The Road Less Traveled - M Scott Perk

About Book:

The Road Less Traveled is a self-help book, beginning with the line, 'Life is Difficult', it covers such gloomy topics as the myth of romantic love, evil, mental illness & spiritual crises. It is inspirational, but in an old-fashioned way, putting self-discipline at the top of the list of values for a good life.

This Book also strikes a great balance between science and religion, declaring neither can be superior to the other, which is likely to be a big part of its allure. A good read for everyone who leans heavily towards either side of the science-religion spectrum.

Summary:

Using his experience from counseling many clients throughout his career, he lays out a recipe for a fulfilled life that's based on self-discipline, love spirituality, and mysterious force he calls grace.

Here are the 3 lessons he discusses:

1. Stay open to change your perspective of reality at any moment.

2. The action of love is much more important than the feeling, which is fleeting.

3. We're all religious because religion is nothing more than a distinct perception of the world.

Most of our decisions originate from irrational thinking. When we lie, consciously or not we've often just fallen prey to so-called cognitive biases, like the backfire effects, survivorship bias or irrational escalation. It's easy to raise finger and say: "Always be honest!". Peck doesn't emphasize on being honest so much, but to remain open to being wrong because it's hard and takes a lot of humility. Sometimes, even when we're presented with n opportunity to get a better understanding of reality, like facts that prove we're wrong, what we do is we might try to reaffirm our rusty and false beliefs(that is the backfire effect in action). If you learn you're on the wrong track, but you can pause and entertain the idea or opinion at any time you're already closer to the truth than most people.

The book defines as an investment of emotional energy into an object or a person, often to an extent that's unhealthy. Think of it as a romantic obsession or overdose of sexual desire, as a result, our love might burn with a bright flame, but soon fizzle into sparks before extinguishing altogether. If our love is genuine, it won't require lots of feelings at all as Perk's Quotes it: "Love is an Action, Not a Feeling". in this sense, showing your love is as simple as giving your attention, listening and helping your partner reach their goals. No crazy feelings needed.

Our perspective of life is mostly shaped by our education in school and at home, as well as the family environment we grow up in.

For Example, A Person who brought up in extremely conservative, devout and physically abusive parents trends to think that a world is an evil place, trying to punish himself for every mistake he made. Notice how there;'s no God involved in this.

What we can do to improve our religion, then? the answer to this question is we should be open to change and allow ourselves to continue exploring and questioning the world around us, so we can constantly improve our opinions and view of the world(Scientist's Approach).

Perk also described grace as a mysterious force of positive growth in our lives.