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Do you want to be perfect? Or do you want to be happy? We're all laboring under our own and society's expectations to be perfect in every wayto look younger, to make more money, to be happy all the time. But according to Tal Ben-Shahar, the New York Times bestselling author of Happier, the pursuit of perfect may actually be the number-one internal obstacle to finding happiness. Applying cutting-edge research in the field of positive psychology - the scientific principles taught in his wildly popular course at Harvard University - Ben-Shahar takes us off the impossible pursuit of perfection and directs us to happiness, richness, and true fulfillment. He shows us the freedom derived from not trying to do it all right all the time and the real lessons that failure and painful emotions can teach us. He provides exercises for self reflection, meditations, and Time-Ins to help you rediscover what you really want out of life.… (more)
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I have to say that despite my doubts about a self-help book ever working for me, The Pursuit of Perfect appealed to me a lot. First of all, even if perfectionism was never one of my many vices, I realized that I was too among the hordes of people trying to live up to societal expectations of the perfect. From the first pages I could tell that this book had a potential of opening my eyes and also giving me permission to just act according to my human nature, to be simply ‘good enough’ and not necessarily ‘better than’. Mr. Ben-Shahar’s writing is very accessible and quite persuasive. To give you an example, I have always been a person who would suddenly feel envy towards somebody else and then immediately I would scorn myself for feeling this horrible emotion, put it aside and in the end beating myself for the rest of the day about how I must be a bad human being for feeling envy towards somebody that most likely doesn’t deserve it. A few days ago, I was sitting in a public place, waiting my turn to be serviced and reading the part of the book which talks about not suppressing our negative feelings but instead accepting them. And wouldn’t you know, there comes a drop-dead girl, wearing sexy clothes and attracting stares of every male specimen in the room. I immediately start being jealous and think of all the reasons why she really is looking ridiculous and completely overdressed and how she truly is screaming for attention. But instead of suppressing these emotions of jealousy and low self-confidence, I decided to just stay with them and take a closer look at the girl. I allowed myself to feel the negativity, I accepted the fact that I indeed was being jealous and went back to reading my book. Hours later, when I left the building, I all of a sudden realized that I completely forgot about that girl, didn’t beat myself up for being jealous and I had a fairly good, relaxing time as opposed to being literally devoured by envy. So there you have it. It worked and I have a strong feeling that if this one worked, others might too.
If you are looking for a self-help book that focuses on personal anecdotes and avoids discussions of the academic studies on the topic, this might be for you. However, if you are more interested in the science behind this fascinating new field I recommend “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt or “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. Both are very accessible.
Wow. That was incorrect. Ben-Shahar starts by debunking the perfection as a goal
And then he takes the concept further linking it to deeper philosophical, emotional, and psychological concepts.
I had thought that the notion of abandoning the drive for perfection would be contradictory to my overall approach to life. Instead, I learned that the converse is true. And that has made this the most eye-opening book I've read in years.
(I should elaborate by adding that I found the audio book a little tough to digest, so I bought the 'real' book... that worked much better.)
I can't give this CD set a good review, however. In general, I have trouble appreciating audio books, and this one is no exception. The author's ideas merit pondering, and it's difficult to ponder while listening to a book being read. You could pause the CD and 'ponder' but that doesn't come naturally to me, And of course the index, notes, and excellent bibliography are missing.
The main problem with the CD version is, however, the reader. His voice is didactic, and he takes the opportunity to sound snide and sarcastic whenever he can fit it in. I've looked at the book itself, and find the author's writing 'personality' to be gentle and humorous, but this didn't come across at all. I can't help but wish that Mr. Ben-Shahar had read the book himself. As a Harvard professor, he's probably an accomplished lecturer.
I thought the reader was OK, very even in reading, but I would have enjoyed hearing the author read the book, especially because he shared so much personal information. Also he is a top lecturer at Harvard.
"Do you work at generating light or avoiding darkness?" probably not an exact quote (another disadvantage of the audio format) but that phrase stuck out for me as a take-home message, which turned out to have much to do with accepting suffering and imperfection as a normal part of life.
Unabridged audio book read by Eric Conger.
I should not have requested this book. My life and habits do not really accommodate audio books and this one comes on 6 CDs and runs to 7 hours.
Nonetheless, I made myself listen to much of it since I keep getting notices that I have yet to review it and I am not getting any more Early Reviewer books.
Eric Conger has a pleasant voice with good pacing, although a bit slow of time. He is easy to listen to for the amount of time required to read this book.
The author's field is positive psychology and his thesis is that the pursuit of perfection leads us to impoverished lives. The book is divided into 3 sections: theory, application, and meditations.
The author's message is a simple and powerful one backed up by research. Yet, being so, it didn't require this much beating of the drum to get the point across. Also, the book is of only so much value if one is not the kind to do the exercises in a self-help book.
There are probably better introductions to positive psychology but this one, while somewhat repetitious, is decent enough.
Yes, it contains proof, and exercises to help the afflicted, but it all come down to that first simple statement. But I very soon became impatient with what I was reading, not to mention extremely irritated at the constant interchange between “he” and “she” in the examples; pointless political correctness that simple gets in the way.
I don't think I really needed to plough through all that tautologous writing to get the point. I could go on, but then the same accusation could be levelled at me!
Yes, it contains proof, and exercises to help the afflicted, but it all come down to that first simple statement. But I very soon became impatient with what I was reading, not to mention extremely irritated at the constant interchange between "he" and "she" in the examples; pointless political correctness that simple gets in the way.
I don't think I really needed to plough through all that tautologous writing to get the point. I could go on, but then the same accusation could be levelled at me!