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“But humans are not built to be in a constant happy state. We are built to respond to the challenges of survival.”
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
“One last point: If your relationship with your family is especially difficult, working to improve it might sometimes feel like a lost cause. It’s easy to throw up your hands. Almost every day, we hear from people all over the world who feel stuck in family problems that seem like they have no solution. Maybe you have said, “I just want to turn my back on those people and get on with my life.” Giving up is almost always a mistake, because “those people” are, in a mystical way, you. Your spouse is a completion of you as a person. Your kids provide a rare glimpse into your own past. Your parents are a vision of your future. Your siblings are a representation of how others see you. Giving that up means losing insight into yourself, which is a lost opportunity to gain self-knowledge and make progress as a person. Never give up on the relationships that you did not choose, if at all possible. But what about the relationships that you have chosen? These are your friendships, and that’s the next part of our lives to build.”
― Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier
― Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier
“Thoughts are not facts. They are a mix of opinions, judgements, stories, memories, theories, interpretations, and predictions about the future.”
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
“Thoughts are not facts. They are suggestions offered up to us by the brain to help us make sense of the world.”
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
― Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
“here are the main lessons to make each challenge into a source of growth. 1. Don’t avoid conflict, which is your family’s opportunity to learn and grow if you understand where it originates and manage it appropriately. 2. You naturally think compatibility is key to relationship success, and difference brings conflict. In truth, you need enough compatibility to function, but not all that much. What you really need is complementarity to complete you as a person. 3. The culture of a family can get sick from the virus of negativity. This is a basic emotional-management issue, but applied to a group instead of to you as an individual. 4. The secret weapon in all families is forgiveness. Almost all unresolved conflict comes down to unresolved resentment, so a practice of forgiving each other explicitly and implicitly is extremely important. 5. Explicit forgiveness and almost all difficult communication require a policy of honesty. When families withhold the truth, they cannot be close.”
― Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier
― Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier
Cetavis’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Cetavis’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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