This is your chance to reflect on what you will take away from Chapter 2: What’s Wrong with Me? and to learn from or contribute to other book club members’ take-aways. You can also pose questions here about the chapter or what you are discovering about yourself. You have some incredible resources available in your fellow members. Don’t waste them. And please do not keep your own light under a bushel basket. You know so many things. Reach out and help your fellow book club members, okay?

The exercises we completed in Chapter 2: What’s Wrong with Me? included

1. The "What Have I Done So Far?" List
2. What Are Your Rewards?

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That’s it for this week! Watch for your weekly email on Thursday or just log in again then. If you’re not getting the weekly announcements and you would like to add them, please send an email to me at webmaster@barbarasclub.com. I can also help with comment subscriptions if you need it. Until next week!

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Look at that list you wrote of all the things you’ve done. Now pick up a pencil and see if you can remember anything that interested you, even for a very short period of time, and add it to your list. Then ask yourself these two questions about everything on the list.

1. What was the most exciting or interesting part of the experience?
2. Why did you stop when you did?

Go back and rethink the moment you stopped being absorbed in the project, when you began to lose interest or started having doubts.

What had gone away?

When the magnet that originally attracted you starts diminishing in power, you’ve done what you set out to do. Your purpose for being there is gone. That’s why you lose interest. Not because you’re flawed or lazy or unable to focus, but because you’re finished. It seems obvious, but it never occurs to most of us.

Now, start another column beside your list and title it Rewards. Next to each activity or interest you entered, write down the Rewards you got from that activity.

…

When you’re getting your Reward from any activity, you always feel happy, absorbed, energetic. And when you are satisfied, or the reward diminishes, you get bored. It’s as natural as sitting down to eat when you’re hungry and leaving when you’re full.

Add your answers to this exercise right beside your "What Have I Done So Far?" list in your Scanner Daybook. In a new comment on this page, tell us about your experience with this exercise. Share your most frequent Rewards if you feel comfortable doing so. Then read the rest of the comments and see if you would like to reply to any of them. We can learn so much from each other.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones. If there are a lot of comments by then, look for an Older Comments link to see any that do not fit on this page.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to What I Learned from Chapter 2, What’s Wrong with Me? after you are done with your comments.

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Take out a sheet of paper or your Scanner Daybook and write a list like Pamela’s, with as many experiences or accomplishments, big and small, as you can think of, from teaching your dog a trick when you were a kid, to painting a portrait, to raising your own children or helping someone pass an exam. Include all the projects you started that didn’t get finished, businesses that didn’t get off the ground, courses you didn’t complete, and novels you planned but didn’t write. Don’t think too long, just write down anything that comes to mind. New items will pop into your head when you think you’re done, so don’t try to put the list in any kind of order. What you remember is exactly what should be there.

Do it now. Pick up your pencil and start writing. Give yourself about 5 minutes to write, then come back when you’re finished.

Use your Scanner Daybook for this 5 minute exercise, and leave some empty space to the right of your list. In a new comment on this page, tell us about your experience listing what you have done so far. Any surprises? Any insights? Then read the rest of the comments and see if you would like to reply to any of them. Your replies make a huge difference to your fellow members and to how many of the group will stick with us through all the chapters in this life-expanding book.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones. If there are a lot of comments by then, look for an Older Comments link to see any that do not fit on this page.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 2: What Are Your Rewards? after you are done with your comments.

Book Club Help Page

Welcome / Agenda Page