Meditations for Mortals: A Four Week Guide to Doing What Counts by Oliver Burkeman

BATB score: 5/10 🧘‍♀️

reader discretion advised nothing on meditation

Best as: 28 mini-chapters to be read over 28 days on how to live life a little bit lighter ; yet, mediocre daily mini-lessons 😴

Best as: free basic therapy

Best for: anxious people

Best quotes: “It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.”

“Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder, harnessed for productivity.”

“There’s no authority with the power to demand that you earn your right to exist. You just do exist, and that has to be sufficient.”

“Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

“You have to live merely for the sake of life, without justifications or achievements.”

“The essential trouble is that the driving force of modern life is the fatally misguided idea that reality can and should be made ever more controllable - and that peace of mind and prosperity lie in bringing it ever more fully under our control. And so we experience the world as an endless series of things we must master, learn, or conquer.”