Yesterday I started "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Wow, this book! It is so so good so far. It is so interesting what they bring up in this book. Surprisingly, a lot of the pieces they discuss are things I feel like I believe. They discuss the importance of exposing children and people to uncomfortable situations. I think that it is so important to have challenges in your life. It truly helps change you and teaches so many important things! Yesterday one of my friends told me that she noticed I like things that are hard. She was both wrong and right. Wrong because I don't know if I would say I **like** hard things. I would say I see the good and growth that comes from the hard things, which leads into her being right about me liking them. Something else from the book that caused me to think more deeply was this story that the authors shared at the beginning of the book. The story was about how keeping children away from peanuts led to more children developing peanut allergies. This makes a lot of sense to me- avoiding something causes it to be a problem later. This story goes hand in hand with one of my other beliefs- that we live in a world of over diagnosing. It seems every year more and more people say they have this illness, or this disorder, and they internalize and it changes how they view themselves and situations. Us as humans need to have a label for EVERYTHING. But by trying to label everything, it seems to create more problems. Any time some may feel something different than typical, or they act in a way that is not "normal" there is this need to classify it. But why do we need to label ourselves? We think it makes others aware, but it more often divides rather than creates awareness. I am not saying that every disorder or illness is fake and not real, because there truly are some real things that people struggle with, and it's good to be able to find answers and help for when one needs it. But just like with the peanut allergy story, this hyper-fixation on keeping people safe and identifying everything and not causing issues for anyone creates more issues. I can't wait to read more of this book, and continue to create my own opinions and views abut the world around me.