2
" [Chesterfield] introduced an ethical question that Americans continue to grapple with: Is it okay to say one thing while believing another? Or to put it another way: What's more important, honesty or politeness?
Lionel Trilling, the literary critic, picked up on this question in 1972 when he published /Sincerity and Authenticity/, in which he defines two distinct terms that he believed Americans had conflated. He describes sincerity as the "congruence between avowal and actual feeling." A sincere work is literature is one in which the author seeks to convey exactly what she's thinking-- your comfort be damned. Authenticity, meanwhile, is a matter of personal integrity: you know what you're being authentic, even if other people don't. It's a virtue that puts little stock in what other people think and instead emphasizes determination and self-awareness.
Using this parlance, Chesterfield urged his son to be authentic but never sincere. He wanted his son to be purposeful when he chose to imitate someone. "I would much rather have the assent of your reason to my advice than the submission of your will to my authority. This, I will persuade myself, will happen," he wrote Phillip. He hoped that Phillip would learn to calibrate his behavior in service of his goals. But sincerity, for Chesterfield, was for chumps. He instructed his son to never share his true feelings or thoughts, to never appear vulnerable or emotional. There is no need for sincerity if you have no self to begin with. And Chesterfield had no self, only a resume. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
4
" Probity, virtue, honor, though they should have not received the polish of Europe, will secure to an honest American the good graces of his fair countrywomen.' In America, , in other words, sincerity mattered more than style. And Chesterfield had become synonymous with all the vapid formality that Americans had fought to free themselves from. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
5
" Ann and Abby, for the most part, remained aloof and practical. The position of the advice columnist, as they both defined it, was an inherently centrist one. It was their job to be dispassionate, to base their advice on social averages. 'Do not agree to engage in any practice you consider frightening, abnormal, or weird,' Abby once advised a reader. The Friedman sisters were not moral heroes. They lacked Dorothy Dix's empathy. 'I'm sorry' was not in their vocabulary. They could be intolerant and cruel and mocked people in distress-- Abby especially. But they never cast themselves as ethicists. They weren't interested in what was right; they were interested in what was normal. They saw themselves as keepers of the social curve. Their advice was a reminder of what was expected of their readers: to buck up, respect their commitments, not be weird. Abby preached acceptance... partly because forgiveness was more efficient than the alternative. She seemed to think that emotions were a waste of time. Eppie was similar. Her response to conflict was either to "dismiss it or rationalize it," as one friend told Carol Felsenthal. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
6
" This notion of oneself as a kind of continuing career-- something to work at, work on, 'make an effort' for and subject an hour a day of emotional Nautilus training, all in the interest of not attaining grace, but of improving one's 'relationships'-- is fairly recent in the world, at least in the world not inhabited by adolescents,' Didion wrote. 'The message that large numbers of people are getting... is that this kind of emotional shopping around is the proper business of life's better students, that adolescence can now extend to middle age. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
7
" Onstage, Hendrix was trying to get a young couple to engage in a dialogue sequence. The pair sat in armchairs facing each other, and Hendrix old the man, Michael, to pay his wife of three months, Tara, a compliment.
'What I appreciate most about you is that you're a good cook,' Michael said.
'So what I'm hearing you saying is that you appreciate that I'm a good cook,' Tara said, She seemed bored.
To prompt Michael, Hendrix began, 'When I think about you as a good cook, I feel--'
'When I think about you as a good cook,' Michael said, 'I feel full, sleepy, and-- sexy.'
'Really?' asked Tara, a little annoyed. The woman sitting next to me groaned.
Hendrix jumped in, 'When I think about you as a good cook, it reminds me of... try to find something from your childhood.'
'When I think about you as a good cook, I--' Michael stopped, then started over. 'When the house smells good, it reminds me of home and when my mom cooked and I feel loved.'
Tara repeated him, her eyes now glassy with affection. Unprompted, she spoke the next line in the sequence: 'Is there anything more to that?' There wasn't. They hugged for sixty seconds as the rest of us watched. Hendrix told the crowd that the length of the average hug is three to nine seconds, but that a good hug, one that 'pushes the boundaries of relationship,' takes a whole minute. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
10
" The neccissity of joy and the so-called body check remain the basic tenets of the Martha Beck life coaching method... Beck and her acolytes bristle at the word advice-- only you, your body, can know what brings it joy. But she has a fairly definitive dos-and-don'ts list for joyful living. Do meditate. Do use agential verbs, as in 'I choose to pull an all-nighter.' Don't use passive words, as in 'I have to pull an all-nighter.' Do what you love. Don't succumb to other people's expectations. She believes the body is your friend and the brain is not, that language is the root cause of most psychic pain. 'We're the only species that can create a belief in reality because of the use of abstract language,' she said. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
11
" A coaching session works like this: The coach asks the client to describe the greatest source of pain in his or her life. The client talks, the coach asks follow-up questions, and as soon as the coach forms an opinion, she discloses it to her client. The technique is meant to distinguish the life coach from a quiet, diffident therapist. 'The first thing I teach coaches to say is, 'Here's what I think is going on with you. Your job is to please, please tell me where I'm wrong and tell me precisely.' Asking for this confirmation, number one, it builds trust. Number two, it puts you in a position of servant rather than overseer. It creates humility and an open mind. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
14
" In 1859, the author Samuel Smiles published a book called Self-Help. (It's the first known use of the term.) In it, he explains that perseverance is the key to success. Accomplished people work harder than regular people. Success is anyone's for the taking. All you have to do was drill down-- get up earlier, stay up later, and apply yourself.
Carnegie applied this same ethos to popularity. Anyone can be popular if they smile a lot and perfect the art of the compliment. All self-help, Carnegie included, promises that the world isn't rigged. That no dream is too big. That we can re-create ourselves to be prettier, smarter, more productive and more likable. Self-help recasts personality traits as skills. It posits that anything can be learned. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
18
" My first night with Beck, she told me, 'I had many times in my life where I could have either chased despair or been weird. I chose weird.' Beck says that a third of people who sign up for life-coach training don't know what they want from it. They are looking for something different. Something weird. This is where Beck comes in with her shaman friends and her psychic ponies. Her coaching is designed to give women permission to be weird, because who knows? Beck believes that weirdness, or being open to weirdness, is the key to a more meaningful existence. Dorothy Dix advised women on how to disguise their weirdness; she believed there was always a way, even without a husband, for a woman to contribute to society. Dear Abby and Ann Landers were dogged in their insistence that were only a select number of ways to live. Beck continues in the tradition of Mildred Newman, training her followers to ignore the judgements of others and their own self-doubt. But Newman was concerned only with the health and satisfaction of her patients and readers, wheres Beck thinks all this self-care leads to something awesome, in the most literal sense of the word, that it generates miracles and time travel and a new world order. She senses, perhaps, that this is what her readers need to hear. Newman's followers, especially the celebrity set, were focused on and delighted by their own achievements, but Beck's followers are more self-conscious and coy. Their self-care needs to be justified. "
― Jessica Weisberg , Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed
