To make it more likely that I’ll integrate wisdom into my life, I’ve been distilling this list of advice for myself.
I don’t claim originality. Sources include podcasts, the writings of others, my own writings, song lyrics and conversations with friends.
All souls are pinholes in the lantern. The candle is universal consciousness. “I honor the place within you where, if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us,” Ram Dass.
Individuality is an illusion. All living beings have the sun inside them.
Strive to make all actions motivated by a desire to serve.
All humans are longing for belonging. Give the gift of belonging to others.
Love, health, money. Three things everyone wants.
Everyone looks perfect from far away or on Instagram. In reality, everyone is a cracked teacup. Pain is a universal feature of life. Old, sick, dead.
Arranging my material life to be as pretty as possible is limited. Cultivate a spirit of generosity and care.
Take refuge in the 5 precepts, and a real life community of practice.
“Tell me more.” Three words that can unlock worlds of connection.
Create from a white page.
Love comes down to loving thoughts, words and actions.
10 weeks, months, years, decades. Will this matter then?
You can’t change something you don’t accept and take responsibility for. If you don’t deal with it, no one else will.
Be impeccable with your word. Three filters: is it true, kind and helpful?
To not judge others, see that behind every impulse is a divine impulse.
Guilt, fear, anger, hurt: underneath them is often sadness. Seeing the sadness is the key to compassion.
Confidence, humility, ego. Whether succeeding or failing, focus on the first two, not the last one.
Love people. Use things. Not the reverse.
Allow people in your life that want to be there, who you resonate with, who are mutually beneficial. A history of bullying can create a “scarcity mindset” where you are attracted to people who are “cool” but don’t treat you well or aren’t good for you.
Be all in AND willing to change course. No one knows if a decision is right when they are making it.
The bare bones of existence are wondrous: we are on a ball in space, related to all of life, existing only in the present.
Awe gives you a break from thinking you are so big and important. Take time to sense smallness in:
- Space: Spend time with the ocean, the sky, mountains. Visualize yourself from far away, from space. You are a speck of dust inside a giant’s eye.
- Time: Spend time in canyons, with redwoods, in old cemeteries. Canyons get a little deeper, and redwoods a little taller, as generations of humans are born and die. “The people who bury me will have funerals too,” Marcus Aurelius.
Sunshine before screenshine.
If someone is emotionally unavailable to you, don’t invest emotionally in them. The flipside: don’t take people for granted.
Mistakes are doorways to learning.
YES is a vehicle of movement, in three little letters. However, your YES only means something when you say NO to something else.
Begin by throwing gutterballs, that way you have plenty of room to improve. If you must compare, compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
Perfectionism promotes procrastination. Do something, even if it’s imperfect. You’ll learn from it.
“Exceptional” is about comparing your work to that of others. “Quality” is about your work’s intrinsic value. Seek quality, not exceptionalism.
When you have a child in you crying, show up for that little boy, don’t shame that little boy. This is internal family systems, in a nutshell. Self-compassion.
Say oops easily, and make a plan to do better.
A lot of suffering is generated by the mind. Simply recognizing when the mind is doing this already makes suffering better because it gives you some distance from it. “Oh mind, you’re doing it again,” you can say, and smile.
Habits: consistency over intensity, systems + identity over discipline.
To feel like you are not wasting time:
- Grieve the past, and don’t wish for it back.
- Build a compelling vision for tomorrow.
Be for things, not against them.
There are three kinds of fears: 1. present dangers, 2. fears of a future you can act upon, 3. fears of a future you have no control over. For the first two categories, act! For the third, let go.
To get out of despair about the state of the world, do something. For bonus points, look for the helpers, and join them.
Practice presence. If you are thinking about a peach while washing the dishes, when you get to the peach, you’ll probably be thinking about something else.
Let go of the idea of salvation: that some magical thing X can remove the pain from life. Life will always have challenges, uncertainty, and pain. Your birth certificate does not come with a “life is easy” guarantee. Every helpful thing is just one tool in the toolbox.
Whatever makes us feel good ( a pet, a job, a house, a partner) is also what makes us feel bad. A good life has meaningful stress.
A good life isn’t about feeling good all the time. A good life is about learning from both positive and negative feelings, and aligning your actions with healthy values.
Practice voluntary simplicity. Learn to be happy with rice and beans, good sleep, and walks outside.
Thanking a teacher lets them know their work is rippling into the future.
Zakolaysa periodically (fast, cold showers, breathwork…)
Slow dopamine over instant gratification.
Don’t put your attention on:
- Obsessing about money. A reasonably well-paying job can keep you from spending too much attention on this.
- Despair about the state of the world. Put it on working with others to make the world a little bit better.
- Beating yourself up about mistakes in the past. Put it on learning from those mistakes and doing better today.
- Thinking that other people have got it all figured out. This is the inner critic saying “you are inferior” and beating you up.
With the highlighter of your attention, choose to emphasize the good in others.
To sculpt attention, use projects, not prohibitions.
Friendship and vocation are an infinite games: the goal is to keep playing.
It takes humility to realize that your ability to help is often limited.
At least once a day, eat slowly and eat together.
Determine if people are believable before taking their advice.
If you move away, the relationship will change. Pretending it doesn’t doesn’t do anyone any favors.
Death is a creative limitation for life. There’s no point in spending large amounts of time on things you don’t want to do. Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
A guide for being “in” your life and not in FOMO:
- Accept that at any moment, you could be doing many other things.
- Find meaning in the choosing. Because our time is finite, the thing we choose is precious.
- Say this: “I’ve chosen this and I commit to showing up fully.”
Come to a complete stop before left turns.
Leash your dog if it’s possible that cars are around.
Insecurities are a form of self-centeredness. People aren’t obsessively thinking about you.
To find meaning and purpose in your life, answer the question: what do you do for others?
Go for a walk with a dog. Then the walk becomes not just about you.
If someone does something nice for you, do something nice for two different people. That way, kindness spreads.
Visit a graveyard and wave to your future self. May this motivate you to live well.
When picking fruits, leave some for others.
Give up your seat at the table, and put some food on that table.
Write to express, to see more clearly, to catalyze meaningful conversations.
The world is a vast collection of doorways leading into rooms filled with all types of people. Your doorway determines your friends.
After a peak experience, use it as kindling to inspire change in your daily life.
If love is given, accept the platter wholeheartedly or say no to it. Don’t take the platter and flick off pieces of food onto the floor. This isn’t fair to you or to them.
Though parents aren’t perfect, they clothed and fed and loved you and got you to where you are now.
Essential life skills:
- Using awareness of our limited time on earth as a stimulus for creative living
- Learning to enjoy solitude
- Making meaning
- Identifying your zone of control
- Balancing deepening and novelty
- Acting despite fear and uncertainty. Life is only as big as what you fear.
- Being compassionate for yourself: this can mean having self-discipline.
- Identifying emotions, and expressing them in a healthy way.
In every shave there lies a philosophy. How you do one thing reveals how you do many things.
Trust is the basis of all relationships, including with yourself.
Ways to see a person:
- As a cultural inheritor AND a cultural creator
- As a storyteller, telling a specific kind of story about themselves
- As someone at a specific developmental stage, focused on agency, relationships, or legacy (it’s possible to be in multiple stages)
- As someone with a personality, bringing a certain kind of energy to the room
- Don’t make assumptions about people; use your curiosity to see them fully
To cultivate meaning in your life, commit to serving a marriage, a vocation, a philosophy/faith, a community.
Deliberately reduce choices. Have less, but spend more time with them and love them more.
To open your mind, read the smartest counter-arguments to your opinions.
You are a yeast, fermenting a delicious sourdough to be eaten 200 years in the future. What kind of bread will it be? What’s your offering to the totality?
Treat yourself like a friend you are responsible for helping.
Each relationship is a crystal with unique beauty. Don’t try to change the crystal structure of a relationship by force.
Curiosity unlocks empathy and growth. Curiosity cures judgement, stuckness, and arrogance. Practice it.
It’s all activist work.
You are responsible for what you believe about yourself (thanks: Nick T).
Useful beliefs:
- Everything is a learnable skill
- Every day is an opportunity to get better at the art of living
- Meaningful social connection and high-quality people are abundant
- You can get better at empathy
- You can create positive ripples by teaming up with others to help the world
- Everything in your life is your responsibility
- You have something to learn from everyone
- Everyone you know, one day, will die
- You are temporarily able-bodied
- You are not obligated to call people, they can always call you
- Your painful experiences are a gift
Think about your thinking. You may need to change your thinking in order to change your life.
Allow yourself to cry. What comes out of your body won’t make you ill. What stays in there does.
Don’t ask “why me?” Ask: “what now?”
You must forgive yourself to move forward.
There is a cost to change. But if you don’t, you’ll never grow. RISK is the best four letter word. Risk leads to discovery.
You can change yourself and no one else. We’re powerful and limited.
It’s more useful to be aware of a single shortcoming in yourself than a thousand in someone else.
Whether it’s praise or blame, it relates to a part of you, not the whole you.
People are neither completely good nor bad. This applies to you, too.
Character determines the quality of your life. It’s the result of your little choices and little actions.
You need a present focus to enjoy life and connect with people. You need a future focus to appreciate deeper levels of fulfillment, complete long-term projects, and vividly see your future. You need a past focus to reflect and learn.
“Hell yes or no” is a tool for when you feel overwhelmed and overcommited. “YES” is a tool for introducing freshness and change into life. “No” is a tool when you need to focus.
When you say “I need” go without that thing and see if you really need it. Renunciation improves agency by liberating you from compulsively following feelings of desire and aversion.
Before you start something, think of the ways it could end. Sometimes the smart choice is to say no to the whole game.
Guide to getting out of a bad state of mind:
- Ask “what’s wrong this second?” Usually, nothing.
- Say no to anything less than amazing.
- Do ADLs, work, cleaning, sleeping, eating well, exercise.
Think long-term; don’t be a short-termite.
When making life-size decisions, ask: what brings you joy, what is in your long-term best interest, and what is useful to others?
Parenting advice: cultivate a long attention span, enter his world, broaden his inputs, use age-appropriate language, don’t demand attention (kids have their own agenda), speak to yourself well (your kid will pick up this self-talk).
Learn to clear space. It’s easier to create from a blank canvas. We need empty time to think, reflect, and plan.
Karma yoga = acting from good intentions, without attachment to outcomes. Realizing that you aren’t entirely the doer.
Money lowers unhappiness when it brings you out of deprivation. To use money well: buy experiences, time, give money away.
Have a well-paying job and use the other half of your time for your art. The job feeds the need for stability, the art feeds the need for expression. Don’t expect your job to fill all your emotional needs; don’t expect your art to make your sole income.
The best way to increase the love in a relationship is to have an experience together, whether that’s watching a movie or eating a meal or going on a trip.
Don’t do anything that isn’t sustainable.
The paradox of choice is real. The more selection the harder it is to get satisfaction. Deliberately remove choices.
The more willing you are to be hurt, the deeper your life will be.
The right goal for romantic partnership is: best friends in 5 years.
The hallmark of co-dependence is bad boundaries. Find your NO.
To be a lenscrafter, you don’t even need to get out of bed, you just need to decide to see the world a certain way. If you buy a red Prius, suddenly you see red Priuses everywhere. If you’re hungry or horny, you see those things in the world. We all eventually reach the gods we worship, whether that’s alcohol, money, or spirituality.
You can always choose your lens:
- Is it insomnia or a sweet opportunity for writing?
- During torture, you can hate the torturers or think: what made them this way?
- Is this lighter an evil piece of single-use plastic, or a miraculous tool for creating fire?
- Is Pheonix a terrible unsustainable sprawl, or a place with amazing art on the streets?
You can’t change the past AND you can change your perspective on it. Look at a story from your past, see what was challenging about it, accept that it was challenging, take your hand, walk yourself out of that space and say “I did it.”
Use better language, for example:
- A problem -> A challenge
- A crisis -> A transition
- Trauma -> cherished wound
Unhealthy values: status, money, power, pleasure, fame. Guard against encroachment by these.
Choose to spread friendliness. Compliment people, pet a cat, wave, give high fives, let other cars go first, say “Good morning” and “Have a great day!”
Clowning is a tool to practice play, courage and connection. Sometimes you need to overcompensate to really change.
To figure out your deepest values, ask yourself: what would I die for?
Write your own obituary, then reverse-engineer it. Think about how you want to be remembered, and act upon it.
Values are immortality projects, the ripples you leave behind in the world. My top values are:
- Generosity
- Gratitude
- Honesty
- Respect
- Trust
- Service / Contribution
- Hope
- Humility
- Responsibility
- Compassion
- Empathy
- Humor
- Presence
- Rest
- Nature
- Nourishing food
- Family
- Awe
- Exercise
- Flow
- Learning
- Writing
- Interest
- Acceptance
- Animals
- Agency
- Connection
- Quality
- Play
- Warmth
- Curiosity
- Simplicity
- Balance
- Grace
- Peace
Courage and discipline are needed for all of the above.
Minimize the secrets you keep from yourself.
If you care only about one thing, you will crash if that thing crashes. Diversify your identity by valuing many different things.
Blame = giving someone outside yourself power over your well-being. Don’t do it.
Growth = embodying better values. It’s painful because it involves the death of old identities.
The only way to feel better about yourself is to do things worth feeling good about. Self-respect has to be earned.
Be the partner you want to have.
Commitment leads to love. Don’t wait until you have a perfect relationship to commit to a person. Commit in order to create a great relationship.
Keep 2 lists: active investments (short), dreams (very long). Saying no to some dreams is a way to give enough water to your active projects so that they can grow into happy, healthy plants.
Suppressing feelings will only make them come back stronger. Though you can’t change feelings, you can change:
- your actions
- the stories you tell yourself
- your values
Flourishing is what we all want. You never reach it, but you get closer to it. Flourishing has these components:
- Enjoyment (pleasure + memory/mindfulness + people). Avoid pure pleasure: this is a doorway to addiction and compulsion. Learn to watch urges without acting on them: they will pass eventually. Your sense of agency will be stronger with every urge you don’t let control you.
- Getting better at something hard, achievement with struggle
- Serving something outside yourself
- Using negative emotions productively
Faith, family, friends, a job that serves = components of a good life.
If you are overwhelmed by your to-do list, pick 1-3 (most important) thing(s) to do today.
GLIG: Getting lost is good.
A tired dog/human is a good dog/human.
If you can jump into a body of water, do it.
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