The Pivot Year

by Brianna Wiest

You will learn to hear someone’s disapproval and not immediately internalize it but simply witness it as their experience: one that does not have to touch you, nor sway or force you to react.

realize that not everything is an open-ended question—some things are meant to just be.

What you do consistently comes to be characteristic of you.

It is to live in a way that makes you feel grateful you are here, that affirms how connected you are to something greater, that makes you feel as though you’re working toward something that one day will add up to be more meaningful than all its parts.

Instead of trying to figure out whether or not something is definitely right for you, just notice what creates resonance or dissonance.

The tension is not the result of another person occupying what could be yours to stand in, but the revelation of how much you are suppressing that they allow to flow out of themselves—how much they are willing to embrace.

What if you knew that you were never meant to get it right the first time, but to build it through trial and error?

The more you get better at anticipating your future needs, the easier it becomes to be present within your life. The more you learn to live in this equilibrium, you find it easier and easier to sip the tea and not worry about so many other things, because they’re settled. Even if they’re not, you trust yourself to handle them.

Listen to the parts of you that are trying to be heard. The parts of you that speak softly, that gently show you where you are not open, where you are still stuck, where you are asking to grow,

You either see things through a critical lens, or a creative one. You either spend your life constantly evaluating how each thing around you is not enough, or you shift your perspective to wonder how you can turn all that you have into anything you ever wanted.

Our job is not to get better at predicting, projecting, or becoming attached to uncertain possibilities, but having sincere faith that what we know needs to happen next is the key that eventually unlocks everything we’ve been waiting for, everything we’ve ever wanted to be.

Realize that we don’t ever really have to let go; we just have to accept what’s already gone.

Everything that’s truly meant for you will be waiting for you on the other side, because everything that’s truly meant for you is still within you. It always has been. 103 The truth is that it has to challenge you in order to change you.

You need a life worth fighting for.

You don’t have to know the ending to be perfectly on path. You don’t have to understand right now.

We move on when we slowly allow something a little more interesting, a little more beautiful, a little more compelling, to grab our attention, and move us into a new world of our own creation.

What matters is that, in the end, you can tell a story that you’re proud of.

Take away all of the words a person has ever spoken to you, and observe what they do. That is how they feel, and that is who they are.

already have everything I need.

One day, everything you fear will never come will be right in front of your eyes.

May this be the year you look back upon and realize you have lived an entire lifetime within it, that the person you were at the beginning is not the person you find at the end. May this be the year you do not give up on who you were meant to be.

Arriving is a matter of trusting it’s all going to be okay.

what makes this beautiful to me?

This is how you come to understand what it is you really want to create, what really inspires you, what really makes you want to be alive.

allow yourself to experience what you once believed you didn’t deserve.

When it comes to loving other people, they mostly just want to be heard; they ultimately need to feel seen.

this is all there is and this is more than enough.

Your internal commentary is either going to block the blessings, or it’s going to let them in. Change the way you think and speak about what it is that’s coming to you, what it is you’re receiving,

when your life comes from a place that’s authentic, you begin to attract the people, places, and experiences you actually want—not the ones you think you’re supposed to want.

Rather than trying to get other people to see you a certain way, ask yourself to actually become that way in real time.

These rest periods are actually life’s way of giving you an opportunity to work on yourself, to invest in who you want to be.

They are quiet gifts that will lead you to the path you were really meant to be on.

Your journey, then, becomes one of discernment. It is not about how you love, but who.

Sometimes, your purpose in this world is not something you do, but someone you become. Someone you choose to be.

Give yourself space and time.

You are here to explore and have a story all your own. Don’t deny yourself that. Don’t deny yourself adventure.

What if you learned to fall in love with the mysterious, the unknown, the unanswered? What if instead of being afraid of the answers you do not yet have, you adopt the perspective that you’re waiting to discover something so profound, so gorgeous, so unknowable at this state?

An honest heart is rare. A heart that is willing to be earnest, and sincere.

I hope you find the beauty in letting yourself rest, in letting yourself be.

I hope you will see your strengths a little more than your weaknesses.

you must calm your own storms that you stop pushing rain upon other people in your life.

How do you know what to do next? You ask yourself, honestly, what your 90-year-old self would advise you to do.

Just because it is not happening in the timing you expected does not mean it is not happening.

The truth is that you can never have enough of what you do not actually need.

What if there’s a plan for you bigger than you can understand? Can you learn to trust yourself? Can you have faith in what your heart knows, but your eyes have not yet seen?

The life you have today is a mere dream of the past. The things you do right now were once the things you prayed to have. Please, do not forget that when you most fear the future. Each time you have stepped forward, the road rose to meet you—and it will again.

What if the journey was really always about learning how to be in it, be with it, here, now? It’s now, now, now.

Go, because if a dream still lingers within you year after year, it is not an escape, it is a calling.

Go, because one day you won’t have the time left. Go, because there will always be another reason not to.

Go, because there is nothing more risky than ending this story with a