101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

by Brianna Wiest

Bad feelings should not always be interpreted as deterrents. They are also indicators that you are doing something frightening and worthwhile.

Whatever you want your day-to-day life to consist of doesn’t matter, the point is that you decide and then stick to it.

A lack of routine is just a breeding ground for perpetual procrastination.

Fear means you’re trying to move toward something you love, but your old beliefs, or unhealed experiences, are getting in the way.

To speak definitively about any one person or idea is to be blind to the multitude of perspectives that exist on it.

It usually takes a bit of discomfort to break through to a new understanding, to release a limiting belief, to motivate ourselves to create real change.

We’re more comforted by ideas of what things are as opposed to what they really are.

Seek what’s positive, and you’ll find that your threshold for feeling it expands as you decide it can.

There’s no contact high during the first days of marathon training when your lungs are stinting and you want to vomit. But over time, you develop your skill. You begin to imagine what you could accomplish. You fall in love with the process.

We want to be legends and geniuses and masters, but care little to develop the discipline it would require to log our 10,000 hours—so to say.

You will never be ready for the things that matter, and waiting to feel ready before you start acting is how the knowing-doing gap widens.

The fact that you do not need to be exceptionally beautiful or talented or successful to experience the things that make life profound: love, knowledge, connection, community, and so on.

Everything is hard; it’s just a matter of what you think is worth the effort.

If you wait on the feeling of “readiness,” you’ll be waiting forever, and worse, you’ll miss the best of what’s in front of you.

(in fearing that happiness won’t last forever, we lose it—in fearing that grief will last forever, we create it).

the idea that other people exist in comparison to oneself is mindless at best and selfish at worst.

Aspire to be someone who gives things meaning, not who seeks things to give them meaning. Rather than chasing “success,” chase kindness. Rather than believe wealth is the mark of a life well lived, believe that intelligence is, or kindness is, or open-mindedness is.

See your fears as catalysts for bettering your life, not as you being condemned to suffering.

Just because I’m alive and breathing and can.

Success is more a product of habit than it is skill.

If you go on living as though love is something that is always required of you, you will find it in everything.

you do not need to be perfect to be good enough.

It’s not about having as little as possible, it’s about having only things that serve purpose or hold meaning.

Clarity comes from doing, not thinking about doing.

Being in a relationship with the love of your life doesn’t necessarily make it easy

What do you want them to say at your funeral? That you wore a small pant size and had a successful job that prevented you from actually developing relationships? Or that you were loving, and kind, and cared about your work, but cared about people more?

Everything is hard in some way.

A good life isn’t passionate, it’s purposeful. Passion is the spark that lights the fire; purpose is the kindling that keeps the flame burning all night.

Whatever you feel you are not receiving is a direct reflection of what you are not giving.

You can’t reflect your way into a new existence, but you can think yourself into paralysis.

Creating the moment-to-moment, day-to-day life you want, with the people you want, happens one job and month of rent and load of laundry and sink of dishes and electric bill at a time.

I guarantee there is not one person you wouldn’t love if you knew their true story, their whole story, if you lived a day or a year or a lifetime in their shoes.

You are not loved by everybody, but that does not mean you are not loved at all. You are not the most beautiful, but being the most beautiful is not what matters most.

As hard as it may be to grasp, all things are good, because all things serve us in the way of growth and development.

You don’t “have” to, you “get” to. This is one of the simplest changes in perception, and yet also something truly fulfilled people master: the knowing that everything is an opportunity to experience. You don’t have to go to work; you get to go to work. You don’t have to wake up early; you get to wake up early. When you start considering things not as obligations but as opportunities, you start taking advantage of them rather than trying to avoid them.

not one word anybody says is more powerful or true than how you behave and who you really are.

I wake up early around 4:30 or five and work out for an hour. Do some meditation and get ready for the day. Put in a good days work, eating a yummy lunch in the middle. Drive home and play violin for a bit, go to a ballet class, and cook a delicious dinner. Have some dessert and get ready for bed. Climb into a made bed and read until I get sleepy.

- Matthew - music - good food - ballet - family

Existing in someone’s silence is existing in the most intimate part of their life.

you are going to be okay; not because you’re delusional, not because that’s what everyone says, but because “okay” is where we all end up. Not because anybody else tells us that we will. But because we find it on our own and learn to believe it for ourselves.

We inevitably fall within what we once said was “wrong,” because we’re human beings, and dangerous territory is the mind that doesn’t leave room for the soul to falter.

Utilize the most powerful growing tool of all: “future-self work.” If you’re on the fence about kids, imagine your life at 75. Do you want your own family around you, or are you okay on your own? Imagine your life in three years from now. Will you be happy you didn’t try harder in that relationship, or that you didn’t save any money, or that you wasted your time watching Netflix when you could have been writing the book or starting the business or playing music like you really want to? Imagine your life from the perspective of the person you hope to be. It will place many things back into alignment.

The idea that human beings should be constantly happy is “a uniquely modern, uniquely American, uniquely destructive idea.”