Being slapped also taught me that you can’t always control how people react to you. Some people are completely out of their minds or they behave very inappropriately. You can’t help this. You cannot control what happens in every interaction. The sooner you accept this, the better off you will be.
You don’t feel loved until you trust that the love being expressed toward you comes without any special conditions or baggage attached to it.
I think what most people – especially educated, pampered middle-class white people – consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.
After all, the only way to overcome pain is to first learn how to bear it.
Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else.
Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.
If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something – anything, really – and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself. I call this the “do something” principle. After.
Despite dreaming about making a living through his art, the real potential of becoming An Artist Nobody Likes was far, far scarier than remaining An Artist Nobody’s Heard Of. At least he was comfortable with and used to being An Artist Nobody’s Heard Of.
When we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.
Anywhere there is an unhealthy or toxic relationship, there will be a poor and porous sense of responsibility on both sides, and.
Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do.
Bad ideologies such as racism or sexism persist due to ignorance far more than malice.
The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives. Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress.
There’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort – even if it could potentially make your life better – is inherently scary.
That my most important values are honesty, empathy, and intellectual curiosity. That I’m unwilling to tolerate women who don’t make me happy, no matter how hot they are.
With great responsibility comes great power.
If I’m ever able to hope for nothing, it will be for the simple reason that I’m already with you.
I see practical enlightenment as becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable – that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death.
We all have our chosen methods to numb the pain of our problems, and in moderate doses there is nothing wrong with this. But the longer we avoid and the longer we numb, the more painful it will be when we finally do confront our issues.