Bonds...

Not to be confused with James Bond. I can see how Cathy's family liked the ideas in this book although it was slow to get through. 

I didn't realize this book had any effect on me until I was caught in self deception last week. I was mad at someone and was plotting my revenge when the ideas in this book came to me. I realized the person did not make me mad I did, and instead of trying to make them feel bad (which I can't really do because they ultimately decide how they feel) I just needed to be open with them and explain how I felt. 

It made me think of the Christmas example where the husband would painfully go along with the Christmas traditions and the wife trying to get the husband more happily involved kept adding more and more traditions. If they had just been honest and open with each other instead of trying to influence the way the person felt they would of solved their problem a lot sooner. 

I also found the idea interesting that we always justify our actions in our minds so we are always right. We might even do this to the point where our conscious becomes skewed. I always thought of my conscious as my moral bearing, and we often say our conscious is the Holy Ghost, but the author is making the point that our conscious can be distorted if we keep lying to ourselves. What did you think, can our conscious become this way or is it always a moral compass?