76. Connect with people. Connect with people. Connect with people.
77. Create vision boards. Or just use Pinterest more. Seeing the life you want is the first step to creating it.
78. Remember that you’re not upset about what you lost—you’re upset about what you never really had the chance to have in the first place. You’ll regret what you didn’t do, not what you’ve done.
79. Dedicate your time to helping someone else. Volunteer at a homeless shelter, donate your belongings, work with kids after school. Make your life about more than just your own wants.
80. Redefine “happiness” not as something you experience when you get what you want, but something you feel when you have something meaningful to work toward each day.
81. Focus on getting better, but let go of the end goal. You get better, not perfect.
82. Let yourself be loved as the person you are. You’ll quickly see how the main person judging you is you.
83. Stop judging other people. See everyone with dignity, with a story, with reasons for why they are how they are and why they do what they do. The more you accept other people, the more you’ll accept yourself, and vice versa.
84. Channel your overactive imagination into something creative. Write an insane novel. Write a short horror story. Make up songs and record them on your phone, just for yourself.
85. Or do what every wise person does, and use your overactive imagination to imagine the best possible outcomes rather than the worst, and then imagine how you can work toward getting there.
86. Let go of the idea that anything is “given” or “taken” from you. You create. You choose.
87. Ask for help when you actually need help. If you don’t learn to do this, you will end up exacerbating a million other non-issues and seeking attention for those, because you don’t actually have what you need, which is support in the moments that really matter.
88. Stop thinking that being sad or broken makes you unlovable or
“bad.” Your honest moments don’t destroy relationships, they bond (as long as you’re being genuine).
89. Thinking that there are starving kids on the other side of the world will not alleviate your pain, so stop trying to compare.
90. That said: There’s a lot worse you could be going through, and if you think back on your life, you can probably remember instances
in which you still were.
91. Read books that interest you, and read them often. Hearing a new voice in your mind will teach you how to think differently.
92. Take a nap. Seriously, wrap yourself in a blanket and go to sleep for 20 minutes. It’s like hitting the “refresh” button on your brain.
93. Recognize that fear is an indicator that something is powerful and worthwhile. The deeper the fear, the deeper the love.
94. “The obstacle is the way.”
95. Let what you dislike about your present be a guiding light toward what you want to love about your future.
96. Challenge yourself to think of possibilities you never imagined before, as often as you can. Let your mind explore itself and grow.
97. Nobody is thinking about you the way you are thinking about you.
They’re all thinking about themselves.
98. Recognize that when you’re lost, you’re also free. When you have to start over, you get to pick better. If you don’t like yourself, you have a chance to fall in love with yourself. Don’t stand in front of the road sign forever; map a new path.
99. “This too shall pass.”
100. Fucking try. Honestly, seriously, try. Put your everything into the work you have. Be kind to people when they don’t deserve it.
You’ll have a lot less energy to worry with when you’re funneling it into things that are really worthwhile.
101. Learn how to relax. Work on learning how to happily do nothing.
102. Trust that things get better as time goes on. Not because time heals, but because you grow. You discover that you’re capable. You realize that your fourth breakup doesn’t hurt even nearly as bad as your first did. This isn’t because life is easier, it’s because you’re smarter.
22
THE INHERENT
ZEN of
CREATIVITY
Being creative is as innate to being human as eating, talking, walking and thinking is. It has always been a process we naturally prioritize; our ancestors somehow found time to carve their images and stories on cave walls. But we’ve mistakenly grown to regard it as some form of luxury—
you’re lucky if you have the means to express yourself.
In reality, it is a manner of education, communication, and ultimately, introspection, and we are in constant manifestation of it. The mediums have shifted from rock particles to pixels, but we can all still see that there is something inherently human about wanting to imprint, impress, craft, mold, form, paint, write, and otherwise mold something abstract into that which is conceivable to someone else.
Unsurprisingly then, it seems that the most effective creative process is one that follows the art of Zen—meditation, mindfulness, intuition, non-resistance, non-judgment, etc.
I did not begin writing because it was something I liked. It was how I figured my way out of pain. It didn’t take too long to realize that I didn’t want to spend my life creating or exacerbating problems only to think and feel my way out for the sake of a job. I wanted to be able to write and create just because. Just because I’m alive and breathing and can.