TheRoadLessTraveled

Note

• Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.

• There’s nothing to moan about. Life is difficult. Everyone has his or her own difficulties in different periods of life. What you are supposed to do is to confront and solve them, enjoying the pain and the joy of overcoming them.

• Do we want to moan about them or solve them?

• Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems.

• What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one.

• And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

• Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning.

• We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist.

• We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them.

• discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems.these tools are techniques of suffering,

• There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing.

• if she were to force herself to accomplish the unpleasant part of her job during the first hour, she would then be free to enjoy the other six.

• She was not willing to tolerate her discomfort long enough to analyze the problem.

• “I knew six weeks ago that I was running through my money fast, but somehow I couldn’t believe that it would come to this point. The whole thing just didn’t seem very urgent, but, boy, it’s urgent now.”

It’s the problem I have. I always put off what I really need to do and distracted by other things. Until the problem become so severe…

• “This problem was caused me by other people, or by social circumstances beyond my control, and therefore it is up to other people or society to solve this problem for me. It is not really my personal problem.”

neurosis /a character disorder.

The neurotic assumes too much responsibility; the person with a character disorder not enough.

• many individuals have both a neurosis and a character disorder and are referred to as “character neurotics,” indicating that in some areas of their lives they are guilt-ridden by virtue of having assumed responsibility that is not really theirs, while in other areas of their lives they fail to take realistic responsibility for themselves.

• the problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence.

• they will instinctually assume responsibility for certain deprivations that they experience but do not yet understand.

• Or early adolescents who are not yet successful at dating or at sports will see themselves as seriously deficient human beings rather than the late or even average but perfectly adequate bloomers they usually are.

• When their children are delinquent or are having difficulty in school, character-disordered parents will automatically lay the blame on the school system or on other children who, they insist, are a “bad influence” on their own children

• Since they lack the capacity to see how inappropriate this is, the children will often accept this responsibility, and insofar as they do accept it, they will become neurotic..

• “If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.”

• the entirety of one’s adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions.

• The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world.

• Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

• Although it has something to do with my parents, it’s my own problem, no one will solve it for me, yeah.

• Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment.

• it is our frontal lobes, our capacity to think and to examine ourselves that most makes us human.

• it is certainly because of the pain involved in a life of genuine self-examination that the majority steer away from it.

• The only way that we can be certain that our map of reality is valid is to expose it to the criticism and challenge of other map-makers.

• . That part of me is gone now. It died. It had to die. I killed it. I killed it with my desire to win at parenting.