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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Everyone fears rejection, but not everyone gets to truly experience the kind of acceptance that comes from being yourself unconditionally.
Calmly standing up for oneself is indicative of inner resolve and self-esteem.
The long-term effects of emotional abuse can be as bad, if not worse, than physical abuse7.
unless we heal what happened in the past, we’re always going to be controlled by it.
our irrational fears and most severe day-to-day anxieties can be traced back to a cause, which needs to be addressed to effectively stop the effect.
Stress debilitates every part of you, and it’s in one way or another interconnected with the top causes of death around the world: accidents, cancer, heart disease, suicide, etc.
The attitudes of the first people you dated/were intimate with, and whether or not they appreciated your body for the completely awesome thing it was (and is). For whatever reason, people’s body hang-ups can often be traced back to those initial experiences, especially if they were negative.
Not spending any time outside. The sun regenerates your body—we are as solar-powered as the foods we eat—and to deny your body that source of warmth and light is to deplete your feel-good hormones and everything else you were built to live in.
what if we made goals that were more about loving what we have rather than chasing what we don’t?
It is not your job to judge who is deserving of your love and kindness. It is not your job to fix anybody. It is only your job to love them in whatever way is appropriate. You are not anybody else’s god.
Start appreciating how rare and beautiful it is to even just have one close friend in life.
Just write down one sentence that sums up the day before bed. In a year, you’ll be grateful you did.
teach yourself the art of denying immediate gratification for the sake of something more important, and show yourself that you already have everything you need, or at least, more than you think you do (even when it doesn’t feel like it).
Call your mom. Not everybody has the privilege.
Keep track of your breath at all times. Be mindful, present and intentional with everything you do. It is not the quantity of what we accomplish, but the quality of it.
Stop trying to navigate the path while the forest is dark. You’ll most want to try to make changes to your life when you’re consumed by emotion, but that’s the worst time to do so. Do not make decisions when you’re upset. Let yourself come back down to neutral first.
Recognize that anxiety stems from shame. It is the idea that who you are or what you are doing is “not right,” therefore eliciting a rush of energy designed to help you “fix” or change it. You’re suffering because there’s nothing you can fix to make that urgent, panicked feeling go away. It’s a mismanaged perception of who and how you are.
Remember that you can choose what you think about, and even when it feels like you can’t, it’s because again, you’re choosing to believe that.
Spend time on your own, especially when you feel like you don’t want to. You are your first and last friend—you are with you until the end. If you don’t want to be with you, how can you expect anyone else to, either?
Focus on getting better, but let go of the end goal. You get better, not perfect.
Stop judging other people. See everyone with dignity, with a story, with reasons for why they are how they are and why they do what they do. The more you accept other people, the more you’ll accept yourself, and vice versa.
Stop thinking that being sad or broken makes you unlovable or “bad.” Your honest moments don’t destroy relationships, they bond (as long as you’re being genuine).
Let what you dislike about your present be a guiding light toward what you want to love about your future.
Fucking try. Honestly, seriously, try. Put your everything into the work you have. Be kind to people when they don’t deserve it. You’ll have a lot less energy to worry with when you’re funneling it into things that are really worthwhile.
When you want to pity yourself over how little love you’re getting, I ask you to stop and consider: How much are you giving?
Your criteria for a romantic “type” are personality traits, not physical characteristics. Your idea of “love” has expanded beyond the feeling that sexual attraction gives you.
Anger is a good emotion; that is, when you finally figure out that you’re not mad at the world—you’re mad at yourself.
The people who were able to hurt you most were also the people whom you were able to love the most. We aren’t profoundly affected by people who aren’t already deeply within our hearts.
What you learn and who you become is more important than how you temporarily feel.
Even if it wasn’t your fault, it is your problem, and you get to choose what you do in the aftermath. You have every right to rage and rant and hate every iota of someone’s being, but you also have the right to choose to be at peace. To thank them is to forgive them, and to forgive them is to choose to realize that the other side of resentment is wisdom.
Anger = recognition.
You love in others what you love in yourself. You hate in others what you cannot see in yourself.
When we hold an idea of what love should look like, we attach to something that often just quells an insecurity, saves us from a reality, or helps us prove ourselves to someone else.
“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets….The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration—it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
You likely struggle with indecisiveness and fear of the unknown, as you never know what kind of treatment to expect from people. You have a hard time trusting others, but at the same time, are easily overly attached and clingy, even just to the idea of a person.
You can’t avoid your emotions. You can’t deny them, invalidate them, or suppress them. You can only try to ignore them, but for reasons more powerful than your conscious mind can grasp, they will make themselves known in many other ways.
You suffer a “spotlight complex,” in which you feel that everyone is watching you and is invested in how your life turns out. (They aren’t. They’re not.)
“Nobody cries at a funeral because the world will be missing out on another pretty face. They cry because the world is missing another heart, another soul, another person. Don’t wait until it’s too late to focus on what will actually matter: creating something that lasts far beyond your body.”
“You do not have to be loved by everybody to be worthy of love.”
“I once bought a train ticket for myself, and was on a trip that I completely funded, and realized that I can support myself, and I don’t have to answer or please anybody else. I work hard so I can live the way I want.”
You are your struggles. You say, “I am an anxious person” rather than “I sometimes feel anxiety.” You identify with your problems, which is likely a huge reason why you can’t overcome them.
You do not have to waste your life bending over backwards to make people happy when they don’t—and wouldn’t—do the same for you.
Existing in someone’s silence is existing in the most intimate part of their life.
There is something absolutely extraordinary in learning about someone else’s culture or dogma or lifestyle, in practicing
The most important thing is that you do what makes you happy—and that you understand that your happiness is your choice and your responsibility alone.
Not liking everybody or desiring solitude or preferring one close friend to a group of many is not social dysfunction.
You desire solitude because being alone is emotionally enriching.
The only thing you should ever try to do when you’re very anxious or panicked is to comfort yourself. You cannot think clearly and shouldn’t make assumptions or decisions about your life in that state. Figure out what soothes you (a snack, a bath, talking to someone, doing something you really enjoy) and get yourself out that energy before you do anything else.
Anxiety is the warning sign that we’re too much in the past or the future—and being there is affecting how we make choices in the present.
