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    The Pursuit of Perfect: to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life
    The Pursuit of Perfect: to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life
    The Pursuit of Perfect: to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Pursuit of Perfect: to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life

    Written by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD

    Narrated by Eric Conger

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Do you want to be perfect? Or do you want to be happy?

    We're all laboring under our own and society's expectations to be perfect in every way-to look younger, to make more money, to be happy all the time. But according to Tal Ben-Shahar, the New York Times bestselling author of Happier, the pursuit of perfect may actually be the number-one internal obstacle to finding happiness.

    Applying cutting-edge research in the field of positive psychology-the scientific principles taught in his wildly popular course at Harvard University-Ben-Shahar takes us off the impossible pursuit of perfection and directs us to the way to happiness, richness, and true fulfillment. He shows us the freedom derived from not trying to do it all right all the time and the real lessons that failure and painful emotions can teach us. He provides exercises for self reflection, meditations, and “Time-Ins” to help you rediscover what you really want out of life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateApr 8, 2009
    ISBN9781598879049
    The Pursuit of Perfect: to Stop Chasing and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life

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    Reviews for The Pursuit of Perfect

    4/5

    79 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Loved this book! Very informative and interesting! Helped a lot to deal with perfectionism!
    • 5/5
      Amazing insights! I was not aware of the differences between a perfectionist & an optimalist.
    • 2/5
      'Readingextravaganza' has written an excellent review summarizing the main ideas in this book. I think that the author's advice to try to be an 'optimalist' rather than a 'perfectionist' is wise and helpful. Perfectionism can indeed make you miserable. If I had read the book instead of listened to it, I probably would have rated it with 3 or 4 stars.I can't give this CD set a good review, however. In general, I have trouble appreciating audio books, and this one is no exception. The author's ideas merit pondering, and it's difficult to ponder while listening to a book being read. You could pause the CD and 'ponder' but that doesn't come naturally to me, And of course the index, notes, and excellent bibliography are missing.The main problem with the CD version is, however, the reader. His voice is didactic, and he takes the opportunity to sound snide and sarcastic whenever he can fit it in. I've looked at the book itself, and find the author's writing 'personality' to be gentle and humorous, but this didn't come across at all. I can't help but wish that Mr. Ben-Shahar had read the book himself. As a Harvard professor, he's probably an accomplished lecturer.
    • 3/5
      While the advice contained in this book is helpful, I have to ask myself did I need to read so much of this to get the message? The answer quite simply is “no”. Having make the point that striving for perfection essentially leads only to low self esteem when we inevitably fail, there is not really a lot more that can be said, yet Ben-Sharah manages to take over 250 pages proving it.Yes, it contains proof, and exercises to help the afflicted, but it all come down to that first simple statement. But I very soon became impatient with what I was reading, not to mention extremely irritated at the constant interchange between “he” and “she” in the examples; pointless political correctness that simple gets in the way. I don't think I really needed to plough through all that tautologous writing to get the point. I could go on, but then the same accusation could be levelled at me!
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. I love the overall realism. My biggest take away was his suggestion to move our attitude from perfectionism to optimism. A perfectionist is one who rejects failure, painful emotions, success and any reality that interferes with a goal. The optimist will not look forward to the above but accepts them and grows from them.
    • 4/5
      Whether we enjoy books or not really depends on where we are in our lives. At this moment in time I really needed to read this book. As an over-educated, unemployed perfectionist, seeking a job in this dismal economy - I needed a wake-up call! Thank you for helping me realize that I can be a little imperfect and that's OK!
    • 3/5
      The Pursuit of Perfect: How to stop chasing perfection and start living a richer, happier life y Tal Ben-Shahar.Unabridged audio book read by Eric Conger.I should not have requested this book. My life and habits do not really accommodate audio books and this one comes on 6 CDs and runs to 7 hours. My commute, if I don't walk, is about 10 minutes. I could try listening to it during the workday but then I would be paying half attention to both work and the book.Nonetheless, I made myself listen to much of it since I keep getting notices that I have yet to review it and I am not getting any more Early Reviewer books.Eric Conger has a pleasant voice with good pacing, although a bit slow of time. He is easy to listen to for the amount of time required to read this book.The author's field is positive psychology and his thesis is that the pursuit of perfection leads us to impoverished lives. The book is divided into 3 sections: theory, application, and meditations.The author's message is a simple and powerful one backed up by research. Yet, being so, it didn't require this much beating of the drum to get the point across. Also, the book is of only so much value if one is not the kind to do the exercises in a self-help book. There are probably better introductions to positive psychology but this one, while somewhat repetitious, is decent enough.
    • 4/5
      I appreciate receiving a review copy of this audiobook from HighBridge audio. I don't listen to many audiobooks - I prefer the print version because it is easier to move back and forth, pause, or go back a little if my attention wanders; also there is the ability to look at notes & references. With an audiobook or lecture if my mind wanders I've just missed something & it's harder to go back and pick up on the missing material.I thought the reader was OK, very even in reading, but I would have enjoyed hearing the author read the book, especially because he shared so much personal information. Also he is a top lecturer at Harvard."Do you work at generating light or avoiding darkness?" probably not an exact quote (another disadvantage of the audio format) but that phrase stuck out for me as a take-home message, which turned out to have much to do with accepting suffering and imperfection as a normal part of life.
    • 4/5
      In 'the Pursuit of Perfect' Ben-Shahar expands on many of the ideas outlines in his prior book 'Happiness'. Delving into the details of how to get over our perfectionist mentality to achieve a happy life of satisfaction. While this book is essentially a self-help book, it reads like an interesting compendium of the scientific research into what differentiates happy people from unhappy people, specifically as this happiness relates to our pursuit of achievement and self fulfillment. In his recommendations Ben-Shahar takes into account a variety of human tendencies and how the status quo has led us to misunderstand why it is that we pursue certain goals. This book is extremely practical and enlightening for anyone who finds their ambitions to sometimes feel overwhelming, a poor fit for their true interests, and an impediment to their overall contentedness with life. Since our modern culture(s) offer so many distractions and diversions from what is truly important to each of us, this book offers a reminder what we should be focusing on and how to pursue that focus in a healthy manner. One criticism that has been levied at Ben-Shahar specifically, and happiness psychology generally, is that while this might be practical for people who are educated, working in professional positions, or who are independently wealthy, it seems to have little application to people who for one reason or another are downtrodden and struggling to have their most basic needs met. This criticism might be somewhat unfair, since Ben-Shahar himself recognizes that in order to pursue the type of happiness he is discussing, one's basic needs must not be in question. While I agree with this limitation of happiness psychology, that does not negate the suggestions for people who do have their most basic needs met, yet the recommendations in this book may facilitate greater enjoyment of those basic needs, if one can learn to recognize how.
    • 4/5
      Ben-Shahar's approach to perfectionism and achievement is a healthy one, supported by research, that drives home how pernicious perfectionism can be. The book takes the solid approach of contrasting perfectionism and "optimalism" (the practice of doing the best one can with what one has), and underlining how optimalism beats perfectionism on pretty much every count, *including* achievement. I'm listening to the audio version, and the reader has a good voice and is easy to listen to. The only problem with going audio for this book is that it's full of many useful exercises - the sort I'm used to being able to set the book down for so that I can complete them. A bit harder to do when I have to rush across the room and pause the CD!
    • 5/5
      I was expecting this book to be a rather bland take on a typical self-help theme, something along the lines of being providing excuses for those who are willing to put in the necessary hard work needed for excellence.Wow. That was incorrect. Ben-Shahar starts by debunking the perfection as a goal (and perfectionism as a attitude), replacing it with the concept of "optimalism", optimizing outcomes against the constraints of reality. He does this fully and from many angles. And thus finding happiness outside of perfectionAnd then he takes the concept further linking it to deeper philosophical, emotional, and psychological concepts.I had thought that the notion of abandoning the drive for perfection would be contradictory to my overall approach to life. Instead, I learned that the converse is true. And that has made this the most eye-opening book I've read in years.(I should elaborate by adding that I found the audio book a little tough to digest, so I bought the 'real' book... that worked much better.)
    • 2/5
      A self-help book! I think I would have liked Happier better; this book is directed at giving readers strategies to guide themselves in the direction of “optimalism” rather than perfectionism, accepting disappointment and long, hard roads to success. I was really struck by the ways in which the advice was removed from social context and individualized: other people showed up, basically, as potential sources of desired goods like love, but it was all about changing yourself. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the baseline for a self-help book was a highly independent self with a lot of social capital, such that success (or failure) at standard material/social goals was possible, but it was just so unlike what I usually read. Ben-Shahar argues that human nature is fixed (though he gives very little content to that fixity in this book, except to say that communism must fail and capitalism must succeed; he quotes Ayn Rand as a good guide to love!) but human behavior isn’t, and once he made that move, with no attempt to discuss power and how things get slotted into nature v. behavior and by whom, I kind of stopped paying attention. On the other hand, I did find earlier parts of the book useful: he makes a good case that modern Western culture too readily encourages people to suppress bad feelings instead of acknowledging them, which makes it harder to experience good feelings in the long run.
    • 3/5
      "Positive Psychology" has recently moved to the main stream and is now taught at top universities and is the subject of several recent books. The science behind this approach is solid and interesting. I had hoped that this book would present the science. Tal Ben-Shahar teaches a course on the subject at Harvard so I had high expectations. Unfortunately, this book does not really teach much of the science. The book is squarely in the "self-help" category and is full of personal anecdotes and spends a good deal of time asking you to think about your own personal experiences. If you are looking for a self-help book that focuses on personal anecdotes and avoids discussions of the academic studies on the topic, this might be for you. However, if you are more interested in the science behind this fascinating new field I recommend “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt or “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. Both are very accessible.
    • 2/5
      'Readingextravaganza' has written an excellent review summarizing the main ideas in this book. I think that the author's advice to try to be an 'optimalist' rather than a 'perfectionist' is wise and helpful. Perfectionism can indeed make you miserable. If I had read the book instead of listened to it, I probably would have rated it with 3 or 4 stars.I can't give this CD set a good review, however. In general, I have trouble appreciating audio books, and this one is no exception. The author's ideas merit pondering, and it's difficult to ponder while listening to a book being read. You could pause the CD and 'ponder' but that doesn't come naturally to me, And of course the index, notes, and excellent bibliography are missing.The main problem with the CD version is, however, the reader. His voice is didactic, and he takes the opportunity to sound snide and sarcastic whenever he can fit it in. I've looked at the book itself, and find the author's writing 'personality' to be gentle and humorous, but this didn't come across at all. I can't help but wish that Mr. Ben-Shahar had read the book himself. As a Harvard professor, he's probably an accomplished lecturer.
    • 3/5
      The main thought throughout the book is how trying to live a perfect life, to have perfect looks and perfect careers is actually ruining our lives. Shortly said, perfectionism is bad. On the other hand, we, the people obsessed with the perfect, should instead try to attain a state of optimalism, a term Mr. Ben-Shahar came up with. Tal Ben-Shahar is a perfectionist and he noticed long time ago that trying to have it all and avoiding failure, negative emotions and get the goals no matter what was making his life miserable. He had done a lot of research to find a way out of his misery and the outcome is The Pursuit of Perfect, in which we are presented with a solution: a middle ground and acceptance of our human nature. The book offers some simple, yet great exercises which do not require a lot of time or effort, and most importantly leave some space for error, since they need not be done perfectly. At the core of the whole book is that our society shuns pain, sorrow, unhappiness and requires us all to be always at our best behavior, always smiling, always being nice to customers and fellow employers and if there is a shadow of anger or sadness lurking about, we run to doctor’s for pills and therapies, because these emotions are absolutely unwelcome. Ben-Shahar argues that as humans we are equipped with tools within ourselves to deal with negative emotions and one of these tools is “going with it”, instead of burying a specific feeling we have and we don’t want to have, be it fear, jealousy, anger and so forth. The more we deny ourselves these emotions the more persistent they will be and sooner or later they will resurface making us miserable.I have to say that despite my doubts about a self-help book ever working for me, The Pursuit of Perfect appealed to me a lot. First of all, even if perfectionism was never one of my many vices, I realized that I was too among the hordes of people trying to live up to societal expectations of the perfect. From the first pages I could tell that this book had a potential of opening my eyes and also giving me permission to just act according to my human nature, to be simply ‘good enough’ and not necessarily ‘better than’. Mr. Ben-Shahar’s writing is very accessible and quite persuasive. To give you an example, I have always been a person who would suddenly feel envy towards somebody else and then immediately I would scorn myself for feeling this horrible emotion, put it aside and in the end beating myself for the rest of the day about how I must be a bad human being for feeling envy towards somebody that most likely doesn’t deserve it. A few days ago, I was sitting in a public place, waiting my turn to be serviced and reading the part of the book which talks about not suppressing our negative feelings but instead accepting them. And wouldn’t you know, there comes a drop-dead girl, wearing sexy clothes and attracting stares of every male specimen in the room. I immediately start being jealous and think of all the reasons why she really is looking ridiculous and completely overdressed and how she truly is screaming for attention. But instead of suppressing these emotions of jealousy and low self-confidence, I decided to just stay with them and take a closer look at the girl. I allowed myself to feel the negativity, I accepted the fact that I indeed was being jealous and went back to reading my book. Hours later, when I left the building, I all of a sudden realized that I completely forgot about that girl, didn’t beat myself up for being jealous and I had a fairly good, relaxing time as opposed to being literally devoured by envy. So there you have it. It worked and I have a strong feeling that if this one worked, others might too.