We are always bigger than the pain we feel.

Time disproves the lies depression tells. Time showed me that the things depression imagined for me were fallacies, not prophecies.

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.

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

versions of ourselves. The hardest question I have ever been asked is: ‘How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?’ 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.

External events are neutral. They only gain positive or negative value the moment they enter our minds. It is ultimately up to us how we greet these things. It’s not always easy, sure, but there is a comfort in knowing it is possible to view any single thing in multiple ways. It also empowers us, because we aren’t at the mercy of the world we can

But it is helpful to remember that our perspective is our world. And our external circumstances don’t need to change in order for our perspective to change. And the forests we find ourselves in are metaphorical, and sometimes we are unable to escape them, but with a change of perspective we can live among the trees.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, thought that if we are distressed about something external, ‘the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment’.

It’s okay not to make the most of every chunk of time.