How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

You offer not perfection but commitment to make amends for failures, to make restitution for losses. This is a flexible (and therefore adult) presentation of your self. It preserves you from the expectation by others that you can be counted on absolutely, or the verdict of others that you be discounted absolutely. “To live is to change and to be pe

“your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if you only allow it.”

Boundaries do not create alienation; they safeguard contiguity. Boundaries are what makes it possible for us to have closeness while we still safely maintain a personal identity.

Like one who lives in a valley and then crosses the mountains and sees the plain, he knows now from experience that the sign saying “Do not go beyond this point,” like the high mountains, does not signify a barrier.

It is often said that anger is a “secondary feeling,” one that masks another feeling, such as sadness or fear. Notice that anger, like all feelings, coexists with other feelings. It never masks them. Drama does that. Where else would masks fit so well?

Negative excitement can keep us stuck for years in dysfunctional, abusive, or self-defeating circumstances. It sometimes feels like a sense of purpose since it sustains our ongoing drama. When the object of our negative excitement is gone, we may then feel depressed and even believe our life has lost meaning. The best way to handle negative excitem

A commitment to an essential bond—an enduring “given” of mutuality—that weathers the stresses and crises of change. This bond is unconditional. If “someone else has come along” who is more attractive, more fun, “just right,” it will be taken only as information about the charms of the new person or the deficits of the present relationship. It will

“That by which we fall is that by which we rise”

I accept this reality: This is my Body. I surrender to every This and Now. My love lets in what fear shuts out. I parent myself. More and more I yield and make peace. I drop “shoulds”; I make choices. I always have a choice. I walk freely on the earth. I have power: I let go of the need to control. I drop guilt: I deserve pleasure and power. I drop

Your values are revealed to others by your words and actions. Your behavior is the final determinant of your values. This is how people come to trust you: they can see your consistency. You act on your inner choices.