2. Photoshop so good you don’t even realize there’s Photoshop (and so your perception of “normal” is totally skewed.)

3. The attitudes of the first people you dated/were intimate with, and whether or not they appreciated your body for the completely awesome thing it was (and is.) For whatever reason, people’s body hang-ups can often be traced back to those initial experiences, especially if they were negative.

4. How you judge other people. What you first reach to insult someone with — especially when it’s physical — says infinitely more of you than them.

5. The way your friends treat their bodies and behave. In this case, it’s less about what they say to you or about themselves, and much more what you pick up on through their actions. We begin to subconsciously adopt the collective mindset of the group of people we hang out with most.

6. What media you consume. The books and magazines you read, websites you visit, TV shows you binge watch all combine to create your concept of what’s “normal” and what’s “ideal,” and you usually derive these ideas from the characters you identify with most.

7. Your heritage and your hometown. Food is such an integral part of culture — it’s largely the thing we socialize around — it can’t not also be tied to the culture in which you were raised. Emotional eating can start young and passing judgments about your figure from not-ill-intentioned relatives can really settle into your psyche after a while.

8. Whether or not you’ve been in a relationship in which you felt that your connection was more than just skin-deep. It’s hard to believe that love can exist without hinging on physical expectations, until you experience it, and you start to realize that appearance really doesn’t matter most. 

9. If you are associating fitness with being a means to an end — that end being a different body — as opposed to being something holistic to keep yourself running (PUN INTENDED.)

10. How genuine your friendships are. If you only maintain relationships with people out of convenience — if you don’t have anybody in your life to whom you know you are important for who you are not what you do for them, your attentions will generally be focused on maintaining a physical, exterior kind of acceptability.

11. The comments people yell on the street — even if cat calls are “meant” to be complimentary (this is arbitrary, but bear with me) they still reduce your body down to a commodity.

12. How much you understand about health vs. genetic build, the fact that we don’t ever lose fat cells, they just shrink, and the concept of big vs. small/heavy vs. light is completely subjective to each person. If you only gauge your body’s acceptability by comparison, you’ll never be enough.

13. An assignment of “good” and “bad” to foods in terms of how they’ll make you look, how how they’ll make you feel or how good they’ll be for you. It skews your idea of what’s important for your body in general.

14. Not spending any time outside. The sun regenerates your body — we are as solar-powered as the foods we eat — and to deny your body that source of warmth and light is to deplete your feel-good hormones and everything else you were built to live in.

15. Not having anything more important to base your self-worth on. When you don’t feel like you have anything more important to offer the world, it’s inevitable that you get stuck on what’s most easy to see and judge.

16. Unrequited love. It’s easy to pin something physical to being the reason someone isn’t interested, but someone who only loves you when you’re 20 lbs thinner is not someone you want to be with anyway.

17. The constant attention given to celebrities’ bodies, how frequently you consume it and how seriously you take it. Whether they’re “bouncing back” after having a baby or simply going through the ebb and flow of life, they’re under the kind of scrutiny that would almost make it seem that obsessing about 10 lbs after you’ve had a baby is normal. Part of their job is to endure this, and it’s terrible, but you don’t need to be another person entertaining yourself with it. It’s not helping anybody. Hold yourself to your own standard.

18. Forgetting what our bodies were meant to do — laugh and play and jump and hug and love — and there is literally zero evolutionary advantage in having chiseled hipbones to help you do any of that.

You have not been forgotten.

You are not falling behind.

In fact, this is the moment when things are most coming together.

The beautiful thing is also the hard one — that sometimes, we have to compromise what’s comfortable for what’s true. That we can grow so accustomed to the things that are not quite right for us, we can begin to confuse them for certainty, for home. That we could grow and wind roots around what was only meant to be temporary — a lesson, a learning period — and break our own hearts in the process of saving our souls.

But those hearts are resilient, and they’re made even more so when we realize that the things we are most attached to are blank canvases upon which we have painted our love, and made them good. And that quality, that ability, goes with us wherever we are. It only grows as it learns, as it begins to discern, as it stumbles back into the things that are so undeniably right, so clearly meant for us.

And those things that are so undeniably right and clearly meant? They aren’t that way because we find them and they are instantaneously perfect, but because the ground is clear enough and the perimeter is wide enough and the open possibility matches the vision we have of what it could be — and so we begin, and we continue.

If we do not give up, we build the things we most want, from the inside out.

So when life seems to be redirecting you — when the changes are swift and sudden, especially — remember that you have no idea what future pain your current discomfort is saving you from. Particularly when you consider that there is no greater regret than getting to the end of your days and realizing that you wasted your time; you did not do what you came here to do.

Brianna Wiest is a bestselling author of books including 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, This Is How You Heal, and The Pivot Year. Find her work here.

The heart’s communication is subtle.

It does not inform you of that truth through the voice in your head, but rather, the very quiet inklings at your core. Your mind will not be able to place these feelings, nor make sense of them. Your mind is dedicated to the path you have laid, the pieces of a life you built for a person you still believe you are. Your mind craves reason and certainty and structure and logic and clarity, and that is precisely what will cause the most resistance.

Love is not reasonable.

Callings are not certain.

Awakening releases structure.

Soul does not operate through logic.

Your mind has built safety through believing that there is only one path to walk, only one way of life to be experienced in a lifetime.

Your heart knows something much greater. It knows that you were meant to seek what makes you come alive, it knows that the gifts embedded in you could heal many others, and it knows exactly the person that you are meant to be, even if you can’t imagine anything else right now.

Your heart goes slowly. It does not act impulsively or irrationally or with anger. The heart simply shows you what is true through the feelings that simply do not fade. The heart shows you where you’re meant to be by where it keeps bringing you. The heart is comfortable taking leaps of faith, because it can feel what’s on the other side. The heart is used to believing before it can see. The heart is the centermost part of who you are, and the truth that lives there is the one you are meant to follow.

The most important journey of your life is not the one where you find the willpower to press forward with a life you do not truly want, but rather, to dare greatly, to lay it all on the line, to step over the horizon, to leap and trust that the road will rise to meet you.

You may believe that it has been your rational mind that’s gotten you where you are today, but it’s truly been a thousand unknowns that have come to life, little feelings that you followed despite everything that told you not to, little urges that were calling you into an entirely different world — one you could not yet see, but inevitably knew would be true.

It may have taken you a while to see clearly, but your heart has known the entire time. The question is not will you follow it or not, but how long will you wait until you begin the life that you know is meant to be yours.

Like babies who scream when scissors are taken out of their hands by well-meaning adults, we don’t know what’s best for us, least of all what would make us happy. To us, happiness is not a new experience, it’s just what we’ve known, familiar discomfort feels the same as comfort.

We’re still filling the voids of our parents.

We’re seeking in our partners the traits that would have saved our parents, and assuming that they’ll also save us.

The real love of your life will not fix whatever makes you uncomfortable about your life.

They will just stand beside you while you do it yourself. Which is precisely what makes the “right” partner seem so unappealing. That is, until we go through enough relationships to realize that the high that an idea gives us isn’t love, it’s something more appealing (but far more destructive).

A lot of the ways love is portrayed in media is not healthy or real.

Need I go through the endless phalanx of films and books and series that just portray love as a “high?” We’re taught that love is comprised of grandiose gestures and loving glares and soul-sweeping emotions, but in reality, it’s about pouring a second cup of coffee in the morning, listening to them vent at the end of the day, attending family functions neither of you want to be at, and choosing love even when it’s the less glamorous option.

We seek out the bad parts of ourselves in others so we can more clearly see them.

We’re both drawn to and absolutely infuriated by the parts of ourselves that are both affecting our lives and of which we cannot yet see. It’s a strange and beautiful self-awareness tactic that’s completely subconscious, yet wildly effective.

If we can’t make ourselves happy, the next best thing is to feed off of other people’s happiness for us.

Because of this, we’ll just choose a partner in an effort to create an appeasing image. This is common and tricky because we confuse the happiness we feel from validation for the happiness we should feel for connection, being understood, being cared for.

We were looking for our soulmates, and we got lessons instead.

We thought one was more important than the other. We think that the point of relationship is to commit, but really, the point is to grow. A two month long relationship that completely changes your perspective on life is more important than a lifelong relationship that doesn’t. The most beautiful and ironic thing of all is that by seeking out the “right relationships” we almost always throw ourselves into the wrong ones that we need a whole lot more.

Brianna Wiest is a best-selling author. Read her book The Pivot Year here. Or, if you’re struggling with self-sabotage, consider The Mountain Is You.

It’s as though we live to write our eulogies. We get degrees and spouses and desire storylines and unfolding fates that make sense and flow well and ultimately write beautiful and admirable stories, but only ones that we will ever tell ourselves. We’re never actually remembered for more than who we were and who we loved and how we lived in a moment-to-moment sense. The rest — the big, overarching, milestone-kind-of-things don’t matter, and maybe they never did.

We miss the moments because we’re distracted. Distracted by the one person we search for in a crowd, fearing they’re there, even when they’re hours and states and other impossibilities away. By the someone who is always on our minds when we’re writing or creating or choosing or riding the train or falling asleep — and we behave as though they are with us, and narrate our lives by what they’d say and feel and think if they were with us, though we know we’d never know that.

There’s always one daunting task, always one to-do list that fails to include anything surrounding what we actually want to do. Not for work, not for the credit, not out of responsibility, but just because we want to be happy. Always one more promotion, one more move, one more great love to find before we can be happy.

But we aren’t. We don’t choose. We don’t think we deserve it. We keep searching, and we keep narrating, and we keep living as though we have a tomorrow to live out all these grand fantasies and promises to ourselves when the reality is that unless we stop today we’ll live forever on the promise of tomorrow. These are daydreams. They’re visions and hopes and issues that don’t exist. The minute you start thinking of the past or future realize that it’s only a thought of a thing, a thought that’s happening in a now. A now that we’re missing.

Tomorrow never changes us. Our jobs never change us. Our relationships don’t, either. Our problems change as the things in our lives do. The issues we take are reflections of what’s wrong with us, the people we hate reflections of our insecurities. No matter how many things come and go, we take the same issues, and hate the same people for the same reasons, and never stop to realize that it’s not them that we hate, it’s the parts of us they force us to recognize.

You have to stop living for how other people will remember you. Stop living by telling yourself the story that you think other people will be happy reading. Because it’s an empty and lifeless one, and it robs you of the thing you’re most seeking when you do it. The most important thing is that you do what makes you happy — and that you understand that your happiness is your choice, and your responsibility alone. It is not a day or a job or a relationship or a change away, it’s right now. The only work to do is to remove the blocks that prevent you from living it out. The only change that has to happen is to you.

The untold millions of little moments are what matter. It’s not about having a job, it’s about having a life that you want to live. It’s not about having a degree, it’s about the nights you finally felt the opposite of loneliness. It’s not about having a relationship, it’s about being in one, and it’s not about living a life that other people can sum up comfortably, it’s about having a life wherein those millions of moments build and corroborate with one another — and you follow them — and have more. You won’t be there to hear the stories and eulogies they tell of you — you’re only here to know them now. 

I mean every one of these points from the bottom of my heart. They may not all be applicable to your life, but could help if you’re in need of ideas. They have all worked for me and I hope they do for you as well.

1. Redefine your necessities and downsize. People are totally disillusioned about what they actually need to live. Doing so is one of the most cathartic, freeing experiences. Carrying those bags of clothes to Goodwill and selling the unnecessary furnishings and books that only clutter your space and mind is an unprecedented sensation. Get rid of all the crap you don’t need. Detaching from the physical is a liberating practice.

2. Stop consuming as a means of lifestyle. We live in a culture that bases a lot of it’s socialization and recreation around consumption. Too many people base their regular outings and activities around meals out and stores frequented. The thing about cleaning house (#1) is that you also can’t keep bringing more stuff in: “want not, waste not.”

3. Let your mind breathe. Not everything has a meaning, stop assigning it. You do not know what’s going to happen in the next hour, let alone the next year or five or 10. Let it unfold as it will. Creating timelines and predictions only serves to make you suffer. Let your mind take a break. Give it time and space to stop thinking actively and let it be, wander, daydream, let the thoughts come and go without assigning value.

4. Write down what you’re stressing about, and then start to work through it on paper. Now, this may seem counterintuitive, as though doing so will make it more real, but that’s often not the case at all. Once you can physically see the problem you’re creating for yourself in your mind, you realize how irrational it is, and writing through your fears is one of the only ways to let them go: by digging through their causes and figuring out what the root is.

5. Say thank you out loud. The easiest way to love your life is to be thankful for the little things in it, and saying out loud: “thank you for my job, for my friends, for my home” etc. is the best way to cultivate it. If you don’t have a mantra, that should be it.

6. Don’t assume you know what reality is. Most things are never as they seem. We like to predict. Even when we don’t realize it, we have an outlined trajectory in our minds of how things are going to go, what we mistakenly call “what should be.” It may seem scary to embrace at first, but eventually you realize that the potential supersedes the fear of realizing that anything could be.

7. Stop doing the “rounds.” I don’t know exactly how much time we all spend mindlessly clicking and scrolling through social media, but I imagine it’s a lot… and for what? We’re on autopilot at this point, subconsciously creating a mindset that’s unhealthy and anxiety-inducing. First that we need to be connected at all times, and second that we should live for the sake of how things will appear. Consciously limit your time with this stuff. You’ll feel better for it.

8. Make sure you get adequate natural light throughout the day. You cannot imagine how much of a difference this actually makes. Go outside. Work by a window. There are correlations between this and a happier disposition.

9. Cultivate a sacred space that’s beautiful and your own. Invest in the few things you do keep around you. A candle and a new throw pillow can change an entire room, and the more peaceful your surroundings, the more peaceful you’ll be.

10. Ritualize. Know what to do when you start feeling anxious. What to read, what to take, where to go, what to think about. Make your routines rituals and then start crafting them for the other things that crop up in life. How you manage work when you’re overwhelmed, how you handle relationships that are getting tense. Have a go-to game plan for these things. It makes the unexpected a lot easier to deal with.

11. Keep little things that remind you who you are within sight. I have photos with my brother and sister, books, a letter from a reader, a notebook, a candle and a flashcard with a mantra on my desk with me always. As soon as I’m feeling overwhelmed and my attention drifts from the screen, I’m distracted by something positive or inspiring.

12. Learn to not fill up every moment of your life with tasks. Lost is the art of genuine down time. There’s something to be said for being able to sit and enjoy your tea/coffee or read a book — and nothing else — for the afternoon. We all are in the habit of scheduling every moment of every day when that’s both impossible to adhere to and doesn’t leave room for possibility and spontaneity. Let go of the minute-to-minute schedule, but not the general routine (if that makes sense.)

13. Make a list of three things that matter to you, three people you want to spend time with, three things you want to accomplish. Start to evaluate how you spend your time and money by seeing whether or not your life aligns with what really matters to you. Adjust accordingly.

14. Have things to look forward to. Book a trip for the next season, make weekend dinner plans with a friend you’re comfortable with. Have ends to your daily means in mind when staying in the (stressful) moment seems all but impossible.

15. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.” Realize that everything in your life is a matter of your own perception. You’re only as affected by things as you permit yourself to be.

16. Be more honest. The number one thing that destroys relationships the quickest is the inability to be honest, because the energy it takes to fake acceptance or enthusiasm with someone will wear on you quickly. Don’t spend as much time with these people, or learn to be honest. If you think about it, would you really want somebody in your everyday life who secretly, unbeknownst to you, is dishonest with you or just doesn’t want to be there? No. No you wouldn’t. Don’t do the same to someone else.

The experiment claims to be based on the fact that number one fear for women dating online is that they’ll meet a serial killer, and the number one fear for men is that the woman will be fat.

Low and behold, when each of the men arrived and met their date, they were… offended. They were mad because they felt lied to, and did little to cover their displeasure with the woman’s appearance. Only one of them didn’t walk away or excuse himself to the bathroom – never to return. But none gave her a chance, or took any interest in getting to know who she was, all because she wasn’t thin.

Now, as I was watching this, I’ll be honest. I was thinking, well, okay, it’s not completely unreasonable to be off-put if you’re expecting one thing, and get another… 

That was, until I saw the women’s video.

Not one of them walked away. They gave the guy a chance. They connected with him. They laughed at his jokes. They did acknowledge that they were disillusioned about his appearance, but they were not rude or entitled about it.

… And one of them kissed him at the end. Another offered up a second date. They got to know who he really was, because they were able to see past their expectations about what he should be.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that research shows women are twice as prone to anxiety as men, are twice as often diagnosed with anxiety disorders, and that women are significantly “more inclined toward negative emotion, self-criticism, and endless rumination about [their] problems.”

But here is the important part: we also know that this is not the result of a biological or hormonal difference. Indicating that it is, unsurprisingly, cultural.

Simply, women are not encouraged to honestly acknowledge their feelings and cope with them in proactive, mindful ways – and this is mostly to maintain how others perceive them.

Taylor Clark dubs this the “skinned knee effect,” wherein from a young age, boys are encouraged to confront their fears, and girls are encouraged to hide them. “If little Olivia shows fear, she gets a hug; if little Oliver shows fear, he gets urged to overcome it.”

And when these emotions “go underground,” they become ingrained in the subconscious, and then begin to have a huge and often overlooked impact on day-to-day interactions.

Studies also tell us that women tend to be insidiously competitive, jealous and spiteful toward other women, especially those they are close to. Because they are taught not to win at someone else’s expense (to be a perpetual people-pleasers and peace-makers) their healthy, natural, normal, innate competitiveness must become tempered.

And the more it is inhibited, the more it remains unacknowledged. As anybody can tell you, as soon as you pack a feeling away in a dark closet… it becomes a potential monster that you have to prepare yourself for – and that feeling of dread and suppression begins to bleed into otherwise unthreatening, daily situations.

Though these are just a few examples plucked from the pile of research on the anxiety gender gap, the point is that anxiety is, in an abstract sense, the anticipation that something ‘bad’ is coming, or the fear that one cannot handle it.

More accurately, the fear that they cannot hide it. 

It’s the running idea that bad things cannot be dealt with because feelings cannot be felt. And so the fear of them, the fear of losing culturally-induced composure, compiles into anxiety. Intense anxiety. Unbearable anxiety that remains dormant until something sets it off and it crops up endlessly. “I know this sense of panic and urgency is coming from somewhere… and so I must search for it, project it and deal with it in ways that aren’t actually addressing the root of the problem.”

Women suffer greater anxiety than men because they’re taught… not to. They’re denied simply being honest about their feelings, and most often in a way that convinces them it will yield positive results. It will make people love them. They will seem “together.”

But at what cost?

In terms of the women in the experiment, certainly they were kinder, more positive, and opened themselves up to the possibility for real romance, but only because they were conditioned to be just that: open, accepting and willing, no matter what. 

Who is to say they were actually interested in that man? I certainly am not. But what we do know is that the men who were not interested in their date didn’t have to pretend for the sake of someone else’s feelings.

There isn’t an anxiety gap. There is an honesty gap, and there is a decency gap. There’s a middle ground on which we each need to rest a foot: that you can be honest without hurting someone intentionally, that you can cope with your feelings without being violent or cunning about it, and most importantly, that it’s human to feel on edge when your instincts are being compressed. That the most we need to do is let our inner demons out and discover they were nothing more than the fear that they could be something else.

Logically, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be happy, and yet something that you can’t quite yet identify doesn’t feel right, and that feeling seems to permeate most of your day.

2. You’re having intense feelings of envy over what your friends and peers are doing.

Jealousy is the emotion that communicates to us what we are subconsciously denying ourselves. When you feel angry or jealous over what your acquaintance is doing (even though you wouldn’t want exactly what they have) what you are trying to tell yourself is that there’s some way in which you aren’t allowing yourself to go after what you desire.

3. You have conflicting desires.

Maybe there’s a part of you that is ready to embrace something new, and another part of you that is scared to let go of what you’ve known. Maybe you’re with someone you care about a lot, but also want to “be single for a while.” No matter the circumstance, you’re not clear on what you want, and your life is in limbo because of it.

4. You can’t make headway on important creative projects.

You consistently feel stuck, foggy or confused – but mostly, you feel unproductive. This is what happens when we are trying to force something too hard. Right now, you’re probably more attached to the idea of the project than you are to actually doing it, and it’s something you really need to reconsider.

5. You judge people who have the things you want.

When you judge people who have what you want or what you’re working toward, you develop a subconscious association that “having what you want” is bad, or makes you unaccepted/unloved… which makes it a lot harder to get it.

6. You feel like you should be farther than where you are.

Often, this feeling crops up not when we feel suffocated by society’s insane definitions of “success” and the timeline on which we should achieve it, but when deep down, we know that we could, and should, be doing better than we are.

7. You’re romanticizing the past, and fearing the future.

You’re keeping yourself stuck by both imagining that the past was better than it was, and fearing that the future will be worse than it is.

8. You feel totally thrown off-kilter from one little remark or comment.

The smallest transgressions seem to have the power to totally derail your day, mostly because you have a lot of deep-seated emotions and thoughts about that topic that you are suppressing or not acknowledging. When someone triggers them even slightly, it feels like an avalanche is activated.

9. Your consuming compulsively.

Whether it’s food, clothing or anything else, you are trying to fill something that feels unsafe or unprotected within you.

10. You’re hate-scrolling.

You’re almost intentionally seeking out content (or people) who you know will aggravate or upset you. A common reason for this is wanting to trigger a catharsis of sorts.

11. You have weird, irrational fears.

Often, we fear what’s irrational or unlikely in order to process real feelings in a way that feels more safe.

12. You’re starting to pick up on your negative patterning.

Every time you get together with your best friend, you both seem to say you’re just “in a weird place right now,” or you notice that you’ve consistently struggled with the same body/money/worth issues for 10+ years. What you’re identifying is not an ongoing problem, but a belief system/internal misalignment that needs to be rectified.

13. You don’t have the energy to waste on things that are inauthentic.

You literally cannot make yourself hangout with people you dislike, or carry on at a job you know isn’t right for you.

14. You feel like you want to purge.

Whether it’s old clothes, toxic beliefs, stale relationships or anything else, you’re ready to completely release whatever’s not serving you in favor of what could.

15. You’re having vivid dreams, or random recollections from childhood.

When you’re in the process of healing (or are going to begin it) you start unearthing old memories, feelings, traumas and authentic experiences that you’ve suppressed for as long as you can remember.

16. You’re reading this.

At some subconscious level, you know that you need to make changes in your life – and maybe you’re just looking for the proof that’s been right in front of you all along.

Milestones are markers that you’re evolving—they do not create emotional fulfillment in the way we think they will. This confusion is why with the dawn of each new year, our resolutions are to change our lives rather than to change ourselves. But what if we made goals that were more about loving what we have rather than chasing what we don’t? What if we realized that it’s what we were seeking in the first place? It’s something to consider—if not even try just a little. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Pick up where you left off. Finish the half-read books on your shelf. Eat what’s in the cupboard. Wear what you own in ways you never thought of before. Apologize and mean it. Call old friends. Revisit old projects. Try other routes.

2. Seek out ways to appreciate the way people are, not the way you want them to be. It is not your job to judge who is deserving of your love and kindness. It is not your job to fix anybody. It is only your job to love them, in whatever way is appropriate. You are not anybody else’s god.

3. Make time for the friends you have more than you seek out the ones you don’t. Stop counting how many people are in your life as though to hitting a certain tally will make you feel loved. Start appreciating how rare and beautiful it is to even just have one close friend in a life. Not everybody is so lucky.

4. Each day, write down one thing your body allowed you to do. Whether it was watching your favorite show or listening to the sounds on the street on the way to work or being able to see a computer screen or hug someone you love, focus on what your body does more than what it looks like doing it.

5. Learn to love things that don’t cost much. Learn to love simple food and cooking it, being outside, the company of a friend, going for walks, watching the sunrise, a full night’s sleep, a good day’s work.

6. On January 1, start a “journal of days” where you write down a sentence or two to sum up each day of your year.  The reason keeping up with a journal is only sustainable for a week or so is that nobody has the time (or energy) to thoughtfully or extensively detail their everyday lives. Yet, we miss out on the incredible opportunity to see how far we’ve come, and what our lives are ultimately comprised of when we fail to – so make it easy for yourself. Just write down one sentence that sums up the day before bed. In a year, you’ll be grateful you did.

7. Find meaning and joy in the work you do, not the work you wish you did. Finding fulfillment in work is never about pursuing your idea of what your “purpose” is. It is always about infusing purpose into whatever it is you already do.

8. Start your own holiday traditions. Make the most special days of the year reflect who you are and what you love and how you want to celebrate your life.

9. Do a “spend cleanse” where you only use what you have for a period of time. At once, teach yourself the art of denying immediate gratification for the sake of something more important, and show yourself that you already have everything you need, or at least, more than you think you do (even when it doesn’t feel like it).

10. Give everything you own a “home,” it is essentially the key to feeling at peace in your space. Go through your belongings and only keep what’s purposeful or beautiful to you – and then assign each of those things a “home,” or a space to return to each night. It makes maintaining flow in your space effortless and calming.

11. Learn to live within your means – no matter how much money you make, your “percentage habits” will remain the same. If you’re in the habit of seeing all of the income you make as “spending money” (as opposed to investing money, saving money, etc.) you will always revert to that habit, no matter how much you make. It is only by learning to live comfortably within your means as they are that you’re able to actually achieve your goals when you earn more.

12. Call your mom. Not everybody has the privilege.

13. Aspire to be someone who gives things meaning, not who seeks things to give them meaning. Rather than chasing “success,” chase kindness. Rather than believe wealth is the mark of a life well lived, believe that intelligence is, or kindness is, or open-mindedness is.

14. Do the most important things immediately in the morning. Give your energy to what matters most, when you have the most of it. It also helps you define what really matters to you.

15. Shed what no longer serves you. Teach yourself to let go of the big things by learning to let go of the little ones. It is easier to bypass thoughts and emotions that are negative in nature when you’re able to release belongings and objects with negative associations.

16. Pace yourself – if at any point you’re doing anything in which you cannot feel your breath, you’re moving too fast. Make physical relaxation a priority – no matter what you’re doing. Keep track of your breath, at all times. Be mindful, present and intentional with everything you do. It is not the quantity of what we accomplish, but the quality of it.

You flirt with your own addiction of sorts: to save. 

The thing about loving an addict is that you think your love should be able to fix it and find yourself in disbelief when it can’t. You think what you lack is hypervigilance. You make ultimatums. You study their pupils when they walk in the room; your nose lingers just a few seconds longer on the scent that follows. You are careful and measured about how you inquire about what they’ve been doing.

You tell them that there’s no future for you if it continues. You think it means they don’t love you when it does. You imagine that healing is a linear thing, that once a few hard nights of sobriety pass, it gets easier. It doesn’t. You start to learn the back-and-forth of mending. You start to see that there’s a God-shaped hole somewhere within them, and nothing – not even you, and every once of love you can muster – can fill it.

People think that being with someone who is addicted to something is an obtuse experience, as in, it’s obvious. It isn’t. It occurs in subtleties and ordinary days. Sometimes you don’t even know what’s happening until you’re blindsided. That’s the kind of addiction that’s the scariest: the quiet kind.

You never see it coming until it’s blaring full-steam ahead and headed right toward you.

You learn that it’s never one thing that’s the problem, it’s an entanglement of past traumas that were never resolved – fears that were felt and never overcome. It is the discomfort they never learned how to swallow on their own. It is the friends who normalize. It is the fear of missing out. It is the reckless abandon. It is the need for the high. It is the disregard for their lives. It is everything you know isn’t really them.

People who love addicts are bleeding-heart masochists and, sometimes, heroes. They epitomize seeing the best in others and fall in love with potential faster than they see reality for what it is. They don’t believe in giving up, not yet, not too soon. They advocate for love. They barter and shield. They try to distract and linger. They are sometimes successful. They are often thwarted. They are the people who are written letters in recovery. The relationships reflected on and regretted.

You can love an addict, but you can’t heal them.

You can only be beside them while they heal themselves. And if they can’t, if they won’t, you have a choice to make. You have to decide how long you will stay, and you have to decide whether loving them will mean you get pulled into the tunnel, too.