Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now

by Gordon Livingston MD

we must accept that society is moving toward a kind of serial monogamy, an acknowledgment that people change over time and that it is naive to expect the love of our youth to endure.

the formal definition of personality includes our habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to others.

Much of our difficulty in developing and sustaining personal relationships resides in our failure to recognize, in ourselves as well as in others, those personality characteristics that make someone a poor candidate for a committed relationship.

character traits that describes qualities to nurture in ourselves and to seek in our friends and lovers.

kindness,

Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.

We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do.

Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.

The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.

Finally, we are entitled to receive only that which we are prepared to give. This is why there is truth to the adage that we all get the marriage partners we deserve, and why most of our dissatisfactions with others reflect limitations in ourselves.

Why do people not seem to understand that criticism begets anger and unhappiness?

The things we do, the prejudices that we hold, and the repetitive conflicts that afflict our

lives are seldom the products of rational thought. In fact, we operate in the world mostly on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday.

If most of our behavior is driven by our feelings, however unclear they may be, it follows that to change ourselves we must be able to identify our emotional needs and find ways of satisfying them that do not offend those upon whom our happiness depends.

Finally, when struggling to overcome maladaptive behaviors by the

use of logic, one is often confronted with the fact that some ignorance is invincible. People can become so wedded to their particular view of how things should work that they ignore all evidence that suggests that change is necessary.

The qualities of a good therapist mirror those of a good parent: patience, empathy, capacity for affection, and an ability to listen nonjudgmentally.

If I find that I am providing most of the energy and optimism, or if I am losing hope for change, it is time to stop.

Finally, if the person I’m talking to appears wedded determinedly to the past and unwilling to contemplate a better future, I grow impatient.