Wrestling, fighting or dancing?

We can wrestle with a challenge or a problem and find energy and possibility while doing it. And we can dance with someone else as we seek a mutual way forward. Fighting tends to be more brutal, final, and hurtful than is often productive. You don’t want to spend your days fighting. The words matter.

Sharing creates connection

A gift doesn’t diminish the giver. Sharing creates connection, possibility, and energy. And the magic of gratitude is that it improves everything it touches, especially the person who offered it in the first place.

We make things happen through our actions

Our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not.

What makes life worth living?

No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don't see the world, don't observe the world, don't contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don't distinguish between it and their own selves.

You can only deeply commit to a few things.

Be ruthless about what you ignore. Time, energy, and resources are so precious. You have to be ferocious about cutting your priorities—more than you realize and certainly more than is comfortable.

You must cultivate activities that you love

You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.

You will have to learn to let go.

At some point, you will have to learn to let go. There is an endless list of obligations and expectations, desires and ambitions, and worries and fears that will always be ready to insert themselves between you and the feeling of peace. If you never learn to let them go, there will never be enough.