Because here’s the deal — if we “hustled” and climbed that big mountain and “crushed” all of our goals and made our big awesome vision board a reality, and we still found ourselves feeling trapped, drained, isolated, bored, or stressed out, we’d have to wonder… “What the hell is this shit? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be happy?” As we’ve discu

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You’ve come to equate the meaning of success with “not-failure” or “un-failure.” You are either a failure or a not-failure. If that’s the meaning you assigned to the notion of success, it’s no wonder you never really feel successful. You’re only someone who once again didn’t fail. So, of course there’s never any reason to celebrate or allow yoursel

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I grew up believing you had to have a reason to feel bad. Something had to have happened. You saw a scary movie. Somebody hurt your feelings. You’re coming down with something. You aren’t taking care of yourself.

A lot of this fear of failure comes from having chosen shitty values. For instance, if I measure myself by the standard “Make everyone I meet like me,” I will be anxious, because failure is 100 percent defined by the actions of others, not by my own actions. I am not in control; thus my self-worth is at the mercy of judgments by others. Whereas if

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Similarly, to cross the cringe minefield, you need to have humility about the fact that your perception is distorted, right now. You simply cannot see the landscape of options in your life objectively. By default, you will ignore a path to your dreams if a personally perilous emotion—worthlessness, loneliness, imperfection—is along the way. If you ... See more