Lesson 1
If the map doesn’t match the ground, the map is wrong. And needs to be changed. For example in finding a partner. If you are finding yourself in bad relationships that means you are not learning the lesson of previous heartbreak. You need to update the map and be more careful about what qualities you are searching for. When it comes to a partner or friend, the qualities are kindness, empathy and ability to love. And these qualities occur together. So does the qualities of impulsiveness, anger and selfishness. So while looking for who to become better friends with look for the qualities instead of how eager they are to give you attention.
Lesson 2
We are what we do, not what we think or wish. Our dreams and wishes have little value in changing our mood. In judging people too we need to look at actions rather than words. The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. Love is demonstrated behaviourally. When someone says the words we long to hear, it is easy to choose to ignore incongruent behaviour. True love requires the courage to be totally vulnerable and that is why most of our dissatisfaction with others are a result of our own limitation.
Lesson 3
Our deeply ingrained behaviours, beliefs and prejudices are rarely a result of rational thinking. We are living in autopilot, doing the same things that did not work yesterday.
Well-functioning families are good at letting their children go. Poorly functioning families tend to hold on to them. When I encounter homes where children continue to live, often unhappily, long into adulthood, I have the feeling that the same conflicts and separation anxieties are being worked on over and over but never resolved. The shared fantasy appears to be that “we’ll keep at this until we get it right.” Sometimes, it never happens. I know of families with young adults in their 20’s and 30’s in which the parents still lie awake until the “kids” are home. Where arguments over chores and mealtimes reflect a longing for the past and a fear of an independent future. There is a kind of shared commitment to not changing the family. The young people trade their chance at autonomous lives in exchange for the security of a familiar, childlike existence that serves to reassure their parents that they need not relinquish the responsibilities on which their sense of themselves depends.
Lesson 5
Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. What can be learnt here is that if you are feeling disappointed or hurt in a relationship, have unmet expectations then it means you should care less.
Lesson 6
Feelings follow behaviour.
By labelling a mental health issue we are treating it like a physical illness where you have to take a passive role and let the medicine do the work. Relief from responsibility.
Lesson 9
“I frequently ask people who are risk-averse, “What is the biggest chance you have ever taken?” People begin to realize what “safe” lives they have chosen to lead. The ways that people test themselves—contact sports, backpacking through Europe, military service—are foreign to most. Something is lost in our obsessive concern with safety and security—some spirit of adventure. Life is a gamble in which we don’t get to deal the cards, but are nevertheless obligated to play them to the best of our ability.”
Lesson 10
“One theme that is played out in many marriages is the coming together of someone with strong obsessive characteristics (usually a man) with someone else who has a more impulsive and theatrical personality (usually a woman). These people are initially drawn to each other because of complementary needs. The man is in need of more entertainment in his life and he values the woman as less inhibited, more spontaneous than he. The woman sees the well-organized and meticulous man as promising a measure of restraint that will balance her impulsive tendencies. It’s easy to see why such a relationship often contains the seeds of disappointment and frustration. (He: “Why can’t you be more responsible?” She: “You just don’t know how to have fun.”)
Lesson 11
Moving from words to actions. Actual change is slow. People do the same thing they were doing yesterday or last year. Therapy is not to vent out your problems.
“One of the most difficult things to ascertain when confronted with a person seeking therapy is their readiness to change, their willingness to exercise the fortitude that is necessary to do so. Some people seek help for reasons other than actually changing their lives. We live in a society that has elevated complaint to a primary form of public discourse.”
“People mistake thoughts, wishes, and intentions for actual change. This confusion between words and actions clouds the therapeutic process. Confession may indeed be good for the soul, but unless it is accompanied by altered behavior, it remains only words in the air. We are a verbal species, fond of conveying our minutest thoughts. (Remember the last time you listened to someone talking into a cell phone?) We attach excessive importance to promises.”
“The disconnect between what we say and what we do is not merely a measure of hypocrisy, since we usually believe our statements of good intent. We simply pay too much attention to words—ours and others’—and not enough to the actions that really define us. The walls of our self-constructed prisons are made up in equal parts of our fear of risk and our dream that the world and the people in it will conform to our fondest wishes. It is hard to let go of a comforting illusion, but harder still to construct a happy life out of perceptions and beliefs that do not correspond to the world around us.”
“Depressed people tend naturally to focus on their “symptoms”: sadness, loss of energy, sleep disturbance, appetite changes, diminished capacity for pleasure. It is easy to get caught up with trying, through medication and psychotherapy, to relieve these painful concerns.”
Lesson 23
Nobody likes being told what to do
“It seems too obvious to mention, and yet look how much that passes for intimate communication involves admonitions and instructions. I sometimes ask parents of balky children to keep track of the percentage of their interactions that consists of criticism or directions (the latter being a variation on the former). I’m used to hearing numbers like eighty to ninety percent. Sometimes, not surprisingly, communications between the parents themselves yield similar figures.”
“Still we try to tell each other what to do. Our desire for control and a belief that we know how things should be overcomes our common sense about how people react to orders. This is especially true of parents. Even in our child-centered (some might say child-obsessed) society, we think we know best how to “guide” our children so that they will fulfill their above-average potential as students, athletes, and American success stories.”
“Not infrequently, those who are preoccupied with issues of control with their children have similar difficulties in their interactions with their spouses. The marital climate is typically characterized by bickering, power struggles, and a sense on both sides that they are not being heard. Once again I ask people to imagine a situation in which criticism and instructions are withheld. People used to giving their spouses lists of assigned tasks find it hard to imagine alternatives”
Lesson 25
“We live in a fear-promoting society. It is the business of advertisers to stoke our anxieties about what we have, what we look like, and whether we are sexually adequate. A dissatisfied consumer is more apt to buy. Likewise, the purveyors of television news attempt to hold our interest by scaring us with stories of violent crime, natural disasters, threatening weather, and environmental hazards (“Is your water safe to drink? Details at eleven.”).
One of the things that define us is what we worry about. Life is full of uncertainty and random catastrophe. It is easy, therefore, to justify almost any anxiety. The list of fears that people carry with them is long and varied, and a function of the information with which we are bombarded.”