A selection of highlights from a review:

* The 50/50 Fallacy: this notion is self-explanatory. No marriage is a 50-50 balance of energy. Contribution levels will vary across situations and over time. If you expect a 50/50 situation, you’re likely really expecting something more along the lines of an 80/20 exchange in your favor, as in you wish your spouse would do 80% of the lifting. Check yourself, and realize there should be zero competition involved in relationship contribution.

* No one— not a single person out of a thousand— said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want.

* I uncovered one underlying principle behind their emphasis on interpersonal skills: maintaining a healthy humility.

* Isolated work is an illusion to be avoided. Your job can be autonomous and flexible AND be connected to many people and environments.

* What if out of the enormous muddle of child-rearing advice there was a “magic bullet”? What if there was one course of action you could take that would create loving relationships with your children, serve as an early warning system for problems they are having, and lead to a lifelong bond with them? According to the experts, there is: spend more time with your children. And if necessary, sacrifice to do it.

* This extra time spent with children should be interactive. Time spent with children is not simply being in the same room with them or just keeping an eye on them. You want to be engaged in their experience as often as reasonably possible.

* No one has perfect children. They all admit it: their kids had at least some difficulty, a flaw, a period of unhappiness, a major wrong turn. The reassuring thing is that most of their kids turned out pretty well nevertheless. The message is clear: abandon all thoughts of raising the “perfect child” or being the perfect parent, and do it as early as possible.

* By making healthy lifestyle decisions as early as possible, you can to some degree control whether you spend the last decades of your life in healthy productivity and contentment or in a downward spiral of physical misery.

* ALWAYS reach out. You do not want to become isolated.

* Be honest above all. If you’re honest with all the people around you, no matter what happens, you can look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and say, “I haven’t done anything wrong.” In other words, you’ve made the right decision if you’re honest.

* One particular virtue was mentioned over and over again – honesty. Just be respectfully honest. If you present the facts as necessary – no more, no less – then you never have to be nervous. The facts are what they are. Withholding or distorting relevant facts when interacting with others generates anxiety and discomfort.

* Don’t worry so much. There is not enough time in our lives to trade off the gold of our existence for the dust of what-ifs or what-if-nots.

* Once people reach a certain age (70s and beyond), it’s almost a certainty that they have experienced significant loss and significant joy. The elders have become experts in walking a balance between accepting loss and maintaining an awareness of life’s pleasures. The elders overwhelmingly believe that each of us can choose to be happier and that we can do so in the face of the painful events that inevitably accompany the process of living.

* They see a distinct difference between worry and conscious, rational planning that greatly reduces worry.

More at:

* https://versatilebeing.com/2018/01/19/book-notes-30-lessons-...

Did your advice come from one person, a dozen, or a thousand? Because the book is the distillation of a thousand: the common threads from all sorts of people from all walks of life.

Reading the book costs nothing except some time (and no money if you use a library like I did).