112 Quotes by Bruce Feiler

Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to – but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed.

The A is agency – autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you. The B is belonging – relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you. The C is cause – a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile.

Twelve-step programs have long stressed that the key is giving up any illusion of control – to admit that we’re wrong, weak, or full of it, and then relinquish authority to a higher power.

An autobiographical occasion is any moment when we are encouraged or obliged to reimagine who we are. It’s a narrative event, when our existing life story is altered or redirected in some way, forcing us to revisit our preexisting identity and modify it for our life going forward. And nearly everyone goes through such moments.

You don’t need a grand plan, you don’t need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins.

What happens when we misplace the plot of our lives?

Jung called this practice counterbalancing one-sidedness. Our lives become too tilted toward one aspect of our identity and too tilted away from others. We’re all familiar with these scenarios. We become so obsessed with our work we neglect our family; we become so consumed with caring for children we overlook ourselves; we become so focused on serving others we ignore our loved ones. The more purely one thing we are, the more in danger we are of overlooking other things.

Tired of nagging your kids to hurry up, get dressed, drink their milk and brush their teeth? Here’s a radical idea: Don’t.

The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.