Andrea Mendez

So we might all have the same needs, but the superficial markers for how we achieve these desires look very different. This is where people start misunderstanding one another, fighting.

- Substack

the older i get, the more i think meaning isn’t something you find. it’s something that accumulates while you’re distracted. it grows in the small, repeated gestures — the things you do without a camera, without a caption, without a reason.

- how to notice the life you’re already living (Substack)

the fact that you’re tired means you’ve been trying. the fact that the day was uneventful means it was probably safe. and that safety, though invisible, is a privilege.

- how to notice the life you’re already living (Substack)

but lately, i’ve been realizing that the reason so much of life feels slippery is because we’re trained to narrate it in progress terms. we say things like “when things calm down,” or “once this phase is over,” as if living is the in-between and the real story starts somewhere later.

- how to notice the life you’re already living (Substack)

Because yes, sometimes friends witness you in such a moment and they walk away. But the right people will see you in your weakness and they’ll come and sit next to you. They will hold your hand and they’ll tell you, not with their words but with their actions: This is the moment at which I could abandon you. And I won’t.

Serious vulnerability is not just talking about how you were struggling at some point, or that you were overwhelmed with emotion previously but are fine now—it’s sharing these things as they are happening, expressing your anger and anxiety and sadness while you still haven’t resolved them.

- Give your friends a chance to abandon you (Substack)

When you do something — say, write, work out, or study — your brain releases a small dopamine burst after completion or progress.

Over time, it starts releasing dopamine before you start — in anticipation — because it has learned:

“This leads to a good feeling later.”

That anticipatory dopamine is what we subjectively experience as wanting.

So through

“If I act without desire, am I being inauthentic or forcing myself?”

This is such a human worry — because authenticity feels like it should mean “only doing what feels right or natural.”

But from a psychological point of view, authenticity isn’t the absence of effort; it’s the alignment between your actions and your chosen values, even when the

When you repeatedly experience love, belonging, and purpose without achievement, your nervous system gradually rewires to believe:

“I can fail and still be safe.”

That’s the moment self-worth stops being conditional.