“The Road Less Traveled”

[dropcap background=”” color=”” circle=”0″]I[/dropcap] read “The Road Less Traveled” when I was about 18 years old, and it is one of the top ten books that shaped my character. The book taught me two major things: Discipline and Love. Play the video to watch my review, or continue reading below.

“The Road Less Traveled”, published in 1978, by M. Scott Peck

I read this book when I was about 18 years old, and it is one of the top ten books that shaped my character. Though I learned a lot from it, there are two major things I will focus on: Discipline and Love.

Discipline is critical for happiness and success in life

I learned about the power of delaying gratification. It convinced me that I needed to put in the effort in life, to get the reward in life. It wasn’t that I was lazy, I just needed someone to pound that message into my brain. This book gave me the power to stay focused on the hard work involved in accomplishing anything worthwhile. This reminds me of quote that a friend later told me which was, “Pain is a partner of growth”.

I started applying discipline at university when I would make a point of being at the library every Saturday at the moment it opened. I set the habit of doing my homework first thing in my day, every day. A second way I applied this was that after each class at the university I sat down at a desk in a quiet area. Then I proceeded to re-write my notes from class, while reviewing the chapter in the book that the professor had taught. I was able to create a new, shorter document for each lecture that was clear and concise. If I couldn’t find the answer in the book to any questions then I would prepare a list of questions for the teacher for the next time I saw him.

In my professional life, I recognized that hard problems were real opportunities. This is because most people do not want to do the hard work to solve hard problems. I like to repeat a saying that I made up which is, “Love Hard”. It reminds me to embrace things that are hard, push through them. Because if they are hard, then I know that most people will not do them or compete with me in that area.

Love is what drives spiritual growth

I learned the concept that love is not a feeling, but rather an action. As Peck defines it, love is “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. I learned that when someone says something like, “my mother loved me so much she did xxx for me”, that this may actually not be love at all. In fact, the mother may have been satisfying her own need, rather than furthering the child’s spiritual growth.

I also learned what he called the myth of romantic love, the idea of “falling in love”. What I have learned from later books is that there is a biological process that goes on when you meet someone you like. Call it attraction. This is the power that brings us together and furthers our species, but it should not be confused with true love.

As Peck says, True love is action.

Discipline and love, that’s what I learned from this book.