Better than Before: Expectations
A book that many of us have heard about at this point “Better than Before” by Gretchen Rubin has landed on my reading list. I came into reading this book with the expectation of learning how to better deal with helping friends work on their habits. My goal being to “help” people better themselves, not “tell” them how to better themselves.
Gretchen’s explanations of 4 tendencies and the many ways these tendencies affect how a person creates habits is very insightful. There are many great tools we can use to help each other form better habits without being overbearing or annoying with our “helpfulness”.
What I’ve found with this book. like many other’s I expect, is more insight into myself and my tendencies. I fall under the tendency she refers to as “Rebel”. I realized this upon examining how during childhood and adolescence whenever I enjoyed something I would do it all the time.
For example I loved reading, but when our school introduced its reading program requiring students to read and take tests, I was done. Immediately I switched into minimal effort mode. How few books could I read in order to pass? The prizes they offered for the most books read never intrigued me. When I was in pre-school I would stay up past my bedtime to read, but now that I was expected to? Forget it.
After graduating college, after 4 more years of minimal effort on my part, I went into the real world. Turns out, in the “real world” or at least the engineering world it mostly consisted of people looking to go nowhere. It was when I was forced into this world thatI immediately began working on getting out of it.
What did I start doing to get out of it? Started reading again, and I love it. No one expects me to read, no one needs me to read, so I read constantly. I love learning, so long as I am not being forced into it under some outside expectation or even my own expectation. I learn because I love it, not because I have expectations of myself for learning. This same love must be cultivated in all things I wish to enjoy in life. Facilitate the flow, don’t control it.