Finished Getting To Yes today. This was a fantastic book. Prolly in the top 5% of the self help books I’ve listened to… at least for me. Maybe it’s cuz I always have had problems with emotions getting in the way of my personal negotiations and this instinct to think of my interactions with other people as being an us-vs-them kind of scenario, like even my romantic relationships in the past often felt like me vs her and I never knew how to steer the conversation back to a place we are both working toward the same goals with our talking. But that feels like the norm in our society. But the concepts in that book are so easy and straightforward except they’re not actually easy because of our emotions. Our feelings are constantly distorting our sense of reality and values.
It’s one of those books that’s just entirely common sense that for some reason we already knew but were not following. Something to remind us what is actually important when we are conversing with other humans.
I stopped listening to Hooked by Michael Moss, the book about processed foods. I have almost 3 hours left on it. Also an excellent book, but I stopped because it was actually being really effective. I was actually doing pretty well of staying away from candy and processed foods (it helped that the campground I went to was mostly vegetarian), so I decided to set it aside and wait until I started to slip before picking it back up. The book really is effective for me at making me want to avoid garbage foods… it’s just that the effect does not last very long. That’s me of course. I am a hard-core sugar addict. So I’m gonna go back to that book tomorrow and hopefully it’ll help me get back on track.
Cuz the point of self help books are of course to improve your own life in measurable ways so I should listen to them at times when i think they will have the biggest benefit to my life and to my ability to contribute to my community.
I also listened to The Essential 55 by Ron Clark.
–Just to jump topics, I want to start writing about all the books I read here. I have hundreds that I’ve collected in my Audible library and they all blend together. I know some of them were fantastic and others were mediocre and a few were just stupid. but I can’t remember which is which with the exception of the obvious ones like How to win friends and influence people. But if I force myself to come and write about them here then I can always come search for any title… hmm, maybe I should think of a keyword I can use for myself with a rating system so I can easily search my journal for mentions of a particularly good book. I dunno–or maybe just dump it all into chatGpt and ask it “what are my favorite books?”
Anyway, the Essential 55 is about teaching children. Started out weird with him demanding the kids call him ‘sir’ and all women be ‘maam’ and thought it was gonna be all about discipline and control but then–so it’s basically just a list of his 55 personal rules that he makes the kids follow and why each rule exists–and most of them I felt were actually pretty good and made sense. Like the first one was the worst one. I don’t have kids of course, and have no interest in teaching kids and I’ve actually only interacted with like one child in the last 15 years, and that was over Zoom, but books like this still have a ton of value for folks like me because most of the rules that he talks about really have some kind of metaphorical equivalent to either dealing with myself and my own life or with dealing with other humans. It’s like so many of the life concepts that I learn about in these books I listen to but really simplified and told in kind of a childish manner that gives us a different perspective on it that may help in remembering.
And the book was rather funny and silly, like he really didn’t take it too seriously when writing it, and joked around quite a bit with really natural language.
And he did talk about being strict at times, like he gave detention to any kid who didn’t finish his homework, which is harsh and wouldn’t work–his kids would have revolted or just broken down–if he did not also have extreme levels of compassion and empathy and positive attitudes toward the kids. Like, yes the strict rules helped and gave the kids high standards to strive to, but they would have backfired and made things worse if he did not have huge levels of kindness to compensate for them.
That’s good advice for life. High moral and ethical standards. Really high standards. But also high levels of compassion and empathy, and commitment and willingness to help others learn how to meet those standards.
Anyway, excellent book.
And now I’m having sugar cravings. I want my chocolate. So tomorrow I go back to Hooked and hopefully make some progress on training my brain to be revolted by processed and sweet foods.
Thursday, February 6, 2025
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