The crucial work is updating your expectations and confronting reality, even if doing so feels difficult and uncomfortable at first.

non-dual thinking, tragic optimism teaches us that life can be sad and meaningful, that we can experience pain and joy, that change can bring about anguish and hope, and that impermanence represents both endings and beginnings.

allostasis describes a pattern of order, disorder, reorder.

Stevenson, who is known for going into jails and prisons and spending hours upon hours sitting with defendants, hearing their stories, affirming their humanity, and offering them dignity.

What they all hold in common is a view of identity as both stable and changing at the same time.

it widens your inner aperture, creating space for you to hold an expansive range of feelings—which is an “accurate expectation” for what it means to be human.

Nearly everything about social media and cable news teaches us to react instead of respond.

benefit of impermanence is that it does not discriminate: The lows pass too and in all likelihood, we’ll derive at least some meaning and growth from our experience, even if it takes time.

What shifts with tragic optimism is that all the usual repression, delusion, self-judgment, rumination, and despair get left behind.