On Being

the older i get, the more i think meaning isn’t something you find. it’s something that accumulates while you’re distracted. it grows in the small, repeated gestures — the things you do without a camera, without a caption, without a reason.

- how to notice the life you’re already living (Substack)

but lately, i’ve been realizing that the reason so much of life feels slippery is because we’re trained to narrate it in progress terms. we say things like “when things calm down,” or “once this phase is over,” as if living is the in-between and the real story starts somewhere later.

- how to notice the life you’re already living (Substack)

Because yes, sometimes friends witness you in such a moment and they walk away. But the right people will see you in your weakness and they’ll come and sit next to you. They will hold your hand and they’ll tell you, not with their words but with their actions: This is the moment at which I could abandon you. And I won’t.

Serious vulnerability is not just talking about how you were struggling at some point, or that you were overwhelmed with emotion previously but are fine now—it’s sharing these things as they are happening, expressing your anger and anxiety and sadness while you still haven’t resolved them.

- Give your friends a chance to abandon you (Substack)

When you do something — say, write, work out, or study — your brain releases a small dopamine burst after completion or progress.

Over time, it starts releasing dopamine before you start — in anticipation — because it has learned:

“This leads to a good feeling later.”

That anticipatory dopamine is what we subjectively experience as wanting.

So through

“If I act without desire, am I being inauthentic or forcing myself?”

This is such a human worry — because authenticity feels like it should mean “only doing what feels right or natural.”

But from a psychological point of view, authenticity isn’t the absence of effort; it’s the alignment between your actions and your chosen values, even when the

When you repeatedly experience love, belonging, and purpose without achievement, your nervous system gradually rewires to believe:

“I can fail and still be safe.”

That’s the moment self-worth stops being conditional.

Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan): The autonomy shift

Self-determination theory identifies three psychological needs:

1. Autonomy – feeling self-directed.

2. Competence – feeling capable.

3. Relatedness – feeling connected.

When these needs are met intrinsically (because something feels meaningful or interesting), self-worth becomes self-sustaining.

When

This is one of the central challenges of adulthood — unlearning the conditional messages absorbed in childhood. Psychologically, tying worth to performance is often a legacy of how we first learned to feel valued: through praise, achievement, or others’ reactions.