.
Chap 30
Most people die with their music still inside them
...we might do well to write one (an obituary) for ourselves, starting in our twenties, and revise it every year or two. What better way to confront who we are, what we're doing, what it all means, and whether we are making any progress toward becoming the people we would like to be remembered as?...what we write about ourselves can be a work of fiction. But the process of selecting how we would wish to be remembered has a way of focusing attention on what we have done, or - more important - failed to do with our lives...the real power of the exercise, however lies in the regret most of us feel (and that is never mentioned in actual obituaries) about our unfulfilled dreams. It turns out that few of us are living the lives we imagined for ourselves when we were young. We are often better off financially than we would have predicted, but it is unusual for someone to report that he is happier than he ever thought he would be. In fact, there is a kind of wistful quality among most people in middle age or older. This frequently takes the form of nostalgia for a simpler life that held more possibilities than the one we are actually living.
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