Letters To My Son

Life doesn’t owe anyone anything. Most adults, and the overwhelming majority of today’s children and teens, feel entitled to having everything they are taught to want.

Stop for a moment and catch your thought. What are you thinking right now? If it is true, that your thoughts shape your life, would you want what you were just thinking right now to become true for you?

What if the real answer is knowing that we can’t get to where we really want to go without depending and leaning on others? What if our collective intellect, our collective resourcefulness, is the only way to become the best version of ourselves?

The stigma attached to letting someone else know that you are in a dark place, remains. The fear of appearing weak or the fear of being told “get over yourself and get back to work”. I get it. I understand it. It’s plain awful.

Anything I did that was bad or wrong or unhealthy, I would just tell myself it was a layer of plaster on top. That wasn’t really me. Therefore, changing the behavior wasn’t so threatening.

The point is to get in touch with something that makes you feel great, but not to let yourself starve, or be stopped by a fear that you’ll fail, by a fear that it cannot be done.

I believe that gratitude is the best approach to life. When life is going, well, it allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness.

In a limitless world, why set your sights on the obtainable? The prize within an arms reach? Why not think bigger? Our expectations are the foundation for our accomplishment.

Let’s get away from the disease of when I and turn it into whether I and let’s stop fascinating about what’s going to be in the future and let’s start focusing on what’ right here today.

Are you weary from the effort of keeping a relationship afloat with a person who refuses to learn to swim? Are you rowing alone, going in circles?

Everyone needs a David Woodhams. The rare friend, who becomes a warrior to defend your weakness, who closes around you like a fortress when your world falls apart, who comes over when you are overcome, reminds you of who you are, when you’ve forgotten, who knows where to find you when you get lost.

Reality is our days are finite. One day, they will run out. Many people I know spend their entire life trying to avoid this fact. They even tell me that I have such a negative outlook on life.

When the rest of the world shuts you down. You’ve got to be the one to stand up. Shout out. Cry out. Stand tall, work hard and go after it. There’s nothing that’s going to stop you.

To be different. To be great. Start by looking at people who have done great things. They all have the same message. Believe in yourself, trust your ability, it’s not hidden, it’s not a message that’s hard to find. You just have to want to find it.

“Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decide you want, and the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match, you suffer”. - Michael Singer

The most important conversation you ever have is the one you have with yourself. You wake up with it. You walk around with it, you go to bed with it. Eventually, you act on it, whether it be good or bad.

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation and order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life. We must first set our hearts, right”.

“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens”. - Louise Hay

“Each one of us has a three year old child within us, and we often spend most of our time yelling at that kid in ourselves. Then we wonder why are lives don’t work”. - Louise Hay

“What distinguishes the exceptional from the unexceptional is a willingness to fail, and an exceptional ability to learn from every failure”. - Eric Greitens

Your success in this life, what you achieve, what you fail to achieve, who you become, who you failed to become, depends on a lot of things. Most importantly, it depends on you and your mindset.

Lock yourself up in your room, or go out in the woods, where you can be alone. When you are alone, the universe talks to you in flashes of inspiration. You will find that you will suddenly know things which you never knew before.

Every room that I walk in, I will change the game. You’ve got to make it up in your mind that all you have is all you need.

We live in a culture of busyness, distraction, and noise, and sometimes the only way something is going to change is if we disappear.

Remember that the single best predictor of resilience and growth is a connection to others. Recruit help moving forward. Relentlessly seek someone who has your back and will pick you up whenever you fall. Credit: Steven C. Hayes, A Liberated Mind: How to pivot toward what matters