Introduction
Good life. A very vague term that
always made our mind boggled, wondering about its purest meaning. Philosophers
from all over the time, places and civilizations had enough of tearing down
their minds to evaluate what is meant by living a Good Life. You and I, as well
as all people that had ever lived this mortal life, are always on their
feet to achieve what they perceive as a Good Life. Good life, is somewhat a
form of art, that must be comprehended by the likes of us.
Overview
The Art of The Good Life, a book
written by the Swiss author Rolf Dobelli might be the one that you are looking
for to reconstruct your view about happiness in life. With 52 thought-provoking
ideas that had been arranged to their respective chapters, this book might
shift the way you perceive what does it mean ‘to be happy’ beforehand. Originally
published in 2017, this 260-page book may have what it takes to be able to
successfully grasp the idea of living a more fulfilled, meaningful life.
Like the previous book I reviewed,
the current one that I just finished reading is another motivational,
self-enrichment book that I found really appealing and it keeps luring me to
excitedly go through page by page to know what awaits me for the next chapter.
I love the way the author split his ideas into 52 parts; with each of them
contains different approaches on how to actually amend your existence. By doing so, the readers
won’t get overwhelmed by the immense amount of long paragraph, but rather a
‘just nice’ well-written ideas packed in a page of 3 or 4.
Highlighted content.
Long story short. Let us have a
look on some of the chapters which kinda moved me—giving me insight and a new
outlook that helps me to reshape my mind. Honestly, there might be one or two,
or maybe up to ten chapters of this book that you would want to object,
disagree with. Well there’s no perfect book to begin with—I believe one must be
critically evaluate the content when reading any kind of books.
Alright nevermind about that.
Let’s jump into some of the highlighted content and quote that I want you guys to
read along, shall we?
(I will only put 4 out of 52
here, otherwise this review will be too long)
1. The Circle of
Competence
This chapter tells us about the
cognitive bias that we tend to have, in which we think that we can actually be
good at everything we do. In this section Rolf Dobelli suggest that we need to
be aware of our very own Circle of Competence. It is initially a term used by
world’s most successful investor, Warren Buffet. The idea is, inside the circle
are the skills you have mastered. Beyond it are the things you understand only
partially or not at all. He said “Know
your circle of competence and stick within it. The size of the circle is not
really important. Knowing its boundaries however, vital”. Tom Watson, the
founder of IBM added “I’m no genius. I’m
smart in spots—but I stay around those sports.”. Personally I found this
advices are really liberating you from anxiety or insecurity.
2. The
Introspection Illusion-Take feelings seriously just not your own.
English has more than 300 words
to describe emotions, more than we have to describe colors. See how
complicated was that? Emotions are sometimes overrated. Don’t make it as your
life compass, for you will go nowhere if you are depending on it—it’s a
broken one.
Rolf Dobelli suggest that we need
to imagine ourselves as a huge market, in which bird from all varieties flit
from spot to spot. Some are beautiful birds, while some maybe, not really that
gorgeous. Some stay only for a while, some might dawdle a little bit longer,
and perhaps might left behind their shit. Some you might like more, and might
even despise the others. But as the time goes, they will all move away. Those
birds are like our feelings—since you already sketched this image in your head,
you’ll see that you are not actually own any of your feelings.
3. The Book of Worries-how
to switch off the loudspeaker in your head
Fear and worry, according to the
author is deemed as a loudspeaker that needs to be switched off. The Greek and
Roman philosopher known as Stoics recommended the following trick to sweep away
worry: determine exactly what we can and cannot influence. Address the former
and don’t let the latter prey on your mind. In another part of this chapter, the author
also tells about an experiment ran by researchers from Canadian who tested the
effect of fear towards the life quality of a sparrow by playing the sounds of their
natural predators using speakers. Summary: it clearly shows that, fear does
effect the whole ecosystem.
4. The opinion
volcano-why you’re better off without opinion
The human brain are truly a
volcano—waiting to explode with tremendous amount of opinions about this and
that. It spews out idea and perspective non-stop. No matter whether the
questions is relevant or irrelevant, answerable or unanswerable, complex or
simple. The brain will keep tosses out answers. The key to live a good life,
according to the author, is by preventing this ‘volcano’ from erupting like
there is no tomorrow. You don’t need to be the jack of all trade. Select the
topic of your interest very carefully. There’s no need to worry that by being ‘opinionless’
will make you less intellectual. It isn’t. but instead it is a sign of
intelligence and wisdom.
Some random quotes from the book
“One of my golden rule in life is as follows: avoid situations in which
you have to change other people. This simple strategy has already spared me a
good deal of misery and disappointment.”
“Hired for attitude, trained for skills”
“Survey of medalist during the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona revealed
that silver medalist were less happy than bronze medalist. Why? Because silver
medalist measure themselves against the gold, while bronze medalist measure
themselves against the runner-up”
“What can’t be taken from you are your thoughts, your mental tools, the
way you interpret bad luck, loss and setbacks. You can call this space your
mental-fortress—a piece of freedom that can never be assailed”
“A clever person solves the problem, a wise person avoids it”.
“Essentially, you always live where your focus is directed, no matter
where the atoms of your body are located.”
Conclusion
It took me about a week to finish
reading the book. If you ask me whether this book is somehow any better than
other self-help books out there, I cannot be sure of it because we might look
for different things from the book we read. Comparing to the previous book I wrote
the review about, (The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck), I personally say that
the former somehow influenced me in a more significant way. As for the overall rating
for The Art of The Good Life, I personally rate it 7/10.
So that will sum up my review for
the book titled The Art of The Good Life by Rolf Dobelli. Don’t forget to leave
a comment if you have any thoughts or ideas that you want to address. Until next
time. Bye!
Thanks for reading!
-Shah Rizal-
No comments:
Post a Comment