41. Recognize that there’s a correlation between worry and creativity.
It’s the most basic aspect of human evolution—the more we fear something, the more creative we are in creating solutions to adapt to the alternative. See your fears as catalysts for bettering your life, not as you being condemned to suffering.
42. Remember that you can choose what you think about, and even when it feels like you can’t, it’s because again, you’re choosing to believe that.
43. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” —Marcus Aurelius
44. Go outside and look at the stars and drink a glass of wine.
45. Try bullet journaling. When you go back and re-read it, you’ll begin to see what your patterns are, particularly your self-sabotaging ones.
46. Meditate and imagine speaking with your oldest, wisest, most optimal future self. What you’re doing is tapping deep into your subconscious. Let your choices be guided by the person you hope to become.
47. Laugh.
48. When you ask other people for advice on whatever you’re worrying about, first ask yourself what you hope they’ll say. That’s what you want to tell yourself.
49. Talk to other people and ask them to tell you about the silly things they worry irrationally about. You’re in good company.
50. Work on developing your mental strength. Train your mind like you would your body. Work on focusing, thinking, imagining. This is the single best thing you can possibly do for your life.
51. Say thank you for the fact that you care enough about yourself to even feel panicked about something in the first place.
52. Remind yourself that what you fear is the shadow side to what you love. The more fear, the more love. Learn to start seeing what’s right as much as you worry about what’s not.
53. Give yourself permission to feel okay. This is why we love when other people love us. Nobody else can actually transmute the sensation of love—we crave it from others because it lets us flip the mental switch that gives us permission to be happy, proud, excited, or content. The trick, the whole work of “loving ourselves,” is just learning to do it on our own.
54. Keep your spaces clean and clear.
55. Recite mantras or prayers or motivational speeches in the mirror, if you must. Anything that focuses your mind on something positive and hopeful.
56. Consume your mind with things that interest you—aside from your own problems.
57. If you cannot do this, it means you don’t know yourself well enough yet. That’s okay. The point is that you realize this now, and begin learning.
58. Practice happiness. External events don’t create meaning or fulfillment or contentment; how we think about them does. If you’re operating on a scarcity mindset, you’ll always be unhappy, no matter what you have or get.
59. Do something unexpected. Book a trip, date someone wrong for you, get a tattoo, start looking for a new job in a field you didn’t think you’d enjoy. Show yourself that you don’t know what you don’t know about your life or yourself. Not completely. Not yet.
60. Practice radical acceptance. Choose to love your home, and your body, and your work, even if you don’t like it all the time. Choose to build your life from a place of gratitude and vision, rather than running from your own fears.
61. Be mindful of who you surround yourself with. Your most constant company will account for a lot of how you turn out over the coming years. Pay attention.
62. Spend time on your own, especially when you feel like you don’t want to. You are your first and last friend—you are with you until the end. If you don’t want to be with you, how can you expect anyone else to, either?
63. Re-write your “success” narrative. Sometimes success is getting enough sleep. Sometimes it’s doing what you know is right despite the fact that everyone else in your life is looking down on it.
Sometimes it’s just getting through the day or the month. Lower your expectations.
64. Write out your fears in explicit detail.
65. Listen to scary podcasts or watch horror movies. Expose yourself to things that are actually terrifying. (This will either make it better or worse, but hey, give it a try.)
66. Dream bigger. If you feel as though you’re constantly running through the same issues in your mind, you’ve yet to visualize a future that is greater than your present. When you have something
more important to work toward—or someone to be better for—the obsession with little, made-up problems will quickly dissolve.
67. Don’t confuse a broken dream with a broken future.
68. Don’t confuse a broken heart for a broken life.
69. Create a routine you love, one that involves enough sleep and down time, and a realistic degree of “stuff you know you should do” v.
“stuff you actually want to do.”
70. Validate yourself. Choose to believe that the life you have is more than enough.
71. Take an evening (or a few) to meditate on your past. Think of all the pain and sadness you shoved away. Let yourself feel those things.
When you let them surface, they won’t control you anymore.
72. Choose to do things because you want joy more than you choose to do them because you want to avoid pain.
73. Take an honest look at your life and evaluate how much you’ve constructed as a means to avoid pain, and decide whether or not those fears are even valid in the first place. Do you hold a lesser view of yourself so nobody else’s opinion can hurt you? Do you choose relationships where you’re unwanted so you don’t have to open up to the vulnerability of love?
74. Make plans to build the life you want, not because you hate the one you have, but because you’re in love with the person you know you want to become.
75. Be discerning about what you accept as truth, who you give your energy to, what you do when you procrastinate, and what you surround yourself with at home.