Tin Sison’s Reviews > Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope > Status Update

“‘Fun’ is the product of our value hierarchies. When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun and interesting to us.”

“It is our natural psychological inclination to equalize across moral gaps, to recoprocate action: positive for positive; negative for negative. The forces that impel us to fill those gaps are our emotions. In this sense, every action demands an equal and opposite emotional reaction.”

“Reexamine the experiences of your past and rewrite the narratives around them. Reexamining the narratives of our lives allows us to have a do-over, to decide: you know, maybe I wasn’t such a great boat captain after all, and that’s fine.”

“The only way to change our values is to have experiences contrary to our values. And any attempt to break free from those values through new or contrary experiences will inevitably be met with pain and discomfort. This is why there is no such thing as change without pain, no growth without discomfort. It’s why it’s impossible to be someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be.”

Emotional regulation: “The more the dialogue (between the Thinking and Feeling Brains) occurs, the more the two brains will listen to each other. The Feeling Brain will start giving off different emotions, and the Thinking Brain will have a better understanding of how to help the Feeling Brain navigate the road of life.”

“Start small. If the Feeling Brain’s response is negative, you simply acknowledge that negative emotion and offer another compromise. See how the Feeling Brain responds. Then rinse and repeat.”

“It’s important to let the Feeling Brain air out all its icky, twisted feelings. Just get them into the open where they can breathe, because the more they breathe, the weaker their grip is on the steering wheel of your consciousness.”

“If nothing is more or less important, then there’s no reason to do anything. And if there’s no reason to do anything, then why live at all?”