True happiness comes from being willing to be the one to make the choices for your life, especially when it feels like you are moving into the unknown. It is only in trusting yourself to be present and be a contribution at every step that you will know your power.

Happiness is always there for you to receive when you take full responsibility for what you know.

If you want to be happy, is love.

We often try to replace love with another strategy that doesn’t feel as powerful or vulnerable. Some examples of poor substitute strategies are:

• Controlling others

• Focusing on agreement or disagreement

• Avoiding discomfort or failure

• Pretense to look good

• Being “right”

• Maintaining a victim mentality

• Worrying

• Judging others and being superior or inferior

• Concentrate on what’s wrong

• Etc.

These strategies may feel instantly rewarding as they help us feel safe in the short term, yet they cut us off from genuine human connection in the long run. If you want to be happy, practice noticing when you are implementing one of the able strategies and disciplining yourself to shift into love instead.

Rushing is a form of waiting.

Why do you rush through as if there is an endpoint that will make you happy, as if getting through life is the goal?

There is no happiness to get to. Contentment is something you receive through allowing it in and experiencing it. Stop waiting to be happy by rushing.

We work towards future happiness because we’ve forgotten we already have it if we choose it. The way to make the future idea of happiness useful is to remember we can connect to those “future” feelings now.

Hustling for a target that keeps moving further away makes us miss our lives. Remembering and integrating our most peaceful and successful versions of ourselves helps us be present to our blessings.

What does your future self want your present self to recall today?

Fear’s number one job is to get us to stop before we can even consider or experience the benefits.

Before you react and say no just because it makes you uncomfortable or scared, pause and make a list of all the potential benefits and imagine receiving them. Fear also likes to keep us thinking short term, rather than long-term, and happiness is a long-term game.

Of course, there will be downsides, especially if you consider discomfort a downside. Every benefit comes with a cost, and often that cost is the familiarity of our old selves. However, It’s likely it is totally worth the investment.

The most efficient way to get somewhere is going to be the most direct route.

You can only be direct if you are clear. If you want more of what you want in your life sooner rather than later, you have to be clear about what you want. If you feel like you aren’t able to be direct and confident, it’s likely some clarity is required.

Clarity is usually pretty simple once you decide to be courageous enough to see.

Inspiration and creativity are your natural state. When you feel like you can’t access that part of yourself, there is simply something to discover how to let go of. Today, I needed to release letting myself be the victim, which allowed me to return to creating.

Once you have identified what it would serve you to let go of (it needs to be easy, it needs to be complicated, I don’t know enough, I should feel different than I do, etc.), there are some simple ways you can begin to tap into your natural state.

1. Do something fun that seems unrelated to the task at hand. Keep the fun sensations in your body as you return to your project.

2. Move your body and get your physiology on your side rather than trying to think your way into creativity.

3. Spend time with the work of someone who inspires you, whether it is a book, a lecture, a song, fine art, or anything else. Inspiration is contagious.

The goal is to get yourself inspired by anything. The magic flows over to where you need it if you let it.

There has been no time in my life where I have trusted myself and regretted it. This is a result of two things:

1. Most of the time, when I trust myself, things go well. Meaning I feel lighter, more whole, expressed, and fulfilled. It feels like I have moved things in the correct direction.

2. I know that even when things go “wrong” or don’t turn out as my mind expected, trusting myself still moved me out of where I was, and I am learning and growing as a result. Self-trust is the practice of trusting ourselves right now, knowing that the future will require a different choice or decision based on what happens. Trusting myself doesn’t mean that I am sure everything will go according to my preference.

When I stay stagnant because I am not consulting or listening to the wisdom within me, I experience regret. When I take the time to listen deeply and trust what I know, I am free.

Why do you pay for personal development courses and then get resentful when life throws you opportunities to grow? For free?

Why do you pay lots of money to lift heavy things or get your heart rate up on an expensive piece of equipment and then sit all day and use the elevator?

There is an opportunity right in front of you to grow now instead of later if you choose to see it that way.

When there is something that you wish was there yet isn’t, it is an opportunity to create it.

When something you love seems like it is changing, it is an opportunity to grow and become the next version of yourself.

Absence is an opportunity. Embrace it.

Punishing is a way of being; consequences are boundaries. You can set boundaries without punishing people.

We are designed to support one another and free each other from suffering. We are not designed to discourage and oppress one another by inflicting shame on whoever happens to reactivate us. This is why punishment never brings people closer to themselves or one another.

If we want to heal at an individual and community level, love will be the only thing that will do that. Boundaries are meant to be supportive by creating clarity, not judgment.

Double-check your intentions when you feel pulled to add judgment, shame, or hatred on top of your boundary. It is in this tension that you have the opportunity to choose love and be kind and clear.

There is much more to life than strategizing how to get stuff from people. There is much more to life than hustling for attention. There is much more to life than competing for limited resources.

The “more” is fulfillment and happiness, which comes from contribution. Contribution and making a living are not only not mutually exclusive, but the feeling of genuinely living also comes from contributing.

In a world full of strategy, hustle, and competition, I feel more drawn to give my energy to things that give me life, not aim to take it from me, and I know I am not alone. We are at a moment where we can make a living by making a difference, not only for others but also for ourselves, through sharing our hearts and gifts.

What would you need to be willing to trade in to receive the upgrade to a new kind of more?

I believe that we all care deeply. As we spend more time in this life and gain more wisdom, it’s not caring less about other people and what they think that makes us happier. What gives us more ease and joy is realizing we can’t control very many things, including what others think.

It’s not caring less that makes us happier. It’s loving more, yet controlling less.

To create it, see it.

Your imagination is your most powerful tool, in its power to either empower you or limit you, and it’s always at play. Your imagination can place a worrisome future ahead of you or a beautiful one. Of course, imagining a fantastic future doesn’t guarantee it, yet it makes success way more possible because you see it as possible.

The way to harness the power of your imagination is to spend time actively using it and honing it. What would it look like to devote carved-out time imagining your chosen future every day? Might it support you in seeing a new possibility and feeling a possibility as well?

The only way to know is to try. And just like anything important, doing it consistently is likely the key.

You don’t need anyone else to forgive you to forgive yourself. You don’t need anyone to forgive you for you to be able to forgive them.

Unforgiveness traps you inside of very limited, self-deprecating options. Forgiveness gives you all of your choices back, which frees you up to contribute instead of hustle.

Living a life of choice does not mean you can switch from despair to joy in a heartbeat. Whether that is even possible or useful is up for debate.

Choice is the willingness to meet yourself exactly as you are and where you are right now from a place of compassion and love without judgment, attachment, or aversion. It is the discipline to be in your body and notice all you are feeling without any need to suppress it, run from it, or avoid it. It is the courage to feel the bigness of life.

You cannot control the thoughts or emotions that emerge in your experience, yet you can decide that you will meet all of them with as much grace as possible, knowing that grace will eventually lead you toward the good stuff.

You are free when you let yourself feel.

When you decide to succeed at something, what you are really doing is choosing to notice every time a part of you wants to give in to old limiting thoughts and patterns and wants to step in and pull you back towards the known.

The most crucial part of success is deciding that you will notice what success isn’t and stop it.

Comes from doing the right thing, not getting the right thing.

When you make your life about doing what you know to do in your heart versus trying to force an agenda, life becomes easier and more gratifying because there is nothing to manipulate; there’s more trust to build.

Let your wisdom lead you. Things won’t fall apart; they will come together.

Today (and every day) is the day to contribute. You can make each moment meaningful by doing the generous thing, for yourself or someone else.

By generous, I mean the thing with the most humanity. It could be offering eye contact, a smile, holding a door, picking up the phone, sharing gratitude, lending a listening ear, putting in that little extra planning to make it special, or offering an idea that could be judged in hopes of making a positive change. The moments of connection that you receive and create are what will make your life meaningful. If you want more meaning, contribute more. Your generosity is a renewable resource, and in fact, it is likely that the more you give, the more you will have to give.

Take a moment to envision your upcoming day and the things you will be doing. How could you show up with more humanness and heart, hoping to make things even just a tiny bit better? The little things are the big things because your life is made up of only a series of moments. Right now is the moment; today is the day.

Instead of focusing on who you were yesterday, focus on who you will be proud to be 10 years from now.

What did that person decide to do today when presented with the choices and opportunities you will be presented with?