self relationship & exploration

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

First, you possess imperfect knowledge of yourself. You may think you want something up until the moment you’ve attained it, only to discover that having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting .

Since we can’t gain a complete understanding of ourselves, we have to settle for the next best thing: an incomplete understanding that requires constant updating—hopefully in the right direction—as we continue to take in more information from our peers and life experiences. The key phrase here is “in the right direction.” One could interpret... See more

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

... 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!