mental healing

There’s a game I sometimes play at the museum: ‘what kind of painting am I today?’ Never, despite my best attempts, am I an angelic Botticelli. When hungover and weary, perhaps a Toulouse-Lautrec. When swaddled in loneliness, absolutely an Edward Hopper.

The absence of shame makes trying —to do something new, change how you usually act in a difficult moment, cultivate a practice or ongoing habit that has so far eluded you—less terrifying.

Because shame often comes from fearing failure or actually failing, and then feeling as if the failure has something important to say.

For five years, I’ve ceased to experience with shame what can be experienced with pleasure and triumph (sexuality, jealousy, class differences). Shame spreads over everything, prevents any further progress.

[Persistent self-love]...is not the feeling that I am awesome all the time. Instead, it is the total banishment of self-loathing. It is the deactivation of the part of my mind that used to attack itself...It’s the sense that, while I might fuck up, my basic worth is beyond question—I have no essential damage, I am not polluted, I am fine.

Most of the time, “What should I do with my life?” is a terrible question. “What should I do with this tennis serve?” “What should I do with this line at Starbucks?” “What should I do with this traffic jam?” “How should I respond to the anger I feel welling up in my chest?” These are better questions. Excellence is the next five minutes, improvemen

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