Thirty Insights That Altered My Perspective
Small fragments of wisdom that can inspire big shifts
In my experience, the moment you encounter an insight is just as important as the insight itself. Why? Because timing determines whether you’re truly ready to receive the message. For example, for years, I dismissed the advice to “be yourself” as useless and impractical. Up until my late 20s, everything I had achieved came from not being myself – from molding, performing, and shapeshifting into versions I thought others wanted. Authenticity felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford. It wasn’t until I began building my business – a pursuit that demands authenticity as table stakes – that those two simple words finally broke through. Even then, it wasn’t a neat aha moment. I resisted for years, doubting that who I was at my core was “good enough” to stand on its own. Only after failing a few times did the advice sink in. And when it did, everything shifted. Instead of shrinking to fit in, I began to see my differences as reservoirs of strength.
In the spirit of honoring the deceptively simple words, quotes, and excerpts that have shaped the way I see and move through the world, I’ve gathered thirty insights that altered my perspective. Each one found me at the exact time I needed it most. My hope is that some of them reach you in the same way.
1. Confidence is not the input, it’s the output. You have to do it scared.
2. If you ask disempowering questions, you get disempowering answers.
3. Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.
4. Addiction is a hiding place where sensitive people can go so that we don’t have to be touched by love or pain.
5. Next steps present themselves when current circumstances are mastered.
6. It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what they heard.
7. A clarity that hurts you is better than the hopeful confusion that holds you.
8. Greed is so well organized that we call it economic prosperity. Ill will is so well organized that we call it defense and we make weapons and war. Ignorance is so well organized that we study about everything except ourselves.
9. Worrying is worshipping the problem.
10. He who blames others has a long journey ahead. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.
11. Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
12. A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
13. Negativity is the manifestation of fear.
14. When you are dead, you do not know that you are dead. All the pain is felt by others. The same thing happens when you’re stupid.
15. To be insulted by you is to be garlanded with lilies.
16. When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
17. To create is to escape.
18. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
19. A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.
20. Who all still have the power to hurt your feelings? They are your masters.
21. You’re offended when you fear it might be true.
22. You can fulfill any desire in life that you want. Because inherent in having the desire is the mechanics for its fulfillment. I don’t have the same desires as you, because nature gave me those desires that nature means to fulfill for me.
23. We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.
24. Humans are not born forever on the day their mothers have them; life necessitates giving birth to themselves over and over again.
25. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.
26. They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant; in a complex world, intelligence consists of ignoring things that are irrelevant.
27. I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.
28. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
29. Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself, and a heart can never suffer when it goes in search of a dream.
30. When setting out on your own journey, do not seek the advice of those who never left home.