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June 17 - October 24, 2024
Nobody is thinking about you as much as you are thinking about you.
Everybody else is running around worrying about themselves as much as you are worrying about yourself.
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
Your habits accumulate and begin to default. Imagining that you’ll never grow out of them is the fastest way to a reality check.
You can be more alone in a crowded room and feel more connected in complete solitude.
As anyone who struggles with heightened or irrational emotions can tell you, the root of most anxiety and panic is a fear of experiencing anxiety and panic.
It’s why “loving yourself first” is the most common, the most confusing, and yet the most profoundly solid advice anyone can give. Because it’s not really about feeling love for yourself; it’s being able to feel stable enough that your mindset doesn’t rest in the narrative of a supposed other’s.
The understanding that what we are beneath our skin is more real than what’s on it or how many layers of cells lie between.
That you cannot only be okay with your body when it looks and feels the way you want it to. That you find comfort in sometimes being very uncomfortable, and that you know it is not your responsibility to defer to anyone else’s level of comfort (or lack thereof).
Having eyes to see the love of your life, hands to hold them, and a mouth to speak to them, a gut instinct to know they are your soul mate, and a mind to understand that they agree.
How often you make time to do the things you want, not the things that are expected of you.
What we think, we become.
No emotion lasts for any significant period of time—that’s not how they’re designed. It’s only the cognitive patterning that keeps us re-inciting a feeling over and over again, or that keeps us from choosing the course of action that the emotion is guiding us toward.
Whatever problem you think you have right now is not the actual problem. The problem is that you do not know how to think about your problem correctly.
Make a conscious effort to connect and reconnect with the people you already have in your life—even if it’s just one person you trust and connect with. This will begin to re-form healthy emotional attachments. It’s not weak to need love.
You will need to take action on the things that are holding you back from pursuing the things you actually want. As Cheryl Strayed says, “Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than they did before.”
If you want to be happy, you need to stop chasing happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of doing things that are challenging, meaningful, beautiful, and worthwhile.
