REACT...it seems I'm not alone...

I’m reading Gretchen Rubin’s THE HAPPINESS PROJECT…I wish I could read all day, but at the pace I’m going: with every  paragraph or new topic I catch myself looking at the ceiling thinking how, if and why it applies to me and my life and what I should do about it…so I think it’s going to take me to read it as long as it took her to write it…

anyway, I’m enjoying it immensely!!

It is my kind of book: the perfectly balanced mix of research, quote and anecdote all in a true SELF-HELP BOOK (the genre/category I said I didn’t like much…well in this case the jokes on me…AND I FELL IN LOVE WITH THE COVER AT FIRST SIGHT)

I hadn’t commented because each time I get a chance to read I always forget my pencil to underline the key parts of the text and leaving it to memory is out of the question…but today I stumbled, well not exactly, let me rephrase…as I continued reading the part that followed was something I was not expecting…(and this time I did have a pencil with me)

How many of you have already read it?

Right now I’m on chapter three (and in no hurry to finish it…remember I become emotionally attached to books, so whenever I get to the end it’s like saying goodbye to a dear friend: IT HURTS TOO MUCH)

So, guess who also found herself being AFRAID OF FAILURE…Yes, you guessed it: Gretchen Rubin, the author of this bestseller and several other important books among her long list of personal achievements…

let me set up the quote for you…

After tackling her need to be and feel more energized in January, then her resolution to strengthen her personal relationships in February, in March she decided to attain happiness through her work and launched her blog but soon felt she needed more, she was sure she could do more…although…

Chapter 3, page 79:

“Pushing myself, I knew, would cause me serious discomfort. It’s a Secret of Adulthood: Happiness doesn’t always make you happy. When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure – but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.”

In all this process, SELF-KNOWLEDGE was very important to her, it served as the information she needed to push herself and at the same time BE TRUE TO HERSELF, TO HER ESSENCE…she quotes W.H Auden:

“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity” 

So if we put these two quotes together I think it would be safe to say that each of our failures is a moment of discovery of our SELF…it’s an opportunity to identify our limitations and observe if we’re faced with an accidental limitation which has to be OUTGROWN or a necessary limitation THAT HAS TO BE ACCEPTED on our quest for SELF-KNOWLEDGE…

I am so happy I didn’t desist in my need and want of this book…

hugs people

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