Better Than Before. Chapter 1: DECIDE NOT TO DECIDE

            I have been a big fan of a writer, Gretchen Rubin. Her first book I read was The Happiness Project which is still my favorite book until now. It is an eye-opener kind of book. I was planning to continue my pleasure in reading her book called Happier at Home, which has reviewed by people in a very good way. But when I was in book store looking for that book and finally found it, my eyes were captured to another book, also written by her. It is “Better Than Before. Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives.” The title mesmerized me and you know, sometimes our planning doesn’t always go the same way with the truth, so I bought that book. In this blog, I will tell the main points and the lessons I’ve learned from this book, chapter by chapter. So let’s start with chapter 1: Decide Not To Decide.

CHAPTER 1: DECIDE NOT TO DECIDE

·         Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.

            According to Gretchen (and I personally agree too), habits make us decide less of what we’ll be doing. A habit requires no decision from me, because I’ve already decided. Like: “am I going to brush my teeth when I wake up?” duh, of course! So, what she’s trying to say is we can form habits (good ones) so we don’t even have to decide whether we’re going to do good things or not. It will be done automatically by habits. It will also save our mind and energy for something more important and brain-consuming. With habits, we also conserve our self-control. Because we’re in the habit of putting dirty coffee cup in the dishwasher, we don’t need self-control to perform that action; we do it without thinking. So once the habit is in place, we can effortlessly do the things we want to do (good ones of course).

·         For a happy life, it’s important to cultivate an atmosphere of growth.

            On this road to be better than before, we automatically grow up. The sense that we’re learning new things, getting stronger, forging new relationships, making things better, helping other people. Habits have a tremendous role to play in creating an atmosphere of growth, because they help us make consistent, reliable progress.

·         Perfection may be an impossible goal, but habits help us to do better.

            Aim or goal in reading this book and adapt it to our life is not to make us perfect. We should read the title of this book carefully and absorb it. It is to make us better than before.

Note: the picture from http://www.evlady.com/2015/03/birchbox-book-club-better-than-before.html