Letters To My Son

I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go. Once you realize you deserve a bright future, letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make.

Habit resilience is the ability to bounce back when things don’t go as you planned, to stay positive, to encourage yourself, to forgive yourself, to be loving and compassionate with yourself, to shake it off and start again afresh. To learn and grow from struggles.

When going into battle, the wisest general learns to know his enemy very, very well. You can’t defeat the enemy without knowing him. And when you’re trying to overcome a negative self-image and replace it with self-confidence, your enemy is yourself.

We have to be willing to operate with inadequate resources, trusting that, you know they'll be picked up along the way. And that's a lot to take in. It's painful to know that others are going to have knowledge and skills and competencies that you wont.

I am genuinely curious - What it would be like for you? You work hard, you fall short, and you don’t feel bad about it. You just keep trying your best. You keep failing, but see it as learning and growth. You keep deviating from your plan, but don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with you.

Never doubt yourself or your gift. Or the things that set you apart. You don't need everyone else to believe in them. You just need to convince yourself, everything else it falls right into place.

There isn’t a single one of us who has overcome the human condition of self doubt. Whether you’re a supremely confident person, a successful anything or anyone … it doesn’t matter. You have doubts about yourself.

For someone who doesn’t see a lot of possibilities, sometimes a choice is easy — you just choose the one that looks obvious. But for someone who has an abundance of intelligence, there are many more doors than that. And choosing can seem impossible. So this person starts creating a decision tree in their mind: “If I choose this, then this might happen, which means I need to decide if I want this,...

You don’t need goals to tell you what to do. You know what to do. You’re excited about doing it already — you just need to focus, and get to it.

“Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it's a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health.”

I didn’t have any clarity on what I wanted or what I needed to do. This lack of clarity is felt in all of us very deeply, so that it shows up in how we talk, how we hold ourselves, how other people feel about us. It affects our relationships, our jobs, our health.

“That would be a huge missed opportunity, and that’s exactly what we’re doing each day we pass up the opportunity of being human without thought. What kind of opportunities does being human bring us?”

One thing I’ve learned about myself in the last year or so is how much I shut down what I want. Somehow the world taught me that what I want is not acceptable, that I should only want what seems reasonable, doable, or won’t inconvenience others.

Can you remember a time when you were filled with an overwhelming sensation of fear, and an overwhelming sensation of joy? I’ll go. It was snowing rather heavily that morning Feb. 1997 in Great Barrington, MA. 6:07am to be exact when this very kind nurse turned to me and asked if I wanted to hold him and then proceeded to place this miracle gift of my newborn son in my shaky hands.

Take a look at the targets that you've set. Don't waste time asking yourself whether there's something greater, there is. Ask yourself if you're willing to step up to move outside your comfort zone and get it.

In her book, Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan writes: You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know. “Friends come into our lives and friends leave our lives. But friends never leave our hearts. And best friends always get to stay in the best places in our hearts.”

Son, you’re YOU for a reason. Your strengths, passions exist for a reason. Don't let them take a backseat to life. Instead, make them the driver. Allow your thoughts, your time, your day to revolve around your true self and what brings you happiness.

“When we create, we tap into something powerful inside us. We don’t control this energy as much as we channel it. The strength of this creative force in every human being is undeniable—I’ve seen it unleashed too many times to think otherwise. You have this power humming inside of you right now, whether you know it or not.” - Chase Jarvis

It’s Not a Problem, It’s an Experience. “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chodron

The biggest reason people fail at creating and sticking to new habits is that they don’t keep doing it. That seems obvious: if you don’t keep doing a habit, it won’t really become a habit. So what’s the solution to this obvious problem? Find a way to keep doing it.

Mental illness is the “big secret.” It’s the public health crisis most people want to ignore. Men, women and children of all ages, races, faiths and economic levels suffer from it. They hope it goes away. And, they hide it because of widely held misunderstandings that surround those with mental health diseases.

The key is patience: we need to take the long view. The problem that most of us have is that we want results right away. When we don’t get those magical results, we lose patience. We lose hope. We quit. And of course, that means we never actually get any meaningful results.

As we get older, failure is not so inconsequential anymore. What’s at stake is not some arbitrary grade or intramural sports trophy, but the quality of your life and your ability to deal with the world around you. To that I say, Don’t let that intimidate you, though. You have the best teachers in the world: the wisest philosophers who ever lived. And not only are you capable, the professor you had...

As Seneca wrote in “The Shortness of Life”, “Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: It snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today…The whole future lies in uncertainty: Live immediately.”

So for me, I try to notice when I have an expectation that I be in the mood, or that the thing be easy, fun, or comfortable. Just noticing the expectation allows me to choose. Once I’m in a place where I can choose … I can decide that actually, it’s not just “fine” that I do things that are uncomfortable when I’m not in the mood … in fact, it’s an experience I choose to practice with.