The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

going out of your way to avoid any possible situation that could bring up something frustrating or uncomfortable, because you have no tools to be able to handle that feeling.

If you find yourself particularly drained after spending time with someone or are feeling like you don’t want to see them again, that’s your instinct. If the work that you do exhausts you and every bit of it is forced and undesirable, that is your instinct. Instinct is not a feeling (you don’t have an “instinct” that you’re sad today); instinct is

How often do we not even attempt something because we are afraid to look bad or fail immediately?

When we can no longer rely on our coping mechanisms to help distract us from the problems in our lives, it can feel as though we’ve hit rock bottom. The reality is that this sort of awakening is what happens when we finally come to terms with the problems that have existed for a long time.

The truth is that there is no way to escape discomfort; it finds us wherever we are. But we are either going to feel uneasy pushing past our self-imposed limits, breaking boundaries and becoming who we dream of being, or we’re going to feel it as we sit and mull over fears we fabricated to justify why we refuse to stand up and begin.

Anger is transformative, and it is often the peak state we reach before we truly change our lives. This is because anger is not intended to be projected onto someone else; rather, it’s an influx of motivation that helps us change what we need to change within our lives. When we do not see it as such, we tend to bury it, not ever resolving the real

Practice non-judgment through non-assumption. Instead of reaching a conclusion about a person based on the limited information you have about them, consider that you’re not seeing the whole picture and don’t know the whole story.

What you believe about your life is what you will make true about your life.

When people are crying out or acting out in their lives, they aren’t just asking for help. They are most often just asking for someone to affirm that it is okay to feel the way that they do. And if they have to inflate and exaggerate circumstances for you to truly feel the weight and impact that they do? They’ll do it.