self relationship & exploration

Many people, me included, ask the question ‘what is it like to be me’ surprisingly infrequently. Asking yourself this, a lot, can stop you from falling into a bunch of varieties of self-destruction, and lead you towards a more self-authored and less self-inflicted life.

So many high-achieving people get trapped into obsessing about the external world and neglecting their internal world. When you’ve been suppressing things for so long, you can’t just decide to stop all at once. Learning to listen to yourself takes a long time. I used to think that I always had to justify everything to myself—that I needed to be

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The numbness I felt was the result of continuously choosing to ride the gondola in the direction of someone else’s definition of success, moving further and further from my own intuition of a life well lived. When we feel internal turmoil, it’s a signal from our body to rethink our assumptions. While it’s natural to turn to everyone else — anyone... See more

The quest for self-discovery implies there is a prize ending; a time you’ll be able to breathe out a sigh of relief, or jump up and down with excitement, or throw a party, or in some way acknowledge that you’ve finally done it: you’ve discovered yourself. But in practice, the quest never ends, because fully knowing oneself is impossible. This... See more

Second, you possess even more imperfect knowledge of who you will be in the future. Consider, for a moment, what your life today would be if you were to dictate its future contours precisely and completely at the age of ten. Absurd!

Growing up, we turn to our parents, friends, teachers, and communities for guidance like our lives depend on it. Because it does. We have no idea yet how to live, how to learn, how to dress, how to be. Through being explicitly told what to do and implicitly observing what we should do, we learn to earn love and acceptance by living in accordance... See more

Relationships are like gazing into clear, bottomless pools of water. Look hard enough and you’ll meet the eyes of your own reflection. Stare into the soul of someone else long enough, and you’ll fall deeper into the abyss of yourself. The more you love the person in front of you, the more you understand yourself.