When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal

“And maybe in the end, the kindest possible thing you could do for yourself is to know that there is nothing that holds us back more than the important words that went unspoken, the deep instincts that went unfelt, the callings that went unanswered. Your life is reaching toward you, and maybe the kindest possible thing you could do is reach back.”

“Relationships are not safeguards against loneliness. You can’t whittle yourself down to being as nice and accepting and likable as possible in order to ensure that as many people as possible won’t leave you. Relationships come and go; that is what they are designed to do.”

“You will have to build a home no matter where you are. You will have to decorate and settle and reach out. You will have to find rhythms and routines. You will have to be vulnerable, and you will have to be seen.  There is nowhere we can turn to that is an escape from ourselves.”

“The most precious, important thing that you have in your life is your energy. It is not your time that is limited, it is your energy. What you give it to each day is what you will create more and more of in your life. What you give your time to is what will define your existence.”

“When we feel most stuck, it is often because we are trying to decipher who we really are by piecing together images we assume others have of us. What we don’t realize is that there is not just one, singular version of us that exists. There’s our experience of ourselves, and then the kaleidoscope of ways we are perceived by others. When we spend all of our lives trying to manage those perceptions, we become completely lost within them.”

“The path forward is understanding that we are sometimes collateral damage to people’s own inner wars, and that we do not need to adopt their weapons as our own in order to fight back.”

“Make your life a safe haven in which only people that have the capacity to care and listen and connect are allowed. You are not responsible for saving people.”

“We heal when we learn how to adjust how we show up, not how we change what we show up to.”

“The point was never that you adjusted everything around you until it was made perfect, but that you adjusted the way you see everything until you realize that it is enough, and it always has been.”

“Life contracts before it expands, and pulls back before it leaps forward. This balancing act is not something we should resist, but rather, embrace.”

“You will know that it’s time to take your power back when there is no other viable choice, because in the aftermath of loss, you discovered that you unraveled your own existence so that nothing could be taken from you again.”

“This moment is not your life, this is a moment in your life.” — Ryan Holiday”

“I know that your instinct is to do whatever you can to earn the good graces of everyone you can, but that is also the impulse that will rob you of your time, your energy and your sanity.”

“Do you really want to leave your self-esteem hinging on how you imagine others perceive you, or do you want to find a way to feel proud of yourself at the end of the day? Do you want to arrange your existence so that it would be impossible for anyone to say anything negative about it, or do you want to live with so much joy spilling out from inside you that it renders such opinions meaningless either way?”

“Make your life a safe haven in which only people that have the capacity to care and listen and connect are allowed.”

“Your old self is no longer suited to manage the life you have today, and so they must transform into who you are becoming now.”

“You’re living in a work of art while treating it as an equation that you have not yet solved.”

“To trust yourself means that you are no longer content to lodge your soul in the circumstances that have long stopped serving you.”

“Though you cannot always control what you feel, you can control how you respond, and in that response, you can find your freedom.”

“We are not alive to coast. We are not alive to seek safe spaces within the idea of another.We are here to realize that we are the source of our own existence, of all we create, of all that we are.We are here to bring ourselves home, and then to show others the way back to themselves.”

“It is never the right time until it is the right person.”

“I am entitled to my own idea of myself.”

“What if, instead of believing that you have failed, you began to recognize that failure is just life’s way of moving you in another direction? What if instead of counting up all the times things haven’t worked out precisely the way you imagined they would or should, you considered that perhaps you were being led somewhere better? What if you found awe and reverence in the fact that there is a force so powerful protecting you — perhaps one you cannot even name or see or even believe in — that is refusing to let you have even the things you beg hardest for because there is something else you are so destined for?”

“What if you realized that they are under no obligation to be who you think they should be, and the most loving thing you could do would be to set them free of the expectations you hold in your own mind? What if you realized that they don’t have to be just as you imagine in order for you to exchange the love you are meant to share?”

“In fact, our ability to respond to and cope with life is usually a direct reflection of how many challenges we’ve been through. It’s usually the people who are the most at peace who have also been through the worst that life could offer them.”

“What if, instead of believing that your job is not enough — in compensation, in status, in whatever you’ve chalked your inferiority up to be — you began to realize that no set of tasks could ever define the whole of who you are? What if you began to understand that a job is a means to an end, and you doing anything to contribute to your or your family’s well-being and security is important and yet only one facet of success? What if instead of believing that you must be the best to be good enough, you realized that to have somewhere to wake up and go, something to wake up and do, is a purpose and gift that should never be taken for granted?”

“When you start showing up to your life wholly and completely, with joy and interest and commitment, not everyone is going to be ready to meet you there.”

“The reality is that you exist in so many different forms and images and beliefs and stories—and yet, the only one that is ever really going to matter is the one you tell yourself. Allow this knowing to free you.”

“The reality is that you exist in so many different forms and images and beliefs and stories—and yet, the only one that is ever really going to matter is the one you tell yourself.”

“The things that are truly right for you will find you, and they will stay. They will grow you, challenge you, and change you. Most of all, they will not exist in the distance, in the future, in a potential version of reality. It is their undeniable presence that will ultimately put your heart at ease.”