Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

Pain is one hell of a teacher.

Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life’s beautiful uncertainty.

When there is nothing we can do about something, the point of worry begins to diminish.

The future is abstract. The now is all we know. One now after another now. The now is where we must live. There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you. Focus on that.

Be a map with 10,000 roads. Be the orange at sunset that outclasses the pink of sunrise. Be the self that dares to be true.

We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn’t help anything. The problem, clearly, isn’t that we have a shortage of time. It’s more that we have an overload of everything else.

To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics. To be a proud and singular one. An indivisible prime.

no one really cares what you look like. They care what they look like. You are the only person in the world to have worried about your face.

Understand people are more than a social media post.

Do not seek out stuff that makes you unhappy. Do not measure your own worth against other people. Do not seek to define yourself against. Define what you are for.

life isn’t about being pleased with what you are doing, but about what you are being.

Change doesn’t just happen by focusing on the place you want to escape. It happens by focusing on where you want to reach.

Find the hope that is already here and help it grow.

One thing mental illness taught me is that progress is a matter of acceptance. Only by accepting a situation can you change it. You have to learn not to be shocked by the shock. Not to be in a state of panic about the panic. To change what you can change and not get frustrated by what you can’t.

Because often identifying a problem, being mindful of it, becomes the solution itself.

the mere presence of your smartphone can reduce “cognitive capacity.”