A life of ones own

If you wanted to discover how to find your own happiness, start examining yourselves and take a glance on this book entitled A Life of One’s Own by Joanna Field.

This is a book that merely touches every reader’s mind and heart. There are 10 remarkable facts about this book. First is that it was written by Marion Milner, she uses the pseudonym Joanna Field in writing this book She was 34 years old then when she wrote the book. It is about a of a young woman who is candidly questioning herself and what she is doing with her life.

 The basis of this writing is her own personal intimate diary that she kept over many years and was finally published in this book in 1934. (amazon.com)The book cited different events in the author’s life and done in a matter like she was writing in a Diary which is exposed to all people.

Emotion is one great key in an individual’s happiness because according to her which was also cited in the book, “I want to draw and study a few things closely by feeling, not thinking.” A lot of her entries started with “I want.”(Field 1934).

In this book she tries to summarize her discoveries in terms of psychic bisexuality in all of us realizing that: she ‘had not understood at all that a feminine attitude to the universe was really just as legitimate, intellectually and biologically, as a masculine one’ – and just as necessary for both women and men (amazon.com).

Marion Milner is an English psychologist who was born in London in 1900 and in her book she cited the wide-focus mode of paying attention.(MacDonald’spp.96-97) Here the term that best describes her point of view is the term focus wherein we should always try to center our best to what we truly aim in our life and strive hard to reach the goal.

According to Milner herself, her aim for doing the book is to find out what are the experiences that really made her happy. She tries to pick out those moments in her daily life which had been particularly happy and tries to record them in words. She goes over these records in order to see where happiness occurred. (Tacher/Putnam 1981,preface)

Being mindful of our own actions is one key point that should be taken out by the readers. There’s one remarkable thought cited in the book “I came to the conclusion then that “continual mindfulness”. . . must mean, not a sergeant major-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to accept whatever came.” (Field 1934, 8June).

If you are going to ask me why there is a need for you to read this book is because of three precious reasons: First, it makes you discover your true self and be mindful of all your actions. Next is for you to find out what can really make you happy, your likes and dislikes.  and lastly if you have questions like what to do and how to live the way you really wanted to be happy, start reading and reflecting on this book.

References

• Field, Joanna. (1934) A Life of One’s Own. 8June
• Macdonald, Copthorne. Comments about Open Focus,  Toward Wisdom pp. 96-97 Tacher, Jeremy P. (1981) from the author’s 1934 Preface
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Ones-Own-Joanna-Field/dp/0860688216/ref=pd_rhf_p_1
• http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/discipline.htm