
The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward

both of them talked about developing the capacity to navigate change, the omnipresent force in all our lives. Oprah quoted the poem by MAIA and shared her own conviction that “change is there to evolve you.” Gayle said something beautiful, too: “Aging is just another word for living.”
Melinda Gates • The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
is that there’s important value in being willing to change your plans as your understanding of the world expands and grows more complex. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself and the people around you is to have the wisdom to know which dreams to let go of in order to make room for something
Melinda Gates • The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
His immediate family is allowed to do those things, too, but not to him—only to the people outside their circle.
Melinda Gates • The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
But my advice is to leave some room for those plans to change. Resist the idea that anything you’ve done here at Stanford has already locked you into any one path—or any one kind of life or career. Be excited about the fact that you will encounter possibilities you haven’t imagined yet. And be willing to let what you learn shift your thinking about
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Some dreams undoubtedly propel us forward, but others hold us back. The trick is learning to distinguish between the two—and, when you decide an old dream no longer serves you, finding the courage to slip its bonds.
Melinda Gates • The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
A good enough parent is one who cares for their child and tends to their needs without expecting perfection of either themselves or their child. In fact, Winnicott and others argue that a good enough parent is actually more effective than a “perfect parent” (whatever that means) because perfectionism has no place in a healthy relationship between
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In her book Radical Acceptance, Brach describes the Buddhist concept of the sacred pause, writing, “A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal.” These pauses, she says, “can last for an instant, for hours, or for seasons of our life.” What makes them so important, she
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We all approach mindfulness in our own way. But however we get there, the relationship we have with ourselves—with the true, authentic selves that live beneath our ordinary waking consciousness—is, I’ve learned, one of the most important relationships we’ll ever have.
Melinda Gates • The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
“Few of us become everything that we dreamed,” he writes. “One reason is that our dreams often can be shockingly selfish.”