Updated with stories from people who have been inspired by the original text, a guide to connecting with what matters most identifies four phrases for honoring relationships, letting go of unhealthy emotions, and living life fully.

Autorentext

Ira Byock, MD, is a leading palliative care physician, author, and public advocate for improving care through the end of life. His research and writing have helped to define quality of life and quality of care for people living with advanced medical conditions. He has been involved in hospice and palliative care since 1978 and is a founding member and past president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. From 1996 through 2006, he served as Director for Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care, a national grant program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. Byock is Chief Medical Officer of the Institute for Human Caring of Providence Health and Services system. From 2003 through July 2013 he directed the palliative care program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dr. Byock is a Professor of Medicine and Community & Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

More information is available at IraByock.org.

Klappentext

“This beautiful book, full of wisdom and warmth, teaches us how to protect and preserve our most valuable possessions—the relationships with those we love. It shows that the things that matter definitely aren’t ‘things,’ and how to empower your life in the right direction.” —Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Four simple phrases—“Please forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “Thank you,” and “I love you”—carry enormous power to mend and nurture our relationships and inner lives. These four phrases and the sentiments they convey provide a path to emotional wellbeing, guiding us through interpersonal difficulties to life with integrity and grace.

Newly updated with stories from people who have turned to this life-altering book in their time of need, this motivational teaching about what really matters reminds us how we can honor each relationship every day.

Dr. Ira Byock, an international leader in palliative care, explains how we can practice these life-affirming words in our day-to-day lives. Too often we assume that the people we love really know that we love them. Dr. Byock demonstrates the value of “stating the obvious” and provides practical insights into the benefits of letting go of old grudges and toxic emotions. His stories help us to forgive, appreciate, love, and celebrate one another and live life more fully.

Using the Four Things in a wide range of life situations, we can experience emotional healing even in the wake of family strife, personal tragedy, divorce, or in the face of death. With practical wisdom and spiritual power, The Four Things That Matter Most gives us the language and guidance to honor and experience what really matters most in our lives every day.

Zusammenfassung
Motivational teaching about what really matters reminds us how we can honour each relationship every day.

Leseprobe
Four Things That Matter Most: 10th Anniversary Edition
Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition

Learning from Conversations with My Readers

There are few better ways to deepen one’s understanding of a subject than to teach it. As a practicing physician and professor at a medical school, I am continually learning. Questions from patients or doctors-to-be frequently illuminate a problem’s complexities, allowing me to see the whys, hows, and what-ifs through fresh eyes.

Similarly, in the 10 years since The Four Things That Matter Most was first published, readers have taught me about the challenges people encounter—or assume they will encounter—in following my recommendations for mending, tending, and celebrating relationships. They also report benefits that I had not foreseen in saying the four things that matter most: “Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.” People who have attended readings I’ve given or called in to radio talk shows have asked questions about troubled relationships and situations that seemed to make saying the Four Things impossible. The people who have taught me the most were those who wrote or spoke to me of their doubts. They agreed they wanted to say the Four Things but had questions regarding whether these principles could work after they’d had so many painful experiences in their relationships. Often the situation they described involved a parent and, although this was hardly a scientific sample, most often that parent was a father.

I’m grateful to each person for his or her willingness to ask me those hard questions and share sometimes excruciating details of their personal lives, and I admire their strength and determination in moving forward to say the Four Things. Our conversations have given me a fuller understanding of how saying the Four Things can positively affect people’s lives. Hopefully, I have become a better doctor and teacher as a result of their feedback. And hopefully their stories and the varied situations in which they benefited from saying the Four Things can help you better see how you can use the Four Things, too.

Why the Four Things Work

One winter morning, the week after The Four Things That Matter Most was published, I was sitting at home at my desk in New Hampshire being interviewed by phone for a news radio station in Philadelphia. One of the show’s cohosts began the interview in a lighthearted way, asking, “I liked your book a lot, Dr. Byock, but why would anyone buy it? After all, you give the book’s main message away in the first paragraph.”

I laughed out loud. She had a point. Chapter 1 begins by explaining what the four things that matter most are. But the stories of real people that fill this book are necessary to convey the value of saying the Four Things and give you the full picture of how the Four Things can help and the contexts in which you can say them. I don’t profess that if you just say these Four Things to someone, your relationship will be healed. Saying them will certainly help, but while they are the right words, you need to say them at the right time and place.

Life can be very hard. Many of us have suffered badly broken relationships with important people in our lives—the results of past lies, disloyalties, broken promises, frank betrayals, painful divorces, or emotional or physical abuse. When people are deeply hurt, they often cannot imagine any end to the anger or hatred they feel. In the clinical work I do, I’ve learned that sometimes the barrier to healing is exactly that: people’s inability to imagine that any healthy resolution is possible. Stories of people who, against all expectations or odds, mended or reestablished fractured relationships can expand what each of us imagines is possible in our own lives.

By the way, I don’t try to talk people out of being angry about past injuries. Anger is an entirely legitimate emotion. If you have been wronged—if someone was mean-spirited to you or intentionally harmed you in some way—you have every right to be angry. And if you consciously decide to stay angry, you have my blessing. I just want you to know that you have other, healthier options, and the four things that matter most can help you find those options.

True stories expand the possible—they open your imagination to possible future outcomes and often bring tangible results. The saying “Where there is a will, there is a way” applies to long-standing, badly broken relationships between p…