Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself

by Mark Epstein

Making one’s life into a meditation is different from using meditation to escape from life.

Past and future preoccupy us because we are trying to control things, while being in the present necessitates openness to the unexpected.

Simply to dismiss one’s thoughts is to miss the boat. One’s story never changes if it is simply ignored; it just lies in wait, ready to return with a vengeance.

Our narratives need not be as sure of themselves as we have led ourselves to believe. The more we examine them in an open way, the less convinced we tend to be about them.