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The Hardest Person to Grow Up is Yourself: Funny Stories about Emotional Maturity, Humility, and Living Well
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ISBN13: 9798171506285
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 490
Weight: 1.43
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 490
Weight: 1.43
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Growing older is automatic.
Growing up is apparently optional.
Most of us reach adulthood knowing how to drive a car, pay taxes, complain about our knees, and give excellent advice to other people. Yet somehow we can still become defensive over a misunderstood text message, argue about something we barely understand, replay a twenty-year-old grievance at three in the morning, and remain absolutely certain that everyone else is the difficult one. In The Hardest Person to Grow Up Is Yourself, Michael Mulaney sets off on a journey through villages, cafés, harbors, mountain towns, in both the U.S. and old European streets, meeting wonderfully opinionated ordinary people who teach him what emotional maturity really looks like.
Growing up is apparently optional.
Most of us reach adulthood knowing how to drive a car, pay taxes, complain about our knees, and give excellent advice to other people. Yet somehow we can still become defensive over a misunderstood text message, argue about something we barely understand, replay a twenty-year-old grievance at three in the morning, and remain absolutely certain that everyone else is the difficult one. In The Hardest Person to Grow Up Is Yourself, Michael Mulaney sets off on a journey through villages, cafés, harbors, mountain towns, in both the U.S. and old European streets, meeting wonderfully opinionated ordinary people who teach him what emotional maturity really looks like.
There is Josef, the stubborn Austrian woodcarver who discovers that changing his tools doesn't mean betraying his father.
Frank, the retired doctor known affectionately as Doctor Wrong, who learns that mistakes are useful if we're willing to pay attention to them.
Arthur, the Oxford philosopher who has spent a lifetime discovering that I don't know may be one of the wisest sentences available to an educated person.
And fishermen, bakers, psychologists, priests, bartenders, teachers, travelers, grandparents, and neighbors who reveal-usually without intending to-that becoming emotionally mature has surprisingly little to do with age.
Through funny conversations and thoughtful stories, Michael begins asking questions most of us eventually face:
Why do we become so defensive when someone disagrees with us?
Why do old grievances stay alive long after the event itself?
Why is changing our mind so difficult?
Why do families remember the same childhood differently?
Why do we assume we understand other people's motives?
Why does admitting I was wrong sometimes feel harder than remaining wrong?
And why, after decades of experience, can the hardest person in the world to understand still be ourselves? This is not a book about becoming endlessly agreeable, forgiving every offense, surrendering your boundaries, or pretending everyone else's opinion is correct. It is about becoming less controlled by ego, resentment, certainty, and old emotional habits. It is about learning to listen without surrendering judgment, forgive without surrendering boundaries, disagree without becoming cruel, and change your mind without believing you've lost yourself.
Warm, humorous, insightful, and deeply human, The Hardest Person to Grow Up Is Yourself is ultimately about one simple idea: Emotional maturity does not mean finally becoming perfect.
It means becoming a little easier to correct, a little slower to judge, a little quicker to laugh at yourself-and a little more curious about the person sitting in the other chair.
Because growing older happens whether we cooperate or not.
Growing wiser takes practice.
Frank, the retired doctor known affectionately as Doctor Wrong, who learns that mistakes are useful if we're willing to pay attention to them.
Arthur, the Oxford philosopher who has spent a lifetime discovering that I don't know may be one of the wisest sentences available to an educated person.
And fishermen, bakers, psychologists, priests, bartenders, teachers, travelers, grandparents, and neighbors who reveal-usually without intending to-that becoming emotionally mature has surprisingly little to do with age.
Through funny conversations and thoughtful stories, Michael begins asking questions most of us eventually face:
Why do we become so defensive when someone disagrees with us?
Why do old grievances stay alive long after the event itself?
Why is changing our mind so difficult?
Why do families remember the same childhood differently?
Why do we assume we understand other people's motives?
Why does admitting I was wrong sometimes feel harder than remaining wrong?
And why, after decades of experience, can the hardest person in the world to understand still be ourselves? This is not a book about becoming endlessly agreeable, forgiving every offense, surrendering your boundaries, or pretending everyone else's opinion is correct. It is about becoming less controlled by ego, resentment, certainty, and old emotional habits. It is about learning to listen without surrendering judgment, forgive without surrendering boundaries, disagree without becoming cruel, and change your mind without believing you've lost yourself.
Warm, humorous, insightful, and deeply human, The Hardest Person to Grow Up Is Yourself is ultimately about one simple idea: Emotional maturity does not mean finally becoming perfect.
It means becoming a little easier to correct, a little slower to judge, a little quicker to laugh at yourself-and a little more curious about the person sitting in the other chair.
Because growing older happens whether we cooperate or not.
Growing wiser takes practice.
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