https://sive.rs/book/30TrueThings
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now - by Gordon Livingston
Powerful and profound life lessons from a psychiatrist who's been listening to people's problems for decades.
my notes
If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong.
We are what we do. We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do.
In judging other people, we need to pay attention not to what they promise but to how they behave.
Past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.
The three components of happiness are:
* something to do
* someone to love
* something to look forward to
We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rises to the level of our own.
It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place.
We operate in the world mostly on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday.
Our children owe us nothing.
Well-functioning families are good at letting their children go. Poorly functioning families tend to hold on to them.
The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas.
My favorite therapeutic question is “What’s next?” It bypasses the self-pity implied in clinging to past traumas.
I don’t have a clear idea of what people need to do to make themselves better. I am, however, able to sit with them while they figure it out. My job is to hold them to the task, point out connections I think I see between past and present, wonder about underlying motives.
We are responsible for most of what happens to us.
Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.
Feelings follow behavior.
Most people know what is good for them, know what will make them feel better: exercise, hobbies, time with those they care about. They do not avoid these things because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them. They are waiting until they feel better. Frequently, it’s a long wait.
Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.
Happiness is the ultimate risk. There might be advantages to their being depressed. It is a safe position. Asking someone to relinquish depression is often met with resistance. To be happy is to take the risk of losing that happiness.
When confronted with a suicidal person I seldom try to talk them out of it. Instead I ask them to examine what it is that has so far dissuaded them from killing themselves.
People in despair are, naturally, intensely self-absorbed. Suicide is the ultimate expression of this preoccupation with self.
When people fall in love, no justification for their attachment is necessary.
When people fall out of love, the demands for an explanation are insistent: What happened? Who’s at fault? Why couldn’t you work it out? “We didn’t love each other anymore” is not, in most cases, a sufficient response.
Only bad things happen quickly. All the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues.
Nearly every human action is in some way an expression of how we think about ourselves.
Nothing is so beautiful as a promise, right after it is given.
Lying to ourselves disables us entirely from making needed changes.
A conviction that there exists somewhere the person who will save us with his or her love. Much of the infidelity that is the hallmark of unhappy marriages rests on this illusion.
The word “closure,” with its comforting implications that grief is a time-limited process from which we all recover.
Some part of my heart had been cut out and buried. What was left? Now there was a question worth contemplating.
It is our task to transfer that love to those who still need us.
Nobody likes to be told what to do.
Much of what passes for intimate communication involves admonitions and instructions.
I ask people in conflict to withhold criticism of those around them to see if this changes the atmosphere. It is amazing how radical this suggestion seems.
Awfulizing: the idea that any relaxation in standards or vigilance is the first step toward failure, degradation, and the collapse of civilization as we know it.
The conflicts that arise between parents and children are skirmishes in a long-term power struggle based on the faulty assumption that the primary task of parenthood is to shape the behavior of children through incessant instruction.
Rules and punishments produce oppositional children who grow into oppositional adults.
Since judgmental people were generally raised in judgmental families, they find it hard to envision another way of interacting with those they live with.
It is always easier to keep doing what we’re used to, even if it’s evidently not working for us.
It is possible to live without criticizing and directing everyone around us.
The primary goal of parenting, beyond keeping our children safe and loved, is to convey to them a sense that it is possible to be happy in an uncertain world, to give them hope.
Do this by example. Demonstrate qualities of commitment, determination, and optimism.
The major advantage of illness is that it provides relief from responsibility.
Behavior that is reinforced will continue; behavior that is not will extinguish.
It is just hard sometimes to discern what that reinforcement might be.
We are, when sick, told to “take it easy.” The longer someone is disabled, the greater the chance that the illness will become a part of a person’s identity.
Surgery & drugs have contributed to the sense that healing is something that happens to us rather than something in which we are active participants, inducing a kind of passivity in those afflicted.
One of the things that define us is what we worry about.
A “misfortune fund” that could be used to compensate people facing extraordinary expenses that were no one’s fault (e.g., parents of children born with disabling abnormalities, victims of crime or natural disasters). Surely this would be fairer and more compassionate than enriching a few winners in the litigation lottery. Such a system would reinforce the belief that we all share in the inevitable uncertainties and risks that are a part of life.
Threats must be identified realistically in our personal lives as well.
Much of what we do is driven by fear of failure.
The pursuit of material wealth distracts us from activities and people that provide more lasting pleasure and satisfaction.
There are no more powerful desires than the pursuit of happiness and the struggle for self-respect.
If means can be found that move people in these directions: better jobs, education, the chance to improve one’s life, and a sense of fairness and opportunity, the seductive and short-lived bliss provided by drugs will lose its appeal.
Parents have a limited ability to shape children’s behavior, except for the worse.
To imagine that we are solely, or even primarily, responsible for the successes and failures of our children is a narcissistic myth. You seldom see a bumper sticker that reads, MY KID IS IN REHAB.
Parents can try to teach the values and behaviors that they have found to be important, but it is the way we live as adults that conveys the real message to our children about what we believe in. Whether they choose to integrate these values into their own lives is up to them. Kids have a keen nose for hypocrisy.
Anxiety is contagious. Children sense it in their parents and are affected by it.
Given love and support, most children grow into happy, productive adults independent of whatever theory of parenting they were raised with.
Set reasonable limits on children’s behavior. Provoke less confrontation and resentment.
Most of the debilitating struggles within families that drain the happiness of all concerned and lead to destructive power struggles flow from an obsessive need for control on the parents’ part and an anxious sense that their direction is all that stands between their children and a life of crime.
When parents are preoccupied with unimportant issues like food consumption and room cleanliness, these will be arenas for endless conflict.
Children raised in homes where parental control is severe turn out to have a poor set of internalized limits because they have experienced only rigid external rules. Conversely, in families where there are few constraints children do not have a way to learn those guidelines necessary to live comfortably with others.
Our primary task as parents is to convey to them a sense of the world as an imperfect place in which it is possible, nevertheless, to be happy.
“What can I do to make sure this kid turns out well?” Not much, but maybe cutting down on the fights and not trying to control your child’s every decision might help to make everyone happier right now.
Enjoy life even as we are surrounded by evidence of its brevity and potential for disaster.
Focus our awareness and energy on those things and people that bring us pleasure.
Memory is not an accurate transcription of past experience. Rather it is a story we tell ourselves about the past, full of distortions, wishful thinking, and unfulfilled dreams.
The problem with longing for paradises is that it distracts us from our efforts to extract pleasure and meaning from the present.
When we visit our childhood homes, we are commonly amazed at how much smaller they seem.
When Russell Baker first submitted the memoir of his youth, Growing Up, it was rejected by a publisher as uninteresting. He then told his wife, “I am going upstairs to invent the story of my life.” The result was a best seller - and no less true than the original version.
Of all the forms of courage, the ability to laugh is the most profoundly therapeutic.
Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be.
The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?
Life can be seen as a series of relinquishments, rehearsals for the final act of letting go of our earthly selves.
Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.
If every misfortune can be blamed on someone else, we are relieved of the difficult task of examining our own contributory behavior or just accepting the reality that life is and has always been full of adversity. Most of all, by placing responsibility outside ourselves we miss out on the healing knowledge that what happens to us is not nearly as important as the attitude we adopt in response.
Write your own epitaph. This exercise should be incorporated into every written will: “And for my epitaph I would like the following:”
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https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/51526.Too_Soon_Old_Too_Late_Smart
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now
by Gordon Livingston,
Elizabeth Edwards (Foreword by)
3.86 ·
Rating details · 2,929 ratings · 354 reviews
After service in Vietnam as a surgeon in 1968-69, Dr. Gordon Livingston returned to the U.S. and began work as a psychiatrist. In that capacity, he has listened to people talk about their lives and the limitless ways that they have found to be unhappy. He is also a parent twice bereaved. In one thirteen-month period, he lost his eldest son to suicide, his youngest to leukemia. Out of a lifetime of experience, Livingston has extracted thirty bedrock truths: We are what we do. Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Only bad things happen quickly. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing. The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. Livingston illuminates these and twenty-four others in perfectly calibrated essays, many of which emphasize our closest relationships and the things that we do to impede or enhance them. These writings underscore that "we are what we do," and that while there may be no escaping who we are, we have the capacity to face loss, misfortune, and regret, and to move beyond them.
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https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781569244197
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now
Gordon Livingston, Author, Elizabeth Edwards, Foreword by Marlowe & Company $18 (169p) ISBN 978-1-56924-419-7
The gentle, even-keeled warmth of Livingston's prose distinguishes this slim book of 30 inspirational ""truths."" A psychiatrist familiar with trauma from both his practice and his life (in one 13-month period, he lost one son to leukemia and another to suicide), Livingston offers the kind of wisdom that feels simultaneously commonsensical and revelatory: ""We are what we do,"" ""The perfect is the enemy of the good,"" ""The major advantage of illness is relief from responsibility."" He intersperses counsel with personal experience, and tackles topics both joyful and deeply painful. In the chapter focusing on ""We are what we do,"" he notes that the ""three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to,"" and he reminds us that ""love is demonstrated behaviorally""-that is, actions count more than words. In his discussion of ""Happiness is the greatest risk,"" he considers how our fear of losing happiness is often a roadblock to our experiencing it. For those contemplating suicide, he writes that ""it is reasonable to confront them with the selfishness and anger implied in any act of self-destruction."" Livingston's words feel true, and his wisdom hard-earned. Among the many blithe and hollow self-help books available everywhere, this book stands out as a jewel.
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https://www.nateliason.com/notes/soon-old-late-smart-gordon-livingston
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston
Rating: 8/10
Read More on AmazonGet My Searchable Collection of 250+ Book Notes
High-Level Thoughts
It’s an interesting set of reminders on life from someone who’s gone through more emotional hardship than most of us ever will. Some might feel familiar, other topics new, but it’s definitely worth reading through.
Summary Notes
“If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong.”
“It is when these feelings surface that we need to think about our mental instrument of navigation and how to correct it, so that we do not fall into the repetitive patterns of those who waste the learning that is the only consolation for our painful experience.”
“Here is what I tell them: The good news is that we have effective treatments for the symptoms of depression; the bad news is that medication will not make you happy. Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.”
“We are always talking about what we want, what we intend. These are dreams and wishes and are of little value in changing our mood. We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do. Conversely, in judging other people we need to pay attention not to what they promise but to how they behave.”
“Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.”
“The frantic attempts to overcome this ennui take the form of a thirst for entertainment and stimulation that is, in the end, devoid of meaning.”
“The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.”
“We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rises to the level of our own.”
“This question, “What do I owe my parents?” frequently distorts people’s lives well into, and sometimes throughout, adulthood. In fact, our children owe us nothing. It was our decision to bring them into the world. If we loved them and provided for their needs it was our task as parents, not some selfless act.”
“Well-functioning families are good at letting their children go. Poorly functioning families tend to hold on to them.”
“Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.”
“If this formulation appears to be overly analytical and to ignore the mysterious process of “falling in love,” that is because in my experience the “chemistry” that causes us to choose one person over all other possibilities can be seen in retrospect as a combination of readiness, lust, and hope rather than an indefinable but powerful union of two souls.”
“There is a kind of track that we are put on early in life with the implicit suggestion that, if we “succeed,” we will be happy and secure.”
“The best one can hope for is to introduce them to the paradox of perfection: in some settings, notably in our intimate relationships, we gain control only by relinquishing it.”
“Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.”
“When presented with new things, the operative question may be “Why not?” but people frequently defend themselves from disappointment by asking “Why?””
“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.”
“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.”
“No one would expect to become good at skiing without falling down. And yet many people are surprised at the hurt that routinely accompanies our efforts to find someone worthy of our love. To take the risks necessary to achieve this goal is an act of courage. To refuse to take them, to protect our hearts against all loss, is an act of despair.”
“There are certain personality characteristics that are highly correlated with academic and professional success: dedication to work, attention to detail, ability to manage time, conscientiousness. People who have this constellation of traits are generally excellent students and productive workers. They can also be difficult to live with.”
“If we try to impose a businesslike, vertically integrated decision-making structure on our families, we are likely to encounter resentment and resistance. Conversely, if our style tends to be impulsive, superficial, and pleasure-seeking, we may find it difficult to succeed at work.”
“The things we are sure will make us happy seldom do. Fate, it seems, has a sense of humor.”
“This is the final and controlling paradox: Only by embracing our mortality can we be happy in the time we have. The intensity of our connections to those we love is a function of our knowledge that everything and everyone is evanescent. Our ability to experience any pleasure requires either a healthy denial or courageous acceptance of the weight of time and the prospect of ultimate defeat.”
“The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves.”
“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become.”
“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become.”
“Also, the fear that we might try and not succeed can produce a crippling inertia. Keeping our expectations low protects us from disappointment.”
“Before we can do anything, we must be able to imagine it. This sounds easy, but I find that many people do not make the link between behavior and feelings. I blame modern medicine and the advertising industry for much of this problem. We have become used to the idea that much of what we don’t like about ourselves and our lives can be quickly overcome with little effort on our part.”
“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.”
“Most families I talk to see their aging relatives as a burden. The idea that the elderly have anything to give the young in the way of wisdom and life experience is seldom considered. The reason: most old people are preoccupied with self-centered complaints.”
“I believe that parenthood, a voluntary commitment, does not incur a reciprocal obligation in the young— either to conform their lives to our parental preferences, or to listen endlessly to our protests about the ravages of time. In fact, I am of the opinion that the old have a duty to suffer the losses of age with as much grace and determination as they can muster and to avoid inflicting their discomforts on those who love them.”
“It is not so much what occurs, but how we define events and respond that determines how we feel.”
“When I listen to comments from elderly people who have been married fifty, sixty, or more years answering the inevitable question about “the secret to a successful marriage,” it seems to me that a high tolerance for boredom often heads the list.”
“In fact, apart from a last-second touchdown, unexpected inheritance, winning the lottery, or a visitation from God, it is hard to imagine sudden good news. Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children.”
“The process of building has always been slower and more complicated than that of destruction.”
“Of all the things that define us, education appears to be the most highly correlated with success. It is little wonder, then, that we are urged throughout childhood to do well in school and take our successive graduations as necessary steps toward a comfortable life. There is a promise implicit in this process: follow instructions, please others, obey the rules, and happiness will be yours.”
“Often it is the dalliances and the detours that define us. There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised.”
“So it is with our choice of people to be with. Nearly every human action is in some way an expression of how we think about ourselves. There are few behaviors that are “self-esteem neutral.””
““I don’t have answers applicable to every relationship; I believe in what works. What you are doing now isn’t working. Why not try something else?””
“The truth may not make us free, but to lie to ourselves in the name of temporary comfort is the ultimate folly.”
“We do those things repetitively that produce some reward. It is just hard sometimes to discern what that reinforcement might be.”
“The rise of effective somatic treatments— antibiotics, surgery, drugs to control conditions like diabetes, hypertension, all manner of hormone deficiencies— has contributed to the sense that healing is something that happens to us rather than something in which we are active participants.”
“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.”
“Even in good times the public perception of the risk of becoming a crime victim is exaggerated. We arm ourselves against mythical intruders and ignore the reality that family members are the most likely victims of the guns we buy. Meanwhile, the real risks to our welfare— smoking, overeating, not fastening seat belts, social injustice, and the people we elect to office— provoke little anxiety.”
“How can anyone be happy in such a world? A good case of healthy denial helps, but the real secret is selective attention. If we choose to focus our awareness and energy on those things and people that bring us pleasure and satisfaction, we have a very good chance of being happy in a world full of unhappiness.”
“Our yearning for the past is fueled by a selective memory of our younger selves.”
“To know someone fully and love them in spite of, even because of, their imperfections is an act that requires us to recognize and forgive, two very important indicators of emotional maturity. More important is the fact that, if we can do this for other people, we may be able do it for ourselves.”
“Our constant challenge is not to seek perfection in ourselves and others, but to find ways to be happy in an imperfect world.”
“The young frequently look at the old with a combination of obligation, disdain, and fear. They ask themselves, is this what I have to look forward to? Will I become a collection of physical complaints and recurrent reminiscences of an earlier, better time?”
“Or, we can concede a poor agnosticism and surrender ourselves to the unknown as we try to imagine some meaning in the ceaseless rhythms of existence: life and death, dream and despair, and the heartbreaking mystery of unanswered prayers.”
“All humor is in some way directed at the human condition. To laugh at ourselves is to acknowledge the ultimate futility of our efforts to stave off the depredations of time.”
“Things may be grave but they need not be serious.”
“This approach manifests the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse; confrontation gradually improves it. In the case of depression, the behavior that needs changing generally involves overcoming inertia and fatigue enough to do things that predictably make us feel better.”
“Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be.”
“The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?”
“Most of all, by placing responsibility outside ourselves we miss out on the healing knowledge that what happens to us is not nearly as important as the attitude we adopt in response.”
“As a way of inducing reflection I frequently ask people to write their own epitaphs… I would choose for my own. I tell them I like the words of Raymond Carver: And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
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Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now - by Gordon Livingston
Powerful and profound life lessons from a psychiatrist who's been listening to people's problems for decades.
my notes
If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong.
We are what we do. We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do.
In judging other people, we need to pay attention not to what they promise but to how they behave.
Past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.
The three components of happiness are:
* something to do
* someone to love
* something to look forward to
We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rises to the level of our own.
It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place.
We operate in the world mostly on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday.
Our children owe us nothing.
Well-functioning families are good at letting their children go. Poorly functioning families tend to hold on to them.
The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas.
My favorite therapeutic question is “What’s next?” It bypasses the self-pity implied in clinging to past traumas.
I don’t have a clear idea of what people need to do to make themselves better. I am, however, able to sit with them while they figure it out. My job is to hold them to the task, point out connections I think I see between past and present, wonder about underlying motives.
We are responsible for most of what happens to us.
Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.
Feelings follow behavior.
Most people know what is good for them, know what will make them feel better: exercise, hobbies, time with those they care about. They do not avoid these things because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them. They are waiting until they feel better. Frequently, it’s a long wait.
Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.
Happiness is the ultimate risk. There might be advantages to their being depressed. It is a safe position. Asking someone to relinquish depression is often met with resistance. To be happy is to take the risk of losing that happiness.
When confronted with a suicidal person I seldom try to talk them out of it. Instead I ask them to examine what it is that has so far dissuaded them from killing themselves.
People in despair are, naturally, intensely self-absorbed. Suicide is the ultimate expression of this preoccupation with self.
When people fall in love, no justification for their attachment is necessary.
When people fall out of love, the demands for an explanation are insistent: What happened? Who’s at fault? Why couldn’t you work it out? “We didn’t love each other anymore” is not, in most cases, a sufficient response.
Only bad things happen quickly. All the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues.
Nearly every human action is in some way an expression of how we think about ourselves.
Nothing is so beautiful as a promise, right after it is given.
Lying to ourselves disables us entirely from making needed changes.
A conviction that there exists somewhere the person who will save us with his or her love. Much of the infidelity that is the hallmark of unhappy marriages rests on this illusion.
The word “closure,” with its comforting implications that grief is a time-limited process from which we all recover.
Some part of my heart had been cut out and buried. What was left? Now there was a question worth contemplating.
It is our task to transfer that love to those who still need us.
Nobody likes to be told what to do.
Much of what passes for intimate communication involves admonitions and instructions.
I ask people in conflict to withhold criticism of those around them to see if this changes the atmosphere. It is amazing how radical this suggestion seems.
Awfulizing: the idea that any relaxation in standards or vigilance is the first step toward failure, degradation, and the collapse of civilization as we know it.
The conflicts that arise between parents and children are skirmishes in a long-term power struggle based on the faulty assumption that the primary task of parenthood is to shape the behavior of children through incessant instruction.
Rules and punishments produce oppositional children who grow into oppositional adults.
Since judgmental people were generally raised in judgmental families, they find it hard to envision another way of interacting with those they live with.
It is always easier to keep doing what we’re used to, even if it’s evidently not working for us.
It is possible to live without criticizing and directing everyone around us.
The primary goal of parenting, beyond keeping our children safe and loved, is to convey to them a sense that it is possible to be happy in an uncertain world, to give them hope.
Do this by example. Demonstrate qualities of commitment, determination, and optimism.
The major advantage of illness is that it provides relief from responsibility.
Behavior that is reinforced will continue; behavior that is not will extinguish.
It is just hard sometimes to discern what that reinforcement might be.
We are, when sick, told to “take it easy.” The longer someone is disabled, the greater the chance that the illness will become a part of a person’s identity.
Surgery & drugs have contributed to the sense that healing is something that happens to us rather than something in which we are active participants, inducing a kind of passivity in those afflicted.
One of the things that define us is what we worry about.
A “misfortune fund” that could be used to compensate people facing extraordinary expenses that were no one’s fault (e.g., parents of children born with disabling abnormalities, victims of crime or natural disasters). Surely this would be fairer and more compassionate than enriching a few winners in the litigation lottery. Such a system would reinforce the belief that we all share in the inevitable uncertainties and risks that are a part of life.
Threats must be identified realistically in our personal lives as well.
Much of what we do is driven by fear of failure.
The pursuit of material wealth distracts us from activities and people that provide more lasting pleasure and satisfaction.
There are no more powerful desires than the pursuit of happiness and the struggle for self-respect.
If means can be found that move people in these directions: better jobs, education, the chance to improve one’s life, and a sense of fairness and opportunity, the seductive and short-lived bliss provided by drugs will lose its appeal.
Parents have a limited ability to shape children’s behavior, except for the worse.
To imagine that we are solely, or even primarily, responsible for the successes and failures of our children is a narcissistic myth. You seldom see a bumper sticker that reads, MY KID IS IN REHAB.
Parents can try to teach the values and behaviors that they have found to be important, but it is the way we live as adults that conveys the real message to our children about what we believe in. Whether they choose to integrate these values into their own lives is up to them. Kids have a keen nose for hypocrisy.
Anxiety is contagious. Children sense it in their parents and are affected by it.
Given love and support, most children grow into happy, productive adults independent of whatever theory of parenting they were raised with.
Set reasonable limits on children’s behavior. Provoke less confrontation and resentment.
Most of the debilitating struggles within families that drain the happiness of all concerned and lead to destructive power struggles flow from an obsessive need for control on the parents’ part and an anxious sense that their direction is all that stands between their children and a life of crime.
When parents are preoccupied with unimportant issues like food consumption and room cleanliness, these will be arenas for endless conflict.
Children raised in homes where parental control is severe turn out to have a poor set of internalized limits because they have experienced only rigid external rules. Conversely, in families where there are few constraints children do not have a way to learn those guidelines necessary to live comfortably with others.
Our primary task as parents is to convey to them a sense of the world as an imperfect place in which it is possible, nevertheless, to be happy.
“What can I do to make sure this kid turns out well?” Not much, but maybe cutting down on the fights and not trying to control your child’s every decision might help to make everyone happier right now.
Enjoy life even as we are surrounded by evidence of its brevity and potential for disaster.
Focus our awareness and energy on those things and people that bring us pleasure.
Memory is not an accurate transcription of past experience. Rather it is a story we tell ourselves about the past, full of distortions, wishful thinking, and unfulfilled dreams.
The problem with longing for paradises is that it distracts us from our efforts to extract pleasure and meaning from the present.
When we visit our childhood homes, we are commonly amazed at how much smaller they seem.
When Russell Baker first submitted the memoir of his youth, Growing Up, it was rejected by a publisher as uninteresting. He then told his wife, “I am going upstairs to invent the story of my life.” The result was a best seller - and no less true than the original version.
Of all the forms of courage, the ability to laugh is the most profoundly therapeutic.
Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be.
The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?
Life can be seen as a series of relinquishments, rehearsals for the final act of letting go of our earthly selves.
Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.
If every misfortune can be blamed on someone else, we are relieved of the difficult task of examining our own contributory behavior or just accepting the reality that life is and has always been full of adversity. Most of all, by placing responsibility outside ourselves we miss out on the healing knowledge that what happens to us is not nearly as important as the attitude we adopt in response.
Write your own epitaph. This exercise should be incorporated into every written will: “And for my epitaph I would like the following:”
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https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/51526.Too_Soon_Old_Too_Late_Smart
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now
by Gordon Livingston,
Elizabeth Edwards (Foreword by)
3.86 ·
Rating details · 2,929 ratings · 354 reviews
After service in Vietnam as a surgeon in 1968-69, Dr. Gordon Livingston returned to the U.S. and began work as a psychiatrist. In that capacity, he has listened to people talk about their lives and the limitless ways that they have found to be unhappy. He is also a parent twice bereaved. In one thirteen-month period, he lost his eldest son to suicide, his youngest to leukemia. Out of a lifetime of experience, Livingston has extracted thirty bedrock truths: We are what we do. Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Only bad things happen quickly. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing. The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. Livingston illuminates these and twenty-four others in perfectly calibrated essays, many of which emphasize our closest relationships and the things that we do to impede or enhance them. These writings underscore that "we are what we do," and that while there may be no escaping who we are, we have the capacity to face loss, misfortune, and regret, and to move beyond them.
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https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781569244197
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now
Gordon Livingston, Author, Elizabeth Edwards, Foreword by Marlowe & Company $18 (169p) ISBN 978-1-56924-419-7
The gentle, even-keeled warmth of Livingston's prose distinguishes this slim book of 30 inspirational ""truths."" A psychiatrist familiar with trauma from both his practice and his life (in one 13-month period, he lost one son to leukemia and another to suicide), Livingston offers the kind of wisdom that feels simultaneously commonsensical and revelatory: ""We are what we do,"" ""The perfect is the enemy of the good,"" ""The major advantage of illness is relief from responsibility."" He intersperses counsel with personal experience, and tackles topics both joyful and deeply painful. In the chapter focusing on ""We are what we do,"" he notes that the ""three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to,"" and he reminds us that ""love is demonstrated behaviorally""-that is, actions count more than words. In his discussion of ""Happiness is the greatest risk,"" he considers how our fear of losing happiness is often a roadblock to our experiencing it. For those contemplating suicide, he writes that ""it is reasonable to confront them with the selfishness and anger implied in any act of self-destruction."" Livingston's words feel true, and his wisdom hard-earned. Among the many blithe and hollow self-help books available everywhere, this book stands out as a jewel.
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https://www.nateliason.com/notes/soon-old-late-smart-gordon-livingston
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston
Rating: 8/10
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High-Level Thoughts
It’s an interesting set of reminders on life from someone who’s gone through more emotional hardship than most of us ever will. Some might feel familiar, other topics new, but it’s definitely worth reading through.
Summary Notes
“If the map doesn’t agree with the ground, the map is wrong.”
“It is when these feelings surface that we need to think about our mental instrument of navigation and how to correct it, so that we do not fall into the repetitive patterns of those who waste the learning that is the only consolation for our painful experience.”
“Here is what I tell them: The good news is that we have effective treatments for the symptoms of depression; the bad news is that medication will not make you happy. Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.”
“We are always talking about what we want, what we intend. These are dreams and wishes and are of little value in changing our mood. We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do. Conversely, in judging other people we need to pay attention not to what they promise but to how they behave.”
“Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.”
“The frantic attempts to overcome this ennui take the form of a thirst for entertainment and stimulation that is, in the end, devoid of meaning.”
“The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.”
“We love someone when the importance of his or her needs and desires rises to the level of our own.”
“This question, “What do I owe my parents?” frequently distorts people’s lives well into, and sometimes throughout, adulthood. In fact, our children owe us nothing. It was our decision to bring them into the world. If we loved them and provided for their needs it was our task as parents, not some selfless act.”
“Well-functioning families are good at letting their children go. Poorly functioning families tend to hold on to them.”
“Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.”
“If this formulation appears to be overly analytical and to ignore the mysterious process of “falling in love,” that is because in my experience the “chemistry” that causes us to choose one person over all other possibilities can be seen in retrospect as a combination of readiness, lust, and hope rather than an indefinable but powerful union of two souls.”
“There is a kind of track that we are put on early in life with the implicit suggestion that, if we “succeed,” we will be happy and secure.”
“The best one can hope for is to introduce them to the paradox of perfection: in some settings, notably in our intimate relationships, we gain control only by relinquishing it.”
“Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.”
“When presented with new things, the operative question may be “Why not?” but people frequently defend themselves from disappointment by asking “Why?””
“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.”
“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.”
“No one would expect to become good at skiing without falling down. And yet many people are surprised at the hurt that routinely accompanies our efforts to find someone worthy of our love. To take the risks necessary to achieve this goal is an act of courage. To refuse to take them, to protect our hearts against all loss, is an act of despair.”
“There are certain personality characteristics that are highly correlated with academic and professional success: dedication to work, attention to detail, ability to manage time, conscientiousness. People who have this constellation of traits are generally excellent students and productive workers. They can also be difficult to live with.”
“If we try to impose a businesslike, vertically integrated decision-making structure on our families, we are likely to encounter resentment and resistance. Conversely, if our style tends to be impulsive, superficial, and pleasure-seeking, we may find it difficult to succeed at work.”
“The things we are sure will make us happy seldom do. Fate, it seems, has a sense of humor.”
“This is the final and controlling paradox: Only by embracing our mortality can we be happy in the time we have. The intensity of our connections to those we love is a function of our knowledge that everything and everyone is evanescent. Our ability to experience any pleasure requires either a healthy denial or courageous acceptance of the weight of time and the prospect of ultimate defeat.”
“The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves.”
“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become.”
“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become.”
“Also, the fear that we might try and not succeed can produce a crippling inertia. Keeping our expectations low protects us from disappointment.”
“Before we can do anything, we must be able to imagine it. This sounds easy, but I find that many people do not make the link between behavior and feelings. I blame modern medicine and the advertising industry for much of this problem. We have become used to the idea that much of what we don’t like about ourselves and our lives can be quickly overcome with little effort on our part.”
“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.”
“Most families I talk to see their aging relatives as a burden. The idea that the elderly have anything to give the young in the way of wisdom and life experience is seldom considered. The reason: most old people are preoccupied with self-centered complaints.”
“I believe that parenthood, a voluntary commitment, does not incur a reciprocal obligation in the young— either to conform their lives to our parental preferences, or to listen endlessly to our protests about the ravages of time. In fact, I am of the opinion that the old have a duty to suffer the losses of age with as much grace and determination as they can muster and to avoid inflicting their discomforts on those who love them.”
“It is not so much what occurs, but how we define events and respond that determines how we feel.”
“When I listen to comments from elderly people who have been married fifty, sixty, or more years answering the inevitable question about “the secret to a successful marriage,” it seems to me that a high tolerance for boredom often heads the list.”
“In fact, apart from a last-second touchdown, unexpected inheritance, winning the lottery, or a visitation from God, it is hard to imagine sudden good news. Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children.”
“The process of building has always been slower and more complicated than that of destruction.”
“Of all the things that define us, education appears to be the most highly correlated with success. It is little wonder, then, that we are urged throughout childhood to do well in school and take our successive graduations as necessary steps toward a comfortable life. There is a promise implicit in this process: follow instructions, please others, obey the rules, and happiness will be yours.”
“Often it is the dalliances and the detours that define us. There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised.”
“So it is with our choice of people to be with. Nearly every human action is in some way an expression of how we think about ourselves. There are few behaviors that are “self-esteem neutral.””
““I don’t have answers applicable to every relationship; I believe in what works. What you are doing now isn’t working. Why not try something else?””
“The truth may not make us free, but to lie to ourselves in the name of temporary comfort is the ultimate folly.”
“We do those things repetitively that produce some reward. It is just hard sometimes to discern what that reinforcement might be.”
“The rise of effective somatic treatments— antibiotics, surgery, drugs to control conditions like diabetes, hypertension, all manner of hormone deficiencies— has contributed to the sense that healing is something that happens to us rather than something in which we are active participants.”
“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.”
“Even in good times the public perception of the risk of becoming a crime victim is exaggerated. We arm ourselves against mythical intruders and ignore the reality that family members are the most likely victims of the guns we buy. Meanwhile, the real risks to our welfare— smoking, overeating, not fastening seat belts, social injustice, and the people we elect to office— provoke little anxiety.”
“How can anyone be happy in such a world? A good case of healthy denial helps, but the real secret is selective attention. If we choose to focus our awareness and energy on those things and people that bring us pleasure and satisfaction, we have a very good chance of being happy in a world full of unhappiness.”
“Our yearning for the past is fueled by a selective memory of our younger selves.”
“To know someone fully and love them in spite of, even because of, their imperfections is an act that requires us to recognize and forgive, two very important indicators of emotional maturity. More important is the fact that, if we can do this for other people, we may be able do it for ourselves.”
“Our constant challenge is not to seek perfection in ourselves and others, but to find ways to be happy in an imperfect world.”
“The young frequently look at the old with a combination of obligation, disdain, and fear. They ask themselves, is this what I have to look forward to? Will I become a collection of physical complaints and recurrent reminiscences of an earlier, better time?”
“Or, we can concede a poor agnosticism and surrender ourselves to the unknown as we try to imagine some meaning in the ceaseless rhythms of existence: life and death, dream and despair, and the heartbreaking mystery of unanswered prayers.”
“All humor is in some way directed at the human condition. To laugh at ourselves is to acknowledge the ultimate futility of our efforts to stave off the depredations of time.”
“Things may be grave but they need not be serious.”
“This approach manifests the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse; confrontation gradually improves it. In the case of depression, the behavior that needs changing generally involves overcoming inertia and fatigue enough to do things that predictably make us feel better.”
“Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be.”
“The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?”
“Most of all, by placing responsibility outside ourselves we miss out on the healing knowledge that what happens to us is not nearly as important as the attitude we adopt in response.”
“As a way of inducing reflection I frequently ask people to write their own epitaphs… I would choose for my own. I tell them I like the words of Raymond Carver: And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
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