Open When...

by Julie Smith

Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.

The inner world is like a sauna; there are benefits to being there, as long as you don’t stay for too long. Instead, I strongly urge you, in challenging times, to connect with other humans in the real world wherever possible. That is where most of the answers are to our naturally fluctuating mental health in the face of life’s ups and downs.

Second, no matter where you are starting from, the path to all things better is always through new effort and willingness to learn. It is true for all of us that we don’t know what we don’t know. Please trust me when I say that you have no idea how much better things could get for you until you’re there.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Listen to resentment. It might mean that you need to start putting in effort on your own behalf and speaking up for yourself. Or it might mean that you need to exercise gratitude by taking control of the focus of your attention in a way that serves you better.

Are you doing things today that are taking you in that direction?

In the moments that you would previously have worried about whether you fit in, turn your attention to making sure that the people around you feel welcome, feel interesting, and feel a part of things.

What we miss while stuck in this rumination is the understanding that our worthiness need never be on the line.

Another trap that will keep you stuck in the darkness of heartbreak is the idealizing or villainizing of the person who did not love you back.

When you find yourself asking why over and over, step back and acknowledge that yearning for a reason and an understanding is a normal part of the grieving process—but one that can keep you stuck if you give it too much of your focus.

All we can do is choose the regrets we can live with, the ones that we could be at peace with later, not the ones that will leave us grieving for a life that could have been more meaningful.1

The only way to summon the courage to make big decisions is to commit to forgive yourself when you take a wrong turn.

making your decision will not necessarily put an end to the anguish.

You may not instantly believe that this was the best possible decision you could have made for yourself. The doubt may continue. If you need to reassess, then do so constructively, but don’t allow yourself to ruminate on the paths you didn’t choose, especially if you didn’t choose them for good reason. The presence of doubt does not make it the wrong choice. It can mean that you are simply feeling the losses from the sacrifices you made for this path to work. Keep your eyes on where you are going, not where you might have gone.

The most potent way to find courage in the face of big decisions is to know, without a doubt, that you will have your own back when you fail. That is not an if but a when. Because of course you will fail somewhere along the line.

You are not losing. You are living. You are learning. You are witnessing yourself get back up every time. With that, the fear of failure stalks you less and less.

The predator has its eye on something exciting and will enjoy giving everything to reach its goal. It is that anticipation for the chase that sparks acceleration into the pursuit.

Whatever your personal arena looks like, fully commit to standing tall as you take your place, knowing that, at a fundamental level, you are in competition with no one but your past self.

It is choosing to look at a situation from the perspective that is most helpful to you. It’s the predator over the prey, excitement over anxiety, challenge over threat, gratitude over resentment, continuous improvement over limiting self-judgment.

It’s okay if you don’t know where to start. Nobody does. Just begin. Find the nearest thing that you could apply yourself to and go do it. Start so small that it almost feels laughable.

Your emotions are a reflection of your brain’s attempt to make sense of things.

But if you genuinely made a misstep and find yourself remorseful about it, then those feelings can be a force for good if you are brave enough to examine them.

There are some things only adversity can teach you.1 So let it do that. Be willing to look at the thing you least want to look at. Not as a source of self-loathing, but as a source of wisdom.