I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
I help busy people do inner work.
I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
On the surface, it appears masochistic and idiotic.
But when we dig deeper… we might realize it’s actually to serve a need.
Brianna Wiest, author of The Mountain Is You, points out that, “Being successful can make you less liked. Finding love can make you more vulnerable. Making yourself less attractive can guard you. Playing small allows you to avoid scrutiny. Procrastinating puts you back in a place of comfort.“
We self-sabotage because we’re serving the needs of a lower version of ourself.
The practice—the inner work—is about learning how to identify and act in ways that’s aligned with the opposite—our highest version.
Rather than blindly serving the needs of our lower version self, we need to ask ourselves, “What would my highest version do?”
And rather than ignoring, suppressing, or hiding behind behaviors that self-sabotage… we need to unpack, dissect, and understand them.
And by committing to a regular practice that leads to growth, we might find that being successful can make us like ourselves more… that finding love can make us feel more fulfilled… that making ourselves more attractive can be exciting… and that by playing big, taking action, and staying outside of our comfort zone can allow us to maximize our time here on earth.
P.s. Here’s a list of my favorite quotes from The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest.
Sometimes when I sit in my backyard and close my eyes… the rustling of the trees sounds like the caressing of the waves on a shoreline.
Sometimes when I’m driving to work with my windows down, music up, and hand out the window surfing the wind… I forget I even have a destination and feel as free as I ever did roadtripping.
Sometimes when I’m reading a book at home… I can feel as filled with wonder, awe, and curiosity as I ever did while walking the streets of a foreign city or natural landscape.
It’s a reminder for me that wherever you go—there you are.
If you aren’t happy where you are, you will not be happy where you go.
The scenery, the novelty, the freshness might distract you for a little while. But once it settles—and trust me, it settles—what’s left is you… the perceiver. The witnesser. The experience interpreter.
And if you can do the inner work that’ll give your perception novelty and freshness… then it won’t ever matter where you are…
There you’ll be.
The paradox of love is that the deeper you’re in it, the more vulnerable you are to the pain of its loss.
That’s what makes love so scary.
Its impermanence. Its fragility. The fact that it comes with no guarantee.
People promise forever… to have and to hold, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live… and yet, often end up getting divorced well before they’re anywhere close.
And it doesn’t take many deep experiences of pain before guardrails are built.
And what many people might do is put a throttle on their love. Hold back. Build safety mechanisms that prevent them from going all in and risk feeling a proportionally deep pain again.
But… that’s the paradox of love. The less vulnerable you are to the pain of its potential loss… the more shallow the love will feel.
And shallow love is no way to love.
It is indeed as Lord Tennyson suggests, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Maybe it’s just that we shouldn’t promise forever… and should promise instead to always love fully. No throttles. No holding back. No assumption that now will take care of forever.
Just the promise of no guardrails. Not with you. Not in any of the renewing nows.
Just a limitless sky above and bottomless pit of the emotional spectrum.
For you. For me. For us.
P.s. This idea is what inspired the poem, Don’t Say Forever.
When somebody you love turns and walks away… they don’t take your love with them.
Your love is exactly that… love that’s made and expressed by you… for you… within you.
What that person did was give your love a mirror to look into… a love to emulate… a love full of permission to model yours against.
What that person did was help you grow your love… realize a more full version of your love… express the unhindered, unrestricted, unapologetic form of your love.
And because they helped you unleash this elevated version of your love… you love them for that… and they became the target and focus of its powers.
But they do not become the possessors of it.
…They simply take the mirror and model with them when they turn and walk away.
It’s up to you now to become that version of yourself independently… to express a love at that level that simply overflows—not targeting any one person in particular—but rather one that radiates towards everyone you cross paths with…
One that allows you to become the loving person your best version knows you can be.
P.s. This is a response piece to the poem I wrote yesterday.
You’ll be back you say
As an unmissable plan
A stage. A promise. A DJ.
Rips you away.
Six hours we danced
A primal awakening
Lost. Forgotten. Found.
You—the light; my now.
I learned everything about you
Yet learned nothing at all
Stomping. Screaming. Your sound.
An ancestral introduction.
The ecstatic in you
Brought out the ecstatic in me
Mud. Goosebumps. Aroused.
…To stop that? Leave?
But plan triumphed over presence
And this, too, must end
Release. Detach. Allow.
It never gets easier.
And me? Never better.
…Back to phase: mend.
P.s. You can read all of my poems here.
You are so much more likely to find the love of your life while you’re in love with life.
Think about who you are when you’re in love…
Radiant. Energetic. Generous. Bold. Excited. Kind. Helpful. Cute. Funny…
And I suspect a lot of people mistakingly think they need to be in love with a person in order to express this elevated side of themselves.
But the truth is, you just need to be in love with life.
And if you can figure out what makes you come alive and express yourself in the above ways…
I suspect the love of your life will finally figure out that you’re the one they’ve been waiting / looking for.
A friend and I got to talking about memento mori—the Latin phrase that means “Remember your mortality.”
I asked if she had ever heard of the Memento Mori Calendar. She said no. After I explained what it was, she said, “Oh no… that would freak me out!”
To which I replied, “That’s the point!”
You get the Memento Mori calendar, not for decoration, aesthetics, or because it’ll be a fun coloring activity for you to do… but precisely so that it’ll freak you out.
…And hopefully so much so that you’ll get busy living your life to the fullest. With fewer hesitations… more bold choices… and no regrets left when your time comes.
Because your time will come.
…It’s not a question of if… only a question of during which dot on the calendar.