The Comfort Book

by Matt Haig

It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learned while we are at our lowest.

Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same direction, will always get you further than running around in circles. It’s about the determination to keep walking forward.

It’s okay to let people find you. You don’t have to spread yourself so thin you become invisible. You don’t have to always be the person reaching out. You can sometimes allow yourself to be reached. As the great writer Anne Lamott puts it: “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

because we aren’t at the mercy of the world we can never control, we are at the mercy of a mind we can, potentially, with effort and determination, begin to alter and expand. Our mind might make prisons, but it also gives us keys.

The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, sure, but also the people you will be.

To be is to let go

Self-forgiveness makes the world better. You don’t become a good person by believing you are a bad one.

To feel hope you don’t need to be in a great situation. You just need to understand that things will change.

You don’t need to deny the reality of the present in order to have hope, you just need to know the future is uncertain, and that life contains light as well as dark.

In order to get over a problem it helps to look at it. You can’t climb a mountain that you pretend isn’t there.

What we say aloud can never quite capture what we feel inside, but that is almost the point. Words don’t capture, they release.

Don’t envy things you wouldn’t actually want.

You don’t need to be happy to be hopeful.

No is a good word. It keeps you sane. In an age of overload, no is really yes. It is yes to having the space you need to live.

movement isn’t progress if we are heading in the wrong direction.

Experience one beautiful thing a day.

Just give yourself one simple reminder that the world is full of wonders. Even if we are at a point in life where we can’t appreciate things, it sometimes helps to remember there are things in this world to enjoy, when we are ready.

No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.

You have no control over who people think you are. So don’t worry. If they want to hate a fictional version of you that lives in their minds, let them.

You can sound confident and have anxiety. You can look healthy and feel terrible. You can speak well in public and be a wreck. You can be externally privileged and not mentally privileged. You can lift barbells and be weak. You can have everything and feel nothing. You can be cut adrift and look ashore.

There will be other days. And other feelings.