If it feels wrong with your fullest conviction, don’t do it.
Even if it will disappoint some people.
Even if it will interrupt the trajectory, you thought you needed to be on.
And even if it will scare you.
Even if it will call into question everything you thought you knew before.
If it feels wrong with your fullest conviction, don’t do it, because one day, you will look back and realize that there is a difference between fear and intuition.
One you can reason with, and the other stands firm.
When you find that firmness within you, honour it. It is a guide from deep within, and far beyond.
EK #02
If you are consistent in offering yourself loving thoughts, you begin to form a sanctuary around yourself.
You begin to become your refuge.
You start to build a belief system rooted in your certainty.
The world and its opinions become less and less convincing as your foundation is built independently of how you’re perceived, consumed, and responded to.
You begin to understand that your experience of yourself is a sovereign thing; it is not hinged on how much you can be affirmed or appreciated.
In that, you begin to form a wall of armour around yourself not one that does not let love in, but one that is discerning about what is true, what is worthwhile, and what is allowed to enter.
EK #03
Yes, things can change, often faster than you realize and in better ways than you could ever imagine.
You have to find the courage to be uncomfortable, to process, to face things.
More importantly, though, you have to come to the clarity that life can be dramatically different from one chapter to the next.
You will have other chances to be as you’ve always wanted and experience what you’ve always wanted.
Things really will change, whether you are confident in them or not.
There are a few other guarantees.
EK #04
How do you heal when you can’t remove yourself from what’s causing the pain?
You learn boundaries.
You learn that none of us can insulate ourselves fully from the ache of the world, from other broken hearts, from inevitable stress.
You learn that the journey was never about that, anyway; it’s only ever been about strengthening yourself from the inside out.
To act not out of compulsion or obligation, but true choice out of self-preservation, and self-love.
You look inward at what pieces of yourself you see within those who bother you most deeply, and you work on healing those pieces.
You get better at communicating what you need.
But you also make the changes that need to occur within your own life, and then you notice what gently alleviates the tension.
You notice that the situation hasn’t lightened, but you have.
You have changed what moment you meet.
EK #05
To be unwavering does not mean to be linear within your own life experiences, but to continually return to the things that make you feel most at ease, aligned, and lit up with possibility.
These things that seem to awaken you from the outside are pieces of yourself being shown to you in real time.
The whole world is like a painting with ink dropped in nonsensical shapes without clear borders, flowing and merging in unpredictable ways.
What matters is not what picture is being painted, but what within the image you see.
EK #06
Anything that goes unrequited is just unmatched energy.
It’s not about who is more worthwhile than who, what traits, baggage, or strengths tally up or take you down a few points, placing you in or out of the box of being loved or left.
What it comes down to is that there is misaligned momentum, a way in which you are moving through the world that does not flow congruently to the way someone or something else is.
This does not mean that either of your rivers is misdirected, but that sometimes, the idea of leaping onto another person’s path can become an escape fantasy:
An idea of how you might remove yourself from the inevitability of your inner work.
This is futile, of course, because often, the things we latch onto to avoid our demons are the very ones that bring us right to them.
Let go.
You’re attached to something that will never bring you fully to where you’re meant to be.
EK #07
It is okay to unearth the seeds you have planted when you realize your garden is not harvesting what you need to grow.
It is okay to begin again.
It is okay to think differently, to want differently, to move differently through this world.
Your journey is defined by how you tell the story, and by how willing you are to tell a new one when it’s time.
EK #08
Your brain works against you in ways you don’t realize.
The compulsion to repeat makes familiar discomfort desirable.
The negative is disproportionately focused on because it feels like a clearer potential threat.
You are an evolving being trying to operate with pieces of a machine developed for the most blunt kind of survival.
Your growth is the product of witnessing those impulses and choosing otherwise, again and again, until it is instinctive until it is rewired.
When you live from what’s immediately comfortable, you miss out on what’s infinitely beautiful:
What exists beyond where the limits appear to be?
EK #09
Wisdom is the product of self-inquiry.
Not time, as time is nothing but space that can remain empty and unused.
Not experience, as life gone unevaluated, has not been fully internalized, nor more deeply understood.
Wisdom is the product of asking the hard questions as well as the simple ones.
It is where our most gentle, child-like knowing meets the biggest parts of ourselves:
The aspects of us that are willing to see the whole of our lives at once, and to remember what matters, what is worth investing our energy into.
EK #10
You cannot force healing.
You can only intend it, and then allow it.
In the same way that every drop from a rainstorm must find its place on the ground, every sensation in your body must be fully processed and released.
This won’t occur on your preferred timeline.
It will come back in waves when you thought the waters were still.
You aren’t letting go of an experience, a person, or a place, but of all of the things you assumed you’d be, all of the things you made the loss mean about you, all the feelings that have to slowly unravel themselves so as not to overwhelm you.
This takes time, so give that to yourself.
What you gain from the process far exceeds whatever you think you lose in taking quiet refuge.
EK #11
Resistance feels like you’re pushing away from something, but sometimes it’s a sign you are being called to it more strongly than ever before.
When something is a definitive no, you are clear neutral, and detached.
When something is pulling at you at such a scale, you push back because you are afraid of losing control, of losing yourself within it.
Sometimes, what you feel the most tension about is not what you are trying to push away, but what you are reaching to bring closer.
What matters enough to scare you a little, is what you really, truly want.
EK #12
You are a field of contradictions, a constellation of experiences both painful and gorgeous, and all of the lingering hurts and shining possibilities that glisten in between.
You might want to define yourself by the most knowable parts, the cleanest and clearest self-concept imaginable, but the journey of true self-actualization is to embrace your juxtapositions.
It is to hold them up to one another and understand that it is not always comfortable to consider the aspects of ourselves that complement and contradict each other, the pieces that don’t fit, that don’t make sense but coming to grips with them is how you become the fullest version of yourself.
It’s how you set your entire life free.
EK #13
It takes a lot of heart to be who you are.
It takes a lot of courage to show your truest self to the world and be okay with not being received by everyone, with not being seen.
And it also takes a lot of self-trust to stop adapting to tides that come and go but to stand firmly in who you know you are.
It takes a lot, and it matters a lot because our self-concept is the foundation of every single experience we have while alive.
It is the filter through which you come to know it all.
When you are firm within your truth, you may lose some approval, but what will you gain?
That is immeasurable. Infinite.
That is what it has always been about.
EK #14
One day, you will see your strength.
You will begin to realize that the things that once pressed up against every nerve in your body can move through you with a little more ease.
You will walk through the things you once most deeply feared, and you will walk out on the other side and be okay.
And you will realize that through what you face, you find your deepest courage and you get to keep that with you for all the rest of your days.
EK #15
Do not allow your hope to be extinguished with time.
No matter what this world might take from you, do not let it take your faith that another experience is possible, another chapter will begin one day, and a new life can be formed from the ruins.
If there is one thing that you must hold onto, it is only this that change is not possible, it’s inevitable.
It can be different, and better than it ever was before.
EK #16
You might define yourself by your struggles, but others define you by your soul.
You might not be able to see beyond your fears about yourself, but others see the beautiful things you bring into this world, the way you laugh and show up for the ones you love, and all of the lightness in who you are.
Others see your gifts, your talents, and your kindness.
Sometimes, you have to learn to see yourself with the grace of someone not so critically evaluating whether or not you deserve to be loved.
You are love itself.
Let it out, and let it be met, let it be taken, and let it be given back to you in even greater degrees.
EK #17
You will learn how to practice your peace.
You will learn what battles are worth fighting, and which aren’t.
But you will also learn how to hear your intrusive thoughts and not believe them.
You will learn how to confront a challenge and not assume your failure but instead try
You will learn that things do not improve surreptitiously but as a result of practice.
It doesn’t get easier, but you become more resilient. You become more willing.
You will be better at bringing yourself back to your center and trying again.
EK #18
Learn to not over-complicate things.
Allow things to be as they are, for people to be as they are.
Sometimes, your desire to gaze beneath the experience isn’t a mark of depth, but of scepticism, or a lack of faith.
There are times in your life that are meant for introspection, and evaluation.
There are times you are supposed to think critically about what it is you want to do and how you want to be.
But there are also times to simply be in those experiences, to love and laugh, and not worry about where it all will lead or what you’re missing.
Sometimes, true sophistication is the ability to just be present and to let the rest just be.
EK #19
You either see endings or within them new beginnings.
You either see that you’re living the days your younger self once dreamt of or you’re still waiting on something more.
But you either see a storm that disrupts your path or one that corrects your course.
You either see the hours as long and thankless, or life as brief and precious.
You either see the mysterious unknown or an endless realm of possibility.
There is what you experience, and then there is the story you tell yourself about it.
Over time, that story becomes the truth you carry, as the other details fade in the distance.
Over time, how you write the narrative determines how you experience reality.
EK #20
Like most of us, what you are working toward is being able to have peace in the quietest, simplest moments of the day.
You can only get there by practicing again and again, disengaging with the tempting thoughts that lead you nowhere but self-destruction.
You can only get there by reacclimating to an entirely new way of walking through your hours, becoming comfortable in the new life you’ve carved out of the unknown.
The ending is not a place you arrive, it is a way you become.
