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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Susan Cain
Read between
December 31, 2022 - February 4, 2023
“Businesses are often trying to shape themselves to be safe, innovative, collaborative, and inclusive,” she told me. “But safety holds hands with fear; innovation holds hands with failure; collaboration holds hands with conflict; and inclusion holds hands with difference. These business outcomes depend on an openness to the bittersweet. Indeed, on normalizing bittersweet.”
Pennebaker found that that the people who wrote about their troubles were markedly calmer and happier than those who described their sneakers. Even months later, they were physically healthier, with lower blood pressure and fewer doctor’s visits.
Pennebaker found that the writers who thrived after pouring their hearts onto the page tended to use phrases such as “I’ve learned,” “It struck me that,” “I now realize,” and “I understand.” They didn’t come to enjoy their misfortunes. But they’d learned to live with insight.
Can you try writing down an “I am” statement about yourself, something based on a memory or a self-conception that’s holding you back? I can’t focus and I’m a bad employee. I’m afraid to stand up for myself. I gossip too much and hurt people. Ask yourself the questions that Susan would ask, if she were here with you: Would the people who love you still love you if they knew what you just wrote? Would you still love you? Do you still love you? Hopefully, the answer to these questions is yes. But if you’re not sure, or if the answer, for now, is no, remember Susan’s advice: You’re not saying
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Someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it; and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed. —ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY, FROM HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY
“memento mori” (remembering death as a way of appreciating life);
Our difficulty accepting impermanence is the heart of human suffering.
