The road less travelled by M. Scott Peck

Life is difficult.

The road less travelled by M. Scott Peck is a philosophical and spiritual book about finding fulfilment and meaning in life. He uses his background as a psychologist/psychotherapist to bring forward examples that illustrate the underlying principles.

Key points:

• “Life is difficult” this is the first sentence of the book and it is surprisingly relieving to have it validated.
  • The inevitable challenge that life places upon us is a common thread across stoicism, Zen buddhism, and Alderian psychology.
  • The first step is to acknowledge and accept that life will be difficult, no matter what we do or where we go or who we are with; there will always be adversity.
  • Once we have truly accepted this, we can move on to do other things and can stop worrying about why life is difficult
• Almost everything meaningful in life requires discipline
  • This is true to physical and mental endeavours but also for societal or community contributions and, importantly, for fostering meaningful relationships
  • Many have argued how self-control / discipline are predictors of ‘success’
  • Discipline is also the ability to focus on the long-term whilst delaying gratification from short-term pleasures
  • It also goes hand-in-hand with taking responsibility for things that have been put into your care and for the trajectory of your life
• Love can be defined as being committed to the spiritual growth of another person, and this is very different to ‘romantic love’
• Serendipity happens more often when you are in the right place (physically and mentally) to receive it
  • This concept has been alluded to elsewhere and is probably a reflection of familiarity bias. Once we have put our mind into a receptive state then we will hear what we are searching for (probably at a subconscious level)

The point about serendipity has stuck with me ever since I read it. The more I read and think, the more this point seems to resonate.

The latter half of the book gets a little too theological for my personal taste but the themes are important and overlap with other similar texts.

More books like this:

• 12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson
• The last lecture by Randy Pausch
• Magic of thinking big by David J. Schwartz

Here are one, two, and three other summaries/reflections on this book.