Tuesdays with Morrie | Book Summary

Tuesdays with Morrie is one of my favourite books. It is not a practical guide that can show you how to live a successful life. Mitch Albom has done an amazing job on narration and storyline. I have read so many self-help books, but the ideas that are mentioned by Morrie on how to live a good life are amazing. It does not keep repeating about happiness and success but what it takes you on the journey of every stage and emotion of one’s life.

Important Highlights

Acceptance

1. Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do; Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it; Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others; Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.

Dissatisfaction

1. My days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied.

Unhappiness

1. Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.

Life and its Paradoxes

1. The tension of opposites “Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.”
2. The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.

Meaning and Purpose

1. So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
2. Finding a meaningful life? Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
3. if you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere.
4. People are so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back.

Love and Relationships

1. The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
2. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’
3. There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
4. Your belief in the importance of your marriage.
5. People are only mean when they’re threatened.
6. In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.

Death and Dying

1. Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
2. How can you ever be prepared to die? “Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”
3. Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
4. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
5. You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.
6. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing. ”Make peace with living.”
7. “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

Miscellaneous

1. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” —HENRY ADAMS
2. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.
3. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too—even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.
4. The big things—how we think, what we value—those you must choose yourself.
5. Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become.
6. “Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hang on too long.”
7. “Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.”
8. There is no such thing as “too late” in life.

Author: Mitch Albom