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
When you learn something new for the first time you flail miserably at it, but eventually you identify your weaknesses and over time the process toward solution becomes almost instinctual. Things get better and easier, and somehow you’ve developed into this whole new person who could do the hard things you once dreaded, now effortlessly. I find... See more
Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it... See more
In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again. The richest relationships are lifeboats, but they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disquieting places, to the unfathomed trenches of the soul where our deepest shames and foibles and vulnerabilities live, where we are less than we would... See more