📖 Book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and It's All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, PhD. Synopsis: Simple ways to keep little things from taking over your life. The book consists of 100 short articles -- we'll go through them week by week. This week’s # 41: Avoid Weatherproofing Here's what you need to do: 1️⃣ Read it yourself, take time to reflect on it and make notes. 2️⃣ Join the live reading on Wednesday. We'll read and listen to the article together, line by line. 3️⃣ Share your thoughts. Keep your answer under 4 minutes. Be clear, and focus on expressing your ideas about the topic to practice real English speaking. No debates, just sharing thoughts. ***** The idea of weatherproofing as it pertains to peaceful living is a metaphor to explain one of our most neurotic, ungrateful tendencies. It comes from a friend of mine, Dr. George Pransky. Just as we can weatherproof a home for the winter by looking for cracks, leaks, and imperfections, we can also weatherproof our relationships, even our lives, by doing the very same thing. Essentially, weatherproofing means that you are on the careful lookout for what needs to be fixed or repaired. It's finding the cracks and flaws of life, and either trying to fix them, or at least point them out to others. Not only does this tendency alienate you from other people, it makes you feel bad, too. It encourages you to think about what's wrong with everything and everyone -- what you don't like. So, rather than appreciating our relationships and our lives, weatherproofing encourages us to end up thinking that life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nothing is ever good enough the way it is. In our relationships, weatherproofing typically plays itself like this. You meet someone and all is well. You are attracted to his or her appearance, personality, intellect, sense of humor, or some combination of these traits. Initially, you not only approve of your differences with this person, you actually appreciate them. You might even be attracted to the person, in part because of how different you are. You have different opinions, preferences, tastes, and priorities.