Book review - 101 essays that will change the way you think (Brianna Wiest)

 When two of my closest and dearest friends gifted me "101 essays that will change the way you think", I was really excited and intrigued by the sober looking book that was infront of me. I started reading it without knowing what to expect, and to my satisfaction Brianna Wiest does not dissapoint in, what I think, is a must in everybody's book shelves (or hard drive if you are into ebooks).

In this book Brianna Wiest becomes that close friend we all need to talk with when we find ourselves in difficult times in our lives, she writes with such depth and at the same time it gives the feeling of a casual conversation with a friend.

Every time you open the book to read a couple of essays you could be surprised with just exactly the thing you needed to hear in that moment; it happened to me a couple of times and it felt like a much needed warm embrace. Brianna Wiest has a way with words that makes you feel like the answers to some really profound topics where in front of you all along.

I could ramble on and on about every essay that caught my attention, but im just going to list here 8 of the ones that gave me that "close the book slowly while your mouth is wide open" kind of feeling (there where 18 essays in this category for me).

#16 - 8 cognitive biases that are creating the way you experience your life

In this essay the author explores with us the concept of naive realism and explains why and how our perception of the world is not objective and what biases make it so.

#29 - How to know you've evolved more than you give yourself credit for

With a list of  15 statements , Wiest becomes that close friend that brings a moment of peace to your life and shows you that you've been too hard on yourself, and that actually you have accomplished a lot more of what you give yourself credit for.

#35 - The 6 pillar of self-steem; why it is not how you feel, but what you think you are capable of

6 pillar that shows us that self-steem is an active practice that we all should focus on.

 #36 -Why you should thank the people who have hurt you the most in your life

A retrospective view of those relationships that hurted us the most, and trying to focus on the positves of those experiences.

#47 - If we saw souls instead of bodies

An absolute beautiful essay that makes you think of the things that really matter in a person and the things we should thrive to project in our lives.

#50 - How we lose our minds to other people's gods

In this essay Brianna Wiest talks about money and how it has become some sort of god in our modern times.

#53 - Why does a soul want a body

This is my personal favourite (if you know me personally you've probably herd me talk about this one more than one time); in this absolute mind blowing essay, Wiest talks about the idea of why something so transcendental as a soul , needs something so finite as a body. I think the concept is so simple yet profound and beautiful that it makes entire book worth buying.

#82 - 15 little ways to deepen your relationship with anyone 

A list of actions that we often dont think about , but if we applied them to a relationship it could mean the world to the other person. In my opinion this list is a must in everybody's mind.

Those are just some of the essays that I personally loved , but there could be much more for you. With all this said I can confidently put "101 essays that will change the way you think" in my number 1 spot of favourite books (tied with "The hobbit").

I would give this book a 9/10 because it can have some essays that doesn't really resonate with you, but I think it has so much precious reflections we should all think about. with nothing else to say I would like to end with a quote from the author that was engraved in my mind.

"In fearing that happiness won't last forever, we lose it; in fearing that grief will last forever, we create it"

-Brianna Wiest

The perfection in imperfection

 We live our lives pursuing the concept of perfection, perfection in our bodies, academic life, finances, love life, work, etc. Basically, we spent the limited time we have in search of whatever notion we have of perfection… but we never stop a moment and ponder, ¿what if in this moment in time our so called “imperfection” is the true perfection? I often think about this, and every time it makes more sense to me.

It is not without reason that we often hear the phrase, “the journey is more gratifying than the goal”. Part of what makes an achievement so gratifying is the hardships we must endure to accomplish it, and what are those hardships but “imperfections” in our road towards the end goal?

We spend so much time worrying about achieving what we think is the perfect version of our lives (and that is not a bad thing unless it starts to that make you feel less or sad with yourself) that we have stopped appreciating our “imperfect” present. Don’t get me wrong, by no means I’m saying we shouldn’t try to improve ourselves, on the contrary, I think we must thrive to be the best version of ourselves, but not doing so by undervaluing our present or the things we are so lucky to have in our lives at this moment.

Nature shows us perfection in the imperfection in every fruit, plant, mountain and animal... not one is the same as the other but, nevertheless, they are all perfect.

Taking a little bit of a philosophical approach to the subject, I would like to quote Marcus Aurelius.

“Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power. Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner who has rounded the headland, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay”

The interpretation I give to this quote is that our opinion is powerful, so much that when we keep telling ourselves that our present situation is imperfect or that true happiness lies in the future in that new job, or that new car or that new rise or whatever we are pursuing, we are going to end up truly believing it, and thus we are not going to be able to be genuinely happy in our “imperfect” present and, more times than not, we are going to find ourselves regretting not having enjoyed those moments. Contrary to what would happen if we embraced the thought that our “imperfect” present may actually represent true perfection and, by doing so, we could achieve simple, beautiful and true happiness.

Often, we act and think like racehorses, we are blinded to everything else that happens around us and the only thing we allow ourselves to see is the finish line at the end of the racetrack.

A common scenario is people talking about how they miss “the good old days”, they get nostalgic and paint a perfect picture of those good old days whether it is high school or college or childhood … what we don’t do is stop to think that probably our future self is looking back to this moment in time and refer to it as “the good old days”. What i am trying to express, is that we live our lives trying to achieve a perfect scenario in the future, or remembering the perfection of the past but we almost never think that maybe, just maybe, the “imperfection” of our present hides perfection.

During my life I’ve been lucky enough to live a lot of “perfect” moments, but I think I haven’t been wise enough to enjoy and live the “imperfect” ones, i hope that from this moment on we can all enjoy the perfection in our imperfection. I would like to end with a quote that perfectly express the point, from one of my favorite tv shows “The office”.

“The weird thing is now I'm exactly where I want to be. I've got my dream job at Cornell, and I'm still just thinking about my old pals. I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days', before you've actually left them.”

-Andy Bernard (The office)

The year the world stopped

 This global crisis had different impacts in every region of the world but i think that most of the lessons learned were the same worldwide. At the beginning we didn't knew how to react, we where accustomed to a fast passed life with lots of work, studies, activities and so on. First we thought that it was going to pass relatively fast but it wasn't long before we realized that we were in the midst of an historic event.
 
The hours turned to days,  the days to weeks and the weeks to months... suddenly we started to feel the effects of a drastic change of life. I'm not just talking about quarantine and lockdowns, but also it was now a hazard to go to the supermarket and things so simple that we didn't realize that were so important in our lives like hugging a loved one.
 
 It was at this point that we started to realize what is really important in life. we began to notice things that we took for granted and all our past worries of pre-covid times were taken into perspective.
 
I realized that a second passed with my family and loved ones is immensely more valuable than an hour at work, i realized that movie night with friends is something worth treasuring. The constant bad news made me appreciate the things that many of us took for granted like having a roof over my head, food on the table and our loved ones healthy.
 
The year the world stopped we discovered who were the people that are really dear to us and we to them, we learned how to pass time with ourselves. Governments, businesses and huge corporations learned that money in this life is not all mighty. We realized the importance of the essential workers and got a new found respect for their labors.
 
The day the world starts moving again we must not forget the lessons learned, the heroes and heroines that got us out of this of crisis, also the villains, and most important of all we must not forget the health workers that have been fighting in the front line since the beginning, risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones all to help strangers, even the ones that don't care about the pandemic and kept behaving completely selfish and irresponsible. To all and any health worker reading, i want to give my truly heartfelt gratitude for all your selfless sacrifices, i want you to know that without you we couldn't  still be here and that all humanity is in debt with you.
 
In the most sincere way possible …thank you.

The year the world stopped it was something truly unexpected, we've always thought that it was going to be something out of a Hollywood movie, but there was no alien invasion, nor any zombies roaming the streets. To our surprise it was the tiniest possible antagonist... a virus.

People not machines

Have you ever been in a class or a job in which the teacher or boss pictures you and your classmates/ coworkers like machines? it's like that for that person your solely purpose in life is to study for that class or to work for (in some cases) nonstop during the day. I have been in a similar situation and all i could think of was on how unprepared the person was to be in a position of leadership or mentor-ship. 

Only one teacher in all my college life told us that he was aware that we as humans could be having good or bad days and also that his class was not the only thing that we had in our lives, and that knowing this he would try to be as reasonable as possible with us during the course and also that he would expect for us to reciprocate.

It is alarming that during 5 years in college, taking classes with highly capable professionals and extremely smart engineers, just one teacher had this way of thinking and openly told us so. I could say that 90% of the teachers i had treated their course as if it was the only course we were taking, assigning us ridiculous amounts of work.

Don't get me wrong i'm no expert in human resources or psychology but i think that it doesn't take to be an expert to realize that if you want productivity from people, exploitation is not the answer. 

In our modern world there seems to be a fascination towards self exploitation, i've heard countless times people proudly talking about how they worked for ten plus hours, or that they had to work at their house during the weekend. don't get me wrong, i'm not against hard work, and i understand that there are sometimes that we need to put those extra miles to achieve the goals, all i'm saying is that we need balance and also we need to realize that resting is essential for productivity. 

It is also important to give our time the value it deserves, i'm an avid thinker that at the end of our lives we are going to regret the time we've lost to be with our loved ones rather than the extra money we didn't earned.

All this is not a new subject of study, Abraham Maslow created a philosophical model called "the Maslow's pyramid", in which he represents the levels we as human need to satisfy to achieve self-actualization (desire to become the most that one can be), the theory says that when we reach the last level we'll experience a drive to become our best version and this obviously affects our productivity.

The pyramid consist of five levels: physical needs, safety needs, love and belongings, esteem and lastly self-actualization; we can see that the base of the pyramid basically consist in people having a house, food, water, etc. If we have those first two levels then we can look at more sentimental aspects like friendship, family, intimacy, self-steem, etc. and if we have those four levels satisfied then we can thrive and try en become our best version.

And basically with Maslow's pyramid i can show all the argument i'm trying to make, we can't be asked to be extra productive or our best version if we haven't fulfilled the bottom levels, and in a class or job in which we are required to sacrifice a big part of our time with loved ones or even just time for ourselves we can't be expected to perform at our best. In my opinion job managers should be familiarized with this and they should plan accordingly, that way they could get the best out of their employees and overall achieve a better working environment. 

As a student it took a lot for me to realize all this and since then i try to apply it in my life, i hope this helps you in your job or class and makes you reach the top level of the pyramid and thrive towards being the best version of yourself.

The power of self-image

During my life i have been lucky enough to witness the power that self-image has in all the things that we do and think of ourselves. In high school i wasn't a particularly  good student, if i had to define my academic performance during that time i would have said it was mediocre but not necessarily bad... i think the correct word would be average.

When i entered college i decided ( and that is the important part , i decided) that i could become a better student and possibly the best in my class. that little change in my self-image was the first and most important step towards a successful academic life.

I wasn't really aware of how or why i was able to achieve such a drastic change in my habits until i took a class in my last semester with a professor that had the same experience as me, but for him it was an even extremer change.

This professor told us that he was a dreadful student in high school, only getting bad grades in the courses he didn't failed. When he entered college he had a really good first semester because he took classes that he had to take several times in high school because he failed them, so naturally he was very familiar with the subjects of the course and was able to get good grades.

Thanks to his outstanding performance in that semester he was awarded with the "highest grades of the class" award in that semester; in that moment he realized that the self-image that he had of himself ( that was highly influenced by a lot of students of his high school and even by some teachers that told him that he wasn't going to achieve anything in his academic life) was wrong, and it also was the one thing that held him back from even trying to achieve good grades, because his self-image of a good for nothing student told him it would be useless to try. 

He decided that he was going to be the best student in his class for the rest of college, and he did, he was awarded with the best of his class award and he didn't stopped there, he went to his masters degree with the same positive self-image and was also the best of his class there, and thanks to that he could do a doctorate in arguably the best college in the world for his area of studies.

Hearing this story helped me realize that this life changing thought could be applied to every aspect of our lives and that everyone can do it. The first step is so little that sometimes we overlook it and it is to change our self-image. Think about it, picture a person that has been trying to loose weight for some time, he or she always focus on the basic things like what training routines to do or what food to eat, but he or she can have the best training routine or the best meal plan but if the person starts the project of loosing weight with a self-image of someone that is unable to follow a diet or training  (something like, "i´m going to try but i'm a person that can´t keep a diet for more than a month"), then the project is doomed to fail from the beginning. The first step should be creating a self-image of someone that can and will succeed in the project.

Being able to make this mental process of changing our self-image will remove the barriers that we put in our own road towards our goals, it is very different to start something believing that we are capable people, than start it believing that it is something we will most likely fail at because we have a negative self-image about ourselves.

Learning this things that i'm trying to share with you has helped me a lot in my life, not only in the academic aspect of it, but also in several personal aspects (it helped me to stop drinking sodas, for example). I encourage you to start any project with this small yet giant step, because i really believe that it is one of the strongest tools towards self-improvement and also mental health.

I would like to finish this post with a quote of one of my personal role models and childhood hero, the 3 times boxing heavy weight champion of the world and civil rights activist Muhammad Ali. I think that this quote relates perfectly with how self-image can help us in the road to success, because it shows that Ali started his journey with the self-image of being capable of doing great things inside and outside the boxing ring.

"I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was"

 

 

- Muhammad Ali 

About me

So... what can I say about me and about my blog?

I am a civil engineer that likes to read and to talk about the little, yet important things in life, the sort of things that we experience and that have a big impact in our daily life, but at the same time we seldom talk or reflect about them.

I started journaling as a way to keep my fresh toughts on specific moments of my life and, by doing so, being able to come back and read them years later. It felt like having a conversation with my past self and, eventually, I came to love journaling. This led me to the idea of starting a blog; this blog is my way of sharing thoughts and reflections that I consider could be interesting or helpful to somebody out there, and in the process grow by reading all of the readers' feedback, because sometimes all that is needed is a second opinion.

The other reason for starting this blog is because I would like to post a kind of opinion or review of the different books that I read and also from books that have been recommended to me. I think this could be a win-win situation, because I write these reviews and in the process it helps me retain the information much better, and at the same time I hope these reviews can help the readers decide weather to read the book or not. I can summarize the idea that blogging can help me retain more information of the books with a proverb that i read in "The bullet journal method" by Ryder Caroll.

 "The palest ink is better than the best memory"

-Chinese proverb

with nothing more to say about me and about this blog , I trully hope that you can find something useful in some of my posts , and also I would love book recommendations!