Saturday, May 12, 2018

Interesting take-away from books - Part I of V.

If a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change the reader’s life : that alone justifies reading and re-reading it and finding room for it in one’s shelves. Here are passages from 4 books.

How to fail at almost everything, and still win big. By Scott Adams
Positivity is far more than a mental preference. It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It is the closest thing that we have to magic.

Good + Good > Excellent. Success Wise, you are better off being good at two complementary skills than being excellent at one. The success formula : Every skill that you acquire doubles your odds of success.

Tuesdays with Morrie. By Mitch Albom
Tension of opposites. Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.

“A tension of opposites, like a pull on rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle. Life is like a wrestling match. And love always wins at the end.

Blink, by Malcomm Gladwell
Perhaps the most common - and the most important - forms of rapid recognition are the judgements we make and the impressions we form of the other people. Every waking minute that we are in the presence of someone, we come with a constant stream of predictions and inferences about what the person is thinking and feeling. When someone says, “I Love you”, we look into that person’s eyes to judge his or her sincerity. If you were to approach a one year old child, and do something a little bit puzzling (say cupping your hand over hers), the child would immediately look up into your eyes. Why ? Because what you have done requires explanation, and the child knows that she can find an answer on your face. This practice of inferring motivations and intentions of others is a classic example of “Thin slicing”.

Man’s search for Meaning, Viktor E Frankl
(This book is a narration of experiences in Hitler’s concentration camps)
He, who has a “why” to live for can bear almost any “how”. The prisoners, who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss for belief in the future, he also lost his spritual hold. He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Those who know how close the connection between the state of mind of a man - his courage and hope, or lack of them - and the state of immunity of his body, will understand that sudden loss of hope and courage can have deadly effect.

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