Now before you judge me solely off the title, hear me out! This book has been on my reading list for YEARS. Literally! With one of my main goals this year being to read 19 books by the end of the year I've finally found the time to read this. For those uninterested in reading the remainder of the article, here is a one sentence summary: This book provides readers with a basic outline on actions you can do to have a more positive impact on the people you choose to interact with. If you read the titles of the chapters you can honestly have a good grasp on what the book covers.
For those that like to read, hello! While this book is full of sections I enjoy I want to just focus on a few for the sake of your time and sanity. "The secret of Socrates" and "If you're wrong. admit it.
The reason these particular sections caught my interest it's because I can relate to them at this very moment. The section If you're wrong. admit it made me reflect a lot on my time at my current job. It's my first job out of college and the learning curve has been steep to say the least. I like to carry my own weight and I really do my best to achieve that. However, along the way I've been wrong. A lot. It's a hard pill to swallow sometimes but I've learned that the best thing to do is own up to your mistakes. There's really no reason not to. You'll of course do anything to avoid that to begin with but mistakes are an inevitable part of life and the more you strive for perfection, the more you'll look down at yourself when you make a mistake.
In life you're going to have to make decisions that change the course of it and you'll be frustrated on not knowing whether you made the right decision or not. I, however, firmly believe that mistakes must be made in order to achieve what you want. I've learned that through a lot of passions of mine such as photography and martial arts. You have to take so many horrible photos to get a few good ones. You have to get beaten down in order to eventually get your hand raised. Mistakes. Accept them.
Morale of the story is accept the fact you'll make mistakes along the way and own up to them when you need to. It'll save you a lot of pain.
Next up: The Secret of Socrates
Oh man, I feel like I could write a whole book on this subject. This section focuses on how to approach situations where you and someone else don't exactly see eye to eye. I felt like this chapter in particular is important for everyone to read because even though I've only been alive for 22 years at the moment I am writing this, I have never seen the world so divided.
Everyone, including myself, having a format like social media where we can express our opinions at any point in the day has been a double edged sword we're trying to take control of in a dark room. We can't seem to differentiate between the handle or the blade and I honestly don't know whether social media has done us more good than harm. Not only that, but the very people who control the platforms have their own agenda that's only causing the canyon between people to grow.
So how do we start to co-exist in a time where we are so divided? Well, according to the secret of Socrates the way to approach conflict is through first finding common ground. By finding similarities between differing parties we can start to better understand each other. Don't confuse this with the ability to change the mind of others. That's not what I'm saying. I'm merely saying that this is a tool we can use to sit down and have actual discussions with people who have different opinions than our own rather than just avoiding the situation altogether like we have been in recent years. Growth is uncomfortable and the fact that we're avoiding these uncomfortable conversations is setting us back as a society.
We need to love and take care of each other but how can we do that if we're not even willing to hear each other now? What has happened to us?
I truly want to help us become a better community and I believe that the topics discussed in this book and the ones I talked about in particular will get us there. Let's start listening to each other so we can better understand each other. Let's also admit when we're wrong as we're all perfect at being imperfect and it's something we need to accept. Then maybe one day we can truly be a community, where I and you can call each other friends without the need of wanting to change each other.
Thanks for reading.
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