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July 21 - July 28, 2024
When you ruminate, you mistake replay for reflection. When you catastrophize, you mistake worrying for preparation.
you can choose to elaborate on what you came close to getting or you can choose to elaborate on how far you’ve come, the skills you’ve gained, how alive you’ve felt in the process, the relationships you’ve developed along the way, the bravado
you’ve demonstrated in working towards your goal, and so forth.
The reality is that unless you live your life as a big fish in a small pond (boring), you cannot be the best at all things at all times. When you become brave enough to risk failure, you’re going to play with some heavy hitters and you’re going to lose. The loss is proof that you’re not allowing yourself to be intimidated by the risk of unknown outcomes, you’re bold enough to go for it, and you’re allowing yourself to fail forward.
Breaking from comfort of being "the best" somewhere small to be YOUR best somewhere else.
You can be very good at something, excel at something, love doing it, know everything you’re supposed to do, and still parts of it will always be hard.
Comparing yourself to others is a maladaptive waste of your energy.
Yes, you will fall, and yes, you will feel the
fall. But because you know your worth, the fall will not define you.
Healing is anything you do when you act on behalf of your most authentic self.
No one’s getting it right all the time, but more importantly, no one’s getting it wrong all the time either. Turn your attention towards your strengths.
Anything you do to protect, save, restore, and build your energy is productive. Productive activities include but are not limited to sleeping, listening to music, lingering in bookstores, taking a bath, washing your car, completing the work assignment, good conversation, cooking, redecorating, watching a movie, getting a manicure, playing basketball, reading, walking, and singing in the shower.
We can feel so relieved upon leaving a relationship and miss the person still. These aren’t contradictory experiences; they’re whole experiences.
Your pain does not need a makeover; your pain needs permission to stay unkempt. Difficult emotions need to be allowed to lie there like a brick. They’re feelings, not who you are.
Perfectionists are bad at decompressing because they thrive on pressure.
Rest is not an option or a preference. Like water, rest is a need.
Needing validation is not a reflection of insecurity; it’s a central mode of connection. Healthy people need validation.
It’s okay that you need validation; what’s not okay is for you to employ external validation as a primary source of self-worth.
Ouch.
Restoring yourself doesn’t inoculate you from making mistakes. Nothing inoculates anyone from making mistakes.
INSTEAD OF: I’m such a perfectionist. It’s so annoying, I know! TRY: I have a strong and clear vision.
YES!
It’s easy to mistake isolation for independence and being stubborn for being strong.
sleep deprivation may affect eating behavior favoring nonhomeostatic food intake (food intake driven by emotional/psychological need rather than caloric need of the body).”
To feel joy, you need to give yourself access to pleasure.
Without pleasure, our lives become performative. We perform in ways we think will make us happy instead of trusting ourselves to explore what feels good and right.
When you make your access to pleasure conditional (a “treat” for being good), you’re communicating to yourself that whether you deserve to feel good lies in direct proportion to your performance, not your existence.
Mistakes are a part of learning and taking risks. When you trust yourself, you’re not trying to prove anything. You may take more risks, which may mean you make more mistakes.
When you trust yourself, there’s no tally of mistakes. There’s no pettiness. There’s generosity in self-compassion and curiosity, followed by action to better support yourself.
Your self-destructive patterns are the least interesting thing about you; why are you allowing them to lead your identity? Is the damaged version of who you are really your whole story? Are you not bored with this narrative yet?
in the process of surrendering, you let go of the narcissistic notion that you are the all-knowing being who can figure out every answer to every question and thereby control the universe at large.
In a control mindset, pleasure is a distraction. You don’t have time to feel good when you’re operating within a scarcity model that demands a continual supply of externally validated worth. You start intellectualizing joy, making an excellent plan to be very happy later.
There is no one right way to be who you are. There’s no “one right door” to enter before you get to you any more than there’s one right place to dive into the ocean.
your worst day of actively working towards what you want in this life is going to be better than your best day of a life in which you are denying yourself your truest desire.
The energy you bring into the room with you is more valuable than anything you could ever do.
Labels are not who you are. Labels represent our desire to contain our experiences with some degree of reliability.
Healing is a highly individualized process and never looks the same for two people—not in pace, not in method, not in the language that ends up resonating; we each heal in our own unique way. What you most need, only you can know.
Don’t let anyone, including me, tell you who you are. You tell other people who you are—that’s power.
