“Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.”

Tao te Ching, written around 2500 BC: “All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”

hell is suffering—particularly any suffering that feels inescapable.

if you don’t walk your true path, you don’t find your true people. You end up in places you don’t like, learning skills that don’t fulfill you, adopting values and customs that feel wrong. The folks you meet along the way either genuinely love these things, or they’re faking it as hard as you are. Either way, your connection with them will be

David Emerald did just that after he studied Karpman’s work. He developed a kind of anti-triangle, which he called the “empowerment dynamic.”

My inner teacher felt completely aligned with the thought that as a child, I’d been a victim. No question. But now I was an adult who had consciously decided to step outside the rules of my culture. I’d known that people would push back. I realized that the person sending that fax probably saw me as “attacking our way of life.” After all, I’d told

Spiritual confirmation is present when we remember a phone number, laugh at a joke, or forgive ourselves for a mistake. It waves at us cheerfully from the most mundane things,

Epictetus wrote in the second century AD, “What upsets people is not what happens to them, but their thoughts about what happens.”

Over and over, we’d talked about the fact that he was happiest doing simple things, like hiking. But Keith truly believed that if he did less of that and focused on getting even richer, he’d finally feel good enough.