Book Title - The Road Less Travelled
Author - M. Scott Peck
Genre - Personal Development and Self-Help
Number of Pages - 380 (Four Chapters)
Reading time - 8 hours 20 minutes (as per Kindle suggestion)
My Ratings - 🍪🍪🍪🍪
Introduction
This book is rated as #1 bestseller in Psychopathology - the study of the origin, development, diagnosis, and treatment of mental and behavioral disorders. You may find author M. Scott Peck's writing style heavy to handle as he goes in-depth about the subject.
Nevertheless, you will reciprocate and understand his diction as long as you carry on reading without giving up. If you are into psychology and spirituality then this book is for you as it is filled with Godly wisdom and insight.
In this book, there are only four chapters. The author/psychiatrist, M. Scott (Scotty) Peck, has neatly arranged his concepts and perspectives about God, peace, life, death, growth, change, and transformation.
I read the Kindle edition and having recently subscribed to Amazon Prime account. I got access to their Prime reading library, which allows me to borrow 10 books for free at a time. How cool is that! So, I'm making the most out of this offer! Now back to the review.
The first publication of this book was in the year 1978 and it covers all the kinds of things that people usually avoid talking about. It's definitely a copy that you will refer to again and again and want to give away as gifts to others.
Main Takeaways
After scanning the table of contents, I started reading the first chapter titled 'Discipline.' The very first line says, 'Life is difficult.' This chapter talks in-depth about delaying gratification, accepting responsibilities, dedicating to saying the truth, and avoiding impulsiveness.
The author says we need to be disciplined in order to solve all our life's problems. Only then will we gain greater levels of maturity and grow mentally and spiritually.
Instead of lamenting and feeling victimized all the time. He suggests taking responsibility and control of your freedom in your hands. It is your choice. Stop giving your power away.
Your time is your responsibility.
Once you are able to perceive your time as being valuable, it naturally follows that you want to organize it and protect it and make maximum use of it.
Maps - We are not born with them, but have to make them and revise them every now and then. We can revise our maps only when we have a genuine willingness to work on our pain or problem.
Depression - Your depression is signaling that major change is required for successful and evolutionary adaptation.
We must learn to avoid clinging to old patterns of thinking and behaving. But grow up to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.
We are these days so busy seeking to be loved that we have no energy left to love. We depend on others to fill our inner emptiness. Which according to the author can never be fulfilled because we always feel 'a part of us' missing as we have no sense of identity. We jump from one relationship to another and long to depend on someone just anyone no matter who.
A passive dependent person goes above and beyond to do things for you so you would take good care of them in return. Their primary goal is to be loved and their only motive is receiving care 24/7. Their constant craving for attention, affection, shows how poorly they tolerate loneliness.
The author says such people behave this way because of their parent's failure to fulfill their basic emotional needs during their childhood. They cling on with desperation that leads them to become unloving even manipulative which ultimately destroys the very relationship that they wanted to preserve.
Ideas and Suggestions
Like any self-help book, the basic premise is that the reader makes an earnest effort to inculcate the ideas and suggestions in order to improve and change their life. Similarly, this book is no different it suggests the following:
Delay gratification. Watch this video - The Marshmallow Test. One of the hardest things to deal with in life is exercising will power and making a sacrifice in the short term. In order, to achieve something of significant importance in the long run. To be organized, efficient, and to live wisely, the author suggests we must learn to delay gratification.
Learn to be self-disciplined and teach your children the same. Have self-control and endure the unpleasantness now. Self-deny instead of self-indulgence to yield more happiness/joy in the future. Keep your eyes on the prize at all times.
Be responsible for yourself. To confront others with something that is bothering you, you must be willing to speak in a language that the listener can understand and is capable to operate. Hence, adjust your communication accordingly.
Necessity vs Love - The author says when you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love.
Love should be a free exercise of choice. Two people decide to love each other even when they are quite capable of living without but choose to live with each other. Love is an act of will. It is leadership, a two-way street whereby the receiver also gives and the giver also receives.
Happiness is an inside job. You are responsible for your happiness, not others. Read more about this here.
Awesome Quotes
To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously.
I have come to believe and have tried to demonstrate that people's capacity to love, and hence their will to grow, is nurtured not only by the love of their parents during childhood but also throughout their lives by grace, or God's love.
If we have loving, forgiving parents, we are likely to believe in a loving and forgiving God. And in our adult view, the world is likely to seem as nurturing a place as our childhood was.
For a successful marriage, we need to learn to respect the individuality of the other and seek to cultivate it. As all of us have our own separate destiny to fulfill.
Narcissistic individuals lack the capacity for empathy, which is the capacity to feel what another is feeling. They do not perceive others as others but only as extensions of themselves.
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