As I am a Harry Potter fan, a book by JK Rowling called Very good lives: The Fringe Benefits Of Failure And The Importance Of Imagination would always be a good idea for me. Her wisdom is apparent in this book which tells us about the following:

• Embrace failure. ‘Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lives at all, in which case you fail by default.’
• Know what makes you happy and what doesn’t. ‘Personal happiness lies in knowing life is not a checklist of acquisitions or achievements. Your CV is not your life.’
• What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. Rowling on quoting Greek author Plutarch says: ‘This statement expresses in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world; the fact that we touch each other’s lives simply by existing.’
• Use your imagination to empathise. ‘Imagination in its… most transformative and revelatory capacity, is the power that enables use to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.’
• Put down your want. ‘We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.

 

[ you can read the full article by Suzy Greaves titled ‘Life Lessons’ in July 2015’s Psychologies Magazine, UK Edition]