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Often, our most intense discomfort is what precedes and necessitates thinking in a way we have never conceived of before. That new awareness creates possibilities that would never exist had we not been forced to learn something new.
In a more cerebral context, if you consciously learn to regard the “problems” in your life as openings for you to adopt a greater understanding and then develop a better way of living, you will step out of the labyrinth of suffering and learn what it means to thrive.
I believe that the root of the work of being human is learning how to think. From this, we learn how to love, share, coexist, tolerate, give, create, and so on. I believe the first and most important duty we have is to actualize the potential we were born with—both for ourselves and for the world.
Once you have so deeply accepted an idea as “truth” it doesn’t register as “cultural” or “subjective” anymore.
Your brain can only perceive what it’s known, so when you choose what you want for the future, you’re actually just recreating a solution or an ideal of the past.
When things don’t work out the way you want them to, you think you’ve failed only because you didn’t re-create something you perceived as desirable. In reality, you likely created something better, but foreign, and your brain misinterpreted it as “bad” because of that.
Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.
You needlessly create problems and crises in your life because you’re afraid of actually living it.
You’re never upset for the reason you think you are: At the core of your desire to create a problem is simply the fear of being who you are and living the life you want.
If you want to change your life, change your beliefs. If you want to change your beliefs,
You think “problems” are roadblocks to achieving what you want, when in reality they are pathways.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Simply, running into a “problem” forces you to take action to resolve it. That action will inevitably lead you to think differently, behave differently, and choose differently.
The “problem” becomes a catalyst for you to actualize the life you always wanted. It pushes you from ...
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The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself.
moods are created by our habitualness: how much we sleep, how frequently we move, what we think, how often we think it, and so on.
The point is that it’s not one thought that throws us into a tizzy: It’s the pattern of continually experiencing that thought that compounds its effect and makes it seem valid.
Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them.
More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways.
When you regulate your daily actions, you deactivate your “fight or flight” instincts because you’re no longer confronting the unknown.
You feel content because routine consistently reaffirms a decision you already made.
It’s honestly the healthiest way to feel validated.
A lack of routine is just a breeding ground for perpetual procrastination.
They do not try to elicit a strong emotional response from anyone they are holding a conversation with.
(That idea may be wrong for you, but it exists because it is right to someone else.)
They don’t immediately deny criticism, or have such a strong emotional reaction to it that they become unapproachable or unchangeable.
They speak calmly, simply, concisely, and mindfully. They focus on communicating something, not just receiving a response from others.
They know how to practice healthy disassociation.
They do not try to inform people of their ignorance.
They validate other people’s feelings.
They recognize that their “shadow selves” are the traits, behaviors, and patterns that aggravate them about others.
They do not argue with people who only want to win, not learn.
They listen to hear, not respond.
They do not consider themselves a judge of what’s true.
What you have to know is that suffering is just the refusal to accept what is.
Because your numbness isn’t feeling nothing, it’s feeling everything, and never having learned to process anything at all. Numbness is not nothing, neutral is nothing. Numbness is everything at once.
Because your sadness is saying, “I am still attached to something being different.” Your guilt is saying, “I fear I have done bad in someone’s eyes,” and your shame, “I fear I am bad in someone’s eyes.”
Your anxiety is your resistance to the process, your last grasps at a control you are becoming more and more aware that you do not have. Your tiredness is your resistance to ...
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t...
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Your annoyance is your repressed anger. Your depression, biological factors aside of course, is everything coming to the surface, an...
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We then strive to keep things within the parameters of which we’ve already accepted. Out of that, we create failure. We create suffering over self. We begin to believe that a static idea can represent a dynamic, evolving being. The ways we don’t live up to the ideas in our minds become our greatest grievances.
I think sometimes we get attached to the structures because we don’t like the contents. We’re more invested in how we’re perceived than who we are, in the idea of what the title means than the day-to-day work of the job, in the “do you promise to love me forever?” than the actual day-to-day loving. This is to say: We’re more comforted by ideas of what things are as opposed to what they really are.
What if healing yourself is not fixing an attitude, not changing an opinion, not altering an aesthetic, but shifting a presence, an awareness, an energy? In this case, fixing the parts does not heal the whole. The only thing that changes you and your life is the awareness of the parts that are not “I.” It is the whole, it is where you end up, it is where you began, it is the one thing, the only thing, that shifts, and raises, and facilitates the spark of awareness that made you question the elements of its vessel.
Nobody wants to believe happiness is a choice, because that puts responsibility in their hands.
as though the more they state how bad things are, the more likely it is that someone else will change them.
The real stuff is the product of an intentional, mindful, daily practice, and it begins with choosing to commit to it.
We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. So even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we’re most accustomed to, and we project that on whatever actually exists, over and over again.
When things go beyond that limit, we sabotage ourselves so we can return to our comfort zones. The tired cliché of stepping outside them serves a crucial purpose: It makes people comfortable with discomfort, which is the gateway to expanding their tolerance for happiness.
The path to a greater life is not “suffering until you achieve something,” but letting bits and pieces of joy and gratitude and meaning and purpose gradually build, bit by bit.
This is the single most common root of discomfort: the space between knowing and doing.
