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You Only Need This One Book to Address EVERY ASPECT of Personal Development
10 key takeaways from “You’re Too Good to Feel This Bad”
I was originally put off by the title of this one, even though it was blowing up on Instagram and it seemed like every Bookstagrammer I follow was recommending it left and right.
My initial thoughts were, “But I don’t feel bad! Why do I need to read this? It sounds…whiny and…weak.” However, after blazing through it myself, I’ve found it’s pretty much the opposite. And now I recommend it all the time!
The ideal reader here is the high-achiever, or wannabe high-achiever, who is already doing relatively well, but who endeavors to go further.
The book starts off with some fairly simple — but important — foundational stuff that many successful people seem to struggle with, like breathing properly and getting enough sleep, and then it moves on into mindset, career success, and money, before finishing on a high note with respect to relationships and love.
So yes, Nate Dallas covers quite a bit of ground in a fairly short book, and it certainly wasn’t written to be the “definitive” book on any of these topics.
But it’s rooted in Dallas’s invaluable personal experiences getting to the top of the Career mountain and realizing that he’d neglected important parts of himself along the way. There’s an element of ceaseless self-questioning in this book that would be a wonderful skill for all of us to develop more fully.
A recurring theme here is the large impact over time of small choices that we are in control of. Simple, obvious stuff like breathing from the diaphragm and prioritizing sleep is well within our loci of control, and once we do regain control of these elemental life processes, a whole lot of other things are going to start falling into place as well.
Also important — and I’m so glad he references them repeatedly — is the raising of our standards. We don’t rise to the level of our goals, but rather fall to the level of our standards, and in my own life, raising them has been a huge part of my success.
You get what you tolerate in life, and if you tolerate getting 4 hours of sleep and working 70 hours a week for a salary that’s barely enough…
