The Integration Index in the back of the 10th-anniversary hardcover edition of The Gifts of Imperfection is a new tool for making the work your own.

Here’s how it works:

First, create a list of categories that are meaningful to you. I’ve suggested a few that I like to use. Feel free to add, take away, and invent your own. You can also change and add categories as you move through the book.

Four of my favorite indexing categories are:

• Quotes
• Definitions
• Beautiful language
• Do more research

When you come across something that’s important to you in the book, highlight and tag it. Then write the page number down under one of the categories you created.

When you’re done, you haven’t just read the book, you’ve inhabited it. You’ve created an index that allows you to see all of the page numbers of your favorite quotes or definitions. There’s no secret message in your completed index—the process of doing this is “the integration work.”

In other words, simply slowing down, rereading something that’s resonating with you, frustrating you, or maybe even confusing you, highlighting and tagging it, then figuring out why it’s important and where you want to file that in your mind, in your life, and in your index—this process is the engine of integration.

See how people in our wholehearted community are using the Integration Index and making it their own.