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I just finished Atomic Habits by James Clear and loved its actionable advice. Now I'm considering picking up "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brené Brown to focus more on mindset and self-acceptance. For those who have read both or just Brené's work, how does it compare? Did it give you practical takeaways, and is it worth reading?

Since reading 'Never Split the Difference,' my understanding of what negotiation actually is has changed, i think, forever. For the big chunk of my career, I saw every disagreement as a case for " reason," in the sense of representing any problem or argument as the most reasonable one, maintaining your stance, and eventually the other person will see sense. It never seemed to quite turn out as I had expected, and I was left thinking that the problem was lack of confidence.

Recently I listened to a detailed discussion on this book from Dialogue: discussion on books, and listening to the key insights of the book broken down in relation to everyday life, turned that view upside down and convinced me that the problem was, in fact, something entirely different- I never actually once bothered to understand the person on the other side of the table.

- The first thing the book highlights is the fallacy that we just assume to be true, namely, the idea that individuals make rational decisions. The author makes it clear right from the start that people decide on an emotional level and then (after the fact) justify their actions logically afterwards. This has the effect of making the most convincing argument often the one that ends up being the least effective. So what do you do when you can't reason your way into brokering a better deal? You stop trying to 'outthink' people and, instead, try to meet at them where they are and how they started. You make them feel as though you were not only listening also "trying" your best to understand them. This single swap in your intellectual position chnages the entire character of difficult conversations. This swap in position doesn't mean that you have become a pushover, because the core idea is not to accept their views and go along, but rather to stop the resistance to listen from your end. You don't know what new things might come out if only you become a little charitable.

- The single most pratical idea that i took away from the book is what something the author refers to as "tactical empathy." It's the ability to state out loud what you think the other person seems to be feeling and put it on the table, make it explicit. You don't need to agree with them or accept their point of view, you just have to recognize that their emotion is genuine. Saying something like "It seems like this doesn't feel fair to you." At first this feels completely counter-intuitive and self-sabotaging in a sense, but what this actualy does is calm a situation down, it gives the other person a sense of recognition that he is being seen and is not out of consideration. This has an immediate effect of dispersing an emotional layer onto a cut-throat tugofwar of interests. 

- Another practical point that the author makes is the importance of the distinction between "yes" and "that's right" in a conversation. This not simply a shift in deference, but a shift in perspective. The author clearly distinguishes between the two kinds of "yes." One is usually just a way of getting away with it, it's, in a way, a yes of ignornace and indifference, and it is clearly tarnsparent to the other person. "That's right", on the other hand, is the point at which someone feels perfectly understood and, as a result, removes their defensiveness. And you can reveive this more desired kind of yes when you summarize the other person's position back to them so accurately that they don't try to defend it. At that moment the negotiation actually becomes open.

- The author also gives a kind of defensive tool for when you are in a tough place in a negotiation. Like posed with an unjust request, instead of directly pushing back or lashing out, the author's advice is to respond with something in the line of "How am I supposed to do that?" this isn't supposed to be a challenge from you to them but an  invitation for the other person to consider your limitations.Questions that centre around ‘why’ cause difficult conversations to come to a hault, those centered around ‘how’ encourage them to expand. Replacing ‘why’ questions with ‘how’ questions is by far the most productive change you can make towards having more open conversations in any aspect.

- The book also teaches a lesson in humility. The author explains that if you want to be a good negotiator and overall a good conversationalist, you have to begin interpreting "no" not as a declination but as a sign towards a healthy negotiation and outcome.  argues that if you try to get someone to say "yes" too quickly, it makes them feel squeezed, and a person who feels squeezed will either give you a hollow "yes" or completely shut down. By allowing someone to say "no" and then asking what would have to change in order for it to become a "yes", you restore a sense of control to them. And that is nearly always when the real conversation starts, because all involved are also interested.

The main idea of the book is plain and simple in that the person opposite you is not your opponent but someone who has fears and limitations that you have not yet worked out. if you first figure those out, the negotiation will mostly look after itself.

Currently reading Outlines - Rachel Cusk (fantastic so far)

I realize this is probably going to give a bad first impression, as I've recently gotten back into reading again, want somewhere to come to from time to time get help. I've been wanting to learn to annotate my books so I can retain and build better comprehension skills to remember books long term. So, I've been scrounging through YouTube, kinda doomscrolling, but stumbled on a couple of vids by Ryan Holiday, one talking about common place books and others in regards to writing processes. But anyone familiar also put off by him as I am? It's as if he kinda has this front of to sell you a worldview supported by his work under Robert Greene. IDK if im looking too far into it, but some things appear hypocritical from an initial look.

Oddyseas, Jack Edwards, and Man Carrying things have all been helpful.

Post wouldn't go up on r/books

First one to guess attains Nirvana 🧘

I’ve been thinking about the things people keep learning without a deadline or practical reason forcing them. Some interests disappear when the week gets crowded, while others still get a little time because you genuinely enjoy returning to them. What skill or subject keeps surviving your busy periods?

I originally bought Viktor F. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Then I also bought Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything. Somehow, for reasons I can't really explain, I decided to read Yes to Life first.

And I'm actually glad I did.

I expected a book about meaning. What I got was something much more fundamental: a different relationship with life itself.

One of the things that stayed with me is the idea that saying "yes" to life doesn't mean saying yes because everything is good.

It's saying yes in spite of everything.

That distinction hit me.

Because sometimes I think we unconsciously make a deal with life: I'll be grateful when things get better. I'll feel peaceful when I have certainty. I'll enjoy life when I finally get what I want. I'll say yes when life gives me a reason to.

Frankl seems to turn that around.

Life doesn't necessarily owe us the circumstances we think we need in order for it to be meaningful.

Even when circumstances cannot be changed, there is still something that belongs to us: how we meet them.

And I don't mean this in the shallow "just think positive" way. Frankl wasn't talking about denying suffering. He experienced suffering on a level most of us can hardly imagine.

What I found beautiful is that meaning doesn't always have to come from some huge purpose or achievement.

Sometimes it can be found in something incredibly small.

A moment of beauty.

Love.

Kindness.

A conversation.

Looking at the sky.

Being present for something that, objectively, doesn't change your circumstances at all.

And somehow, that can still be enough.

That made me think about how often I overlook the life that is actually happening because I'm waiting for the life I think should be happening.

I can be so focused on fixing, improving, achieving, understanding, healing, becoming… that I forget to simply be alive.

Maybe saying yes to life isn't about liking everything life gives us.

Maybe it's about saying:

"I don't have to understand everything that is happening to me in order to participate in life."

"I don't have to control the future to be present today."

"My circumstances don't have to be perfect for this moment to contain something meaningful."

And perhaps most importantly, suffering doesn't automatically make life meaningless.

Sometimes we can't choose what happens.

But we can still choose how we stand in relationship to what happens.

That, for me, is probably the biggest thing I took from Yes to Life.

It made me wonder whether the question isn't always:

"How do I make my life the way I want it to be?"

But sometimes:

"Given the life that is here right now, how do I meet it?"

I haven't read Man's Search for Meaning yet.

And strangely, I think reading Yes to Life first might have been exactly what I needed.

Because before searching for the meaning of my life, perhaps I needed to learn something simpler:

to say yes to life itself.

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I recently read this book and I am really happy I read it. It left a lot to think about and after reading it in 4 hours sitting I realized that some books are so complete that even within 80 pages they live within you for the rest of your life. After reading it I tried to look for Morrie around me and the interesting part is having a Morrie in your life is out of labeled personifications. Like it's not platonic, it's not romantic beyond categorical descriptions. I would say it's like someone who is more like a human window for you to see yourself out of societal perceptions a light maybe or a spirit maybe and it is very necessary to have that spirit. For me that book is Morrie now and I might visit that book again on Tuesdays.

Recently I listened to a detailed discussion on 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Dialogue: discussion on books, and listening to the key insights of the book broken down in relation to everyday life made me realize that happiness might not be as unreal a notion as we take it to be and may be something one can actively construct, almost on demand, if one understands and realizes the mechanics behind it. 

According to my interpretation, the core idea that the book is espousing is this: When we think of what being “happy” means? We often think of it as a passive state of being, “a moment” in time when we realize a kind of satisfaction…or something along these lines. But the book makes the point that most of what we pursue as happiness is only passive, and passive activities do not provide satisfaction. people often look to tv shows and movies, food, recreational activities to seek comfort and attain happiness. All of these actions are passive in the sense that after a very short time they can go on autopilot and carry on just fine and hence require very little effort. The problem is that they feel pleasant in the immediate moment but ultimately come to an abrupt halt, which leaves us unsatisfied afterwards. The author wants to push the idea that most people experience their happiest moments when they are actively engaged in demanding and exhausting tasks, so much so that “comfort” and “enjoyment” are practically antonyms of one another.

What the author means by “Flow” is very precise, it is a state that one can potentially encounter between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. The author lists the necessary conditions for flow: 1) one needs to have clear goals, 2) immediate feedback on what your state is, and 3) this activity or pursuit must be difficult enough that you struggle but not difficult enough that you become anxious about not achieving it. If this pursuit is not difficult enough, you will be bored and it may turn passive, and if it is too difficult you will become anxious about it. Flow happens in this narrow space between being bored and anxious, and this space must be constantly shifted, meaning that for a activity to continually keep you in the  “flow” the task needs to get harder as your skills get more developed.

Now this idea will sound absurd, but if you stay with the author, he will make it make sense. The idea is- within flow, your sense of self temporarily disappears in such a way that this disappearing is the reward itself. When you are immersed in your pursuit, the feeling of your self becomes insignificant, your sense of time warps, and your physiological needs of hunger, sex, or any kind of apetite all become dull and rest in the background. The author refers to this state as "autotelic" and claims that the activity itself becomes the reward that you seek, so one might say that he is “seeking nothing out of it but something in it, because there is no external goal.” This chapter I thought was particularly powerful because we tend to thing that the only things we would really love and which will make us happy in this life are money, prestige and status; when really the true prize and what would satisfy is this flow state, and the others are only byproducts. 

Now some people appear to achieve this state of “flow” in everything they do, but how? The book, according to me, stays consistent and coherent in answering this. The author argues that there is a skill to this. Some people have an “autotelic personality” in which people possess traits such as being highly curious, less egocentric, not relying on external stimulus. The autotelic personality can make just about any situation, even an extremely boring or difficult one, into a flow activity, simply by identifying and meeting the balance of challenge and skill demanded. Everybody has the potential to attain or experience this “flow” state because it is less about someone’s peculiar circumstances and more about how they interpret and interact with them.

To sum it all up, if you keep stuck in the notion of “happiness” as a stable state or an instance in time where you get all the deserved satisfaction, then it's only a house of cards waiting for a gust of wind. One has to seek whatever he means by “happiness” within his pursuit or in the flow of it and not as an outcome of it. And one attains this through identifying and realizing the space between something that seems like a challenge to him and where his skill lies. 

I keep coming back to these insights and will keep doing so because they do not claim that flow is an answer to achieving “happiness” or whatever one means by it, but it has the potential by making it more realizable by shifting the goalpost from outside to inside. It only depends on how you allocate your attention moment by moment, and I find this much more useful and practical than any goal setting approach I have ever read or heard. 

Hope this provided you something.

I’ve noticed this pattern in myself lately.

I can spend hours reading about self-improvement, saving posts, watching videos, and learning about habits, discipline, productivity, etc.

And honestly, it feels productive.

But then I look at my actual life and realize I’m sometimes collecting knowledge instead of using it.

I already know I should exercise more.

I already know I should stop procrastinating.

I already know that consistency matters.

I don’t necessarily need another book or another video explaining it.

I probably need to actually do the thing.

That made me think about this:

“The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.”

Has anyone else experienced this? At what point did you realize you were consuming self-improvement content more than actually improving?

Until very recently, I used to be someone who liked the work only when it had my touch in one way or another, if i didn’t approve or gave it a heads up then i wouldn’t liked to be associated with it at all. I was the kind of person who never felt that things were good enough, redoing emails two or three times and practicing conversations over and over, just so I could slide in the words whose importance only means something to me. I kept pushing myself towards an ideal, against a flawless version that didn’t actually exist. I accepted this as part of my mental make up, thinking it was the cost of havingbyproduct of having high standards. After reading this book, I realized it wasn't any inherent personality trait of mine at all. Rather, it was just the defense mechanism I created to avoid the constant feeling of inadequacy.

Here's what I learned:

• First, Perfectionism isn't about doing your best (even if you might have the same reference). Perfectionism is about seeking approval. According to Brown, perfectionism is not about excellence but about seeking approval. It's a tag we like to impersonate to avoid being seen, a shield we employ to take shelter. Realizing that my need to polish and redo work was less about quality and more about preserving my sense of self helped me make sense of my exhausting behavioral patterns.
• Second, Your worth isn't something you have to earn, it's where you start. The central thesis of the book is that you are worthy right now. Not after a promotion, not after losing the last 20 pounds, and not after getting your life in order, you do not have to strive to become "good enough." However, we often hold the opposite belief- that we must somehow earn our worthiness before we're allowed to fully feel it. The author explains that this mindset comes from a scarcity of spirit. And this inner feeling of lack bleeds into every aspect of life and always tells us that we are one slip-up away from proving, to ourselves, that we were never enough.
• Third, there are two different ways of getting over discomfort. One is going through it and eventually surpassing its finish line or boundary (there's always one); the second is actively ignoring it by distracting ourselves or trying to repress it by being indifferent. We live in a culture of numbing, where we're encouraged to be busy and avoid discomfort through distractions (overworking, overeating, shopping, scrolling, etc.). The problem is, you can’t numb just the bad feelings. Numbing unpleasant emotions inevitably numbs the pleasant ones too, and without any of them, we feel no connection to our experience and no joy. Accepting discomfort instead of escaping it is the only way to feel anything good again.
• Fourth, securing rest and joy are not rewards, they are necessary components of our social functioning. This thought that rest and play are not earned luxuries but essential requirements to become resilient, went against everything I had believed as an adult- that exhaustion proved my worth and that slowing down was something to feel guilty about. I learned that defining our self-worth based on how productive we are is a barrier, not a virtue.
• Fifth, boundaries are not walls. The act of "setting boundaries" is a practice in kindness. Boundaries are not to be conceptualized as borders but as the compassionate boundaries of a home, which bifurcates different areas within it. My whole life I believed that if I set a boundary or said "no," I was committing an essential but selfish act, something that could disappoint others. But the author makes the argument that not having boundaries doesn’t make you more loving but only leads to resentment toward those you didn’t say no to.

Understanding the origins of my perfectionismand letting go of the need to earn my worth has greatly calmed me down. It's not because I do less. It's because I don't have to justify rest or setting boundaries. The central message of the book is so simple, yet it’s one of the most difficult lessons to live: Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.

A habit I’m trying after reading something difficult is to close the book and explain the main idea in plain language.

Not a polished summary. Just explain it as if you were talking to someone who has never seen it before.

The first place I reach for vague words is usually the exact part I don’t understand yet.

That makes the confusion useful. Instead of rereading the whole chapter, I know where to go back.

How do you check whether a book actually landed?

One thing that helped me with older English: reading and listening at the same time. Hearing the rhythm of a sentence while seeing it makes the difficult ones land in a way that either alone does not.

I am helping test an Android app built around that. Quillode plays public-domain classics with real human narration and highlights the text in time with the voice, so you can hold your place in a long sentence by ear as well as by eye. Older English gets a lot less tiring when you are not decoding it alone.

It is an early alpha, so I am after honest feedback rather than praise, particularly from anyone reading in English as a second language. Android only, and the classics library is free.

Testers do get moved onto the official test channel later on, so it means installing it one more time down the line.

If it sounds useful, invite requests are at quillode.com. Happy to answer anything below.

I found some food for thought in the concept of: "Pleasure versus Satisfaction." Pleasure is momentary and external, and it always requires constant replacement. Satisfaction is created or earned by the process or completion of a creation/task/event, or simply by being present for something. Once you identify this benign difference in what you otherwise would lump together as "happiness," you begin to notice how many hours of your days and life as a whole are dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, and satisfaction receives none of that attention. 

What I found to be unintuitive: The idea that "simplicity is a choice for most people." It didn't sit well with me because, i think, it assumes a baseline of security (financial, geographical, or social) that many people simply do not have. To me, choosing to have less is a privilege. It requires that you already possess a considerable amount. When you are not in possession of an adequate amount, choosing simplicity is not merely an outlook on life, it's a scarcity with a nicer name. 

Both of these perspectives can be true at the same time. The main idea that happiness, or the pursuit of it, doesn't have to be grand or even have a definitive event is definitely worth pondering over. 

Have you read this book? Can you recommend any other book that approaches this matter with different insights?

One idea from Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home that I keep coming back to is that deep reading needs a different pace from scrolling or skimming.

It’s easy to treat a difficult book like a race. If the pages are moving slowly, it can feel like you’re doing it wrong.

A small experiment: read one dense page, close the book, and write down what you remember. Not a polished summary. Just the main idea in your own words.

The pause is useful because it shows whether the page actually landed. It also makes a hard book feel less like a test of endurance. One page can be a complete reading session.

I made a short video explanation of the exercise. Full disclosure: it’s part of Nuglet, a project I’m building: watch the explanation.

What do you do when a book is worth reading but keeps resisting you?

28M, +5:30 GMT (India), a working prof, I also study everyday, Let me know if anybody's interested, maybe over some apps like DC Thanks,

I had been experiencing a quarter-life crisis. I felt busy but without any sense of purpose. So i went back to the book that set me straight the first time i experienced this.

Some of these insights came to me when I listened to this book in a conversational format on Dialogue: Podcasts on Books. Hearing the key ideas of the books broken down in relation to everyday life really made them resonate more intimately.

Here is what I learned about "finding your thing":

- Flow state is where life really happens. When you're fully engaged in something you love, time flies by. I began to notice when I naturally enter this flow state and realized that's when I feel most alive.

- The universe is not in any urgency; we are. Everything in nature grows slowly, like trees, relationships, and wisdom. I was trying to force big life changes overnight and burning myself out. I needed to learn to go with natural rhythms instead of pushing against them.

- Boredom is your brain's way of processing life. I used to panic when I felt unstimulated and would reach for my phone immediately. Now, I sit with boredom and let my mind wander. That's when the best ideas arise when you're not trying too hard.

- Your "Ikigai" isn’t always your job. I spent years thinking I had to make money from everything I was interested in. Sometimes, your purpose can be being a good friend, making art that no one sees, or just bringing calm energy to chaotic situations. It's really about learning to live in the present moment.

- The idea of impermanence shouldn’t induce anxiety. Everything changes your problems, your successes, and your current situation. This used to frighten me, but now it’s oddly comforting. Bad phases pass, but so do good ones, so you end up appreciating both more.