Natalie Audelo

I call these experiences our dark teachers. The lessons that hurt, scare, scar, wound, and almost destroy us are very often the things that make us who we are because they require us to muster what we thought we could not muster—courage, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, love, resilience, strength, generosity of spirit, ferocity of heart. The time... See more

Looking closely is valuable at every scale. From looking closely at a sentence, a photograph, a building, a government. It scales and it cascades — one cognizant detail begets another and then another. Suddenly you’ve traveled very far from that first little: Huh.

I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh i... See more

I’m uncomfortable with the idea of going public, but only because I haven’t been practicing. I guess I have to suck it up and accept that my practice now entails growing my capacity to deal with the unknown variables of other people even more than I already have.

I saw something wonderful recently about how creatives should never apologize for taking the space to create. How wonderfully, stupidly obvious is that? Whether it’s your work or your pleasure, creating grounds us, fills us, lets the most alive parts of ourselves enter into the world to further germinate and flourish.

Self-actualization means, at least partly, that you have designed a life that fits you—that allows you to express your human potential. And as I talked about in the last part, to make a good design, to find a fit, you need to perceive the context you are designing for clearly.

A big problem with bubbles is the reflexive association between wealth and wisdom, so a bunch of crazy ideas are taken seriously because a temporarily rich person said it.

Many people who are talented in their various fields have access to insight they can’t share with others. They simply see something we can’t. They try to describe it—picture any Paris Review interview—and often hearing them talk about their process is interesting and informative. But they’re unable to describe the core thing—what gives them the sto... See more