Title Be the Person You Want to Find

Author Cheri Huber

Year Published 1997

Kind of Book Relationship/Self-help

How strongly I recommend it 5/10 

My Impressions

I really liked the title. I was expecting the book to be about what the title suggested, but instead it was about mindfulness and early childhood conditioning. Nevertheless there were a few great ideas about self, identity, and projection in here from the lens of a Buddhist.

Date Read Dec 2021

Practical Takeaways

  • See relationships as a way of discovering more fully who you are

  • Say "I am feeling (emotion)" NOT "I am emotion"

  • Be happy and then look for someone to share that with (don't look for somebody to make you happy)

  • See yourself as loveable (and others will see you as loveable)

  • Become for yourself the person you want to find

  • Exercise

"Describe the steps you would take,

The gifts you would buy,

The generosity you would bestow,

The kindness you would offer,

The enthusiasm you would have,

The attention you would give,

And anything else that appeals to you,

If you were to begin giving to yourself the

Things you want someone else to give you."

 

Big Ideas

  • We sometimes project the best aspects of ourselves onto our partners (ie. Idealization)

  • True awareness is not judgmental (it only observes objectively what is)

  • Our childhood patterns continue to play out in adulthood

  • As adults we surround ourselves with people/partners who act as surrogates for people from our childhood (eg. parents) and then play out scripts from our childhood with them (ie. Transference)

  • As children adopting doing what our parents/society want us to do is literally a matter of survival

  • Often the real problem in our adult relationships has little to do with the other person and much to do with a pattern we learned in childhood playing out

  • Buddha-mind is non-dualistic (ie. If you are seeing things dualistically you are not in Buddha-mind)

  • Egocentricity, suffering, fear, self-hate, and illusion of separation are all the same thing.

  • As long as you are in the mindset of self improvement you won't be able to disidentify from your self

  • How you see other people and the world is a reflection of how you see yourself

  • People see us the way we see ourselves

  • If you see yourself as unlovable others will see you as unlovable.

  • If you see yourself as lovable others will see you as lovable.

  • The primary relationship we have in life is the one we have with ourselves

  • The most intimate relationship we have in life is the one with ourselves

 

Unknown Terms

Disidentification: the action of 'stepping back' from an identity and viewing ourselves from a greater perspective ie. Meditation allows us to hover above the judging/thinking self and observe objectively what is going on