It takes strength to witness your patterns and correct your course.
It takes strength to resist what’s become so familiar.
Most people will never realize how deeply the compulsion to repeat can run, how entrenched we can become in the paths we’ve walked over and over again until we cannot see anything beyond them.
It takes strength to choose differently, to believe in what you can sense but not yet see.
It takes strength to be different, to be humble, and to change.
It takes strength to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.
EK #02
It is painful to end your suffering.
It is painful to process, to feel, to let go.
And it is painful to grieve, to be honest, to move on.
It is so painful that most people keep themselves in a prolonged state of mild discomfort to avoid the acute but temporary sensation of facing their fears.
It is painful to end your suffering at first but then there is peace on the other side.
There is a new life waiting to begin.
EK #03
There is not one other human being alive who can accurately assess whether or not you are where you are supposed to be.
Even if you have every external success in the world but know, deep inside, you are not fully fulfilled, then you have to trust that.
You have to understand that your existence will not be evaluated by whether or not other people were impressed, but by whether or not your courage left an impression, an indelible mark, on the very nature of your being.
Whether or not you brought yourself fully into this experience, and what you took away from it.
EK #04
If your worth is not self-evident to them, they are not worthy of your effort to convince them otherwise.
A person who does not value you is not a challenge to see how much you can bend yourself to fit the mold of their preferences, how deeply you can lose yourself in their ideals, and how quickly you can get them to change their mind.
A person who does not value you does not see in you what you see in them, and that is not because they are a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person whose magic will not be recreated.
They are mortal beings whom you have graced with divine perception.
When you turn your gaze to the next person who lights up your heart in that same way, you will see in them all the same.
The light is in you. It always has been.
EK #05
It is okay to say, that is not for me.
It is okay to say, I do not prioritize that right now.
And it is okay to say, that is not the experience I am looking for next.
Sometimes, it feels easier to draw deeper lines, to say something is just an impossibility when it is simply a misalignment.
It takes time to stop conflating what you don’t want with what you can’t do.
You cannot hold it all, not all of the time. Eventually, something has to give, something has to release.
Instead of dizzying yourself with all the reasons you are incapable, consider your energy your most valuable investment, and share it accordingly.
EK #06
When you think that if you finally let yourself run free, you will inevitably fall, what you usually don’t realize is that you’re already on the ground.
Staying where you are is a perceived safety this life was not given to you to be just endured, but experienced.
This life was not given to you to die before you’re dead.
This life was not given to you to arrive at the end in perfect condition.
You may feel as though the worst possible scenario is that you fail,
But it is that your fear of failure paralyzes you from doing anything meaningful with the limited time you have.
EK #07
When you feel even the smallest bit of happiness, slow down.
Stretch that moment as wide as you possibly can.
Let it lead you to a space where everything seems possible, where anything could be.
Allow it to invoke gratitude, and pay attention as you feel so at home, so at ease, so correct in your peacefulness.
This is who you are, although the storms may make you think otherwise.
This is what you will always return to, no matter how many times you abandon yourself.
This ever-present part of you is your true self, your whole self.
EK #08
Your attention has an eclipsing effect on your life; what you pour your energy into becomes your energetic state.
When you feel most stuck, it is because you have unknowingly cornered yourself with your consistent focus.
The way out is to disengage, even just for a moment.
Offer yourself to something, anything else.
It does not need to be good, it does not need to be hopeful.
It just needs to be different, it just needs to capture you, it just needs to pull you, it just needs to move you out of where you are and into somewhere new.
And it just needs to remind you that where you currently are is not the only place you can ever be.
EK #09
Sometimes, things don’t unfold on your timeline because they are occurring on one that is far greater.
Sometimes, the things you’d choose for yourself only rise to the level of your broken self-perception.
And sometimes, when the light hits your eyes after staring for so long into the darkness, it is painful.
Sometimes, life is trying to give you more than you’d ever take for yourself, and you should let it.
You should let it lead you higher than you’d ever expect to go.
EK #10
Every human being you know, everyone you walk past on the street, everyone you judge, everyone you think you dislike, everyone that you think is nothing like you are also fighting a quiet battle inside them.
There is a hurt inside of them that feels quite a lot like your own.
The faces of our demons may differ; we may call them various names, and we may feel their presence more at some times than others, but, at the end of the day, they all haunt us in similar ways.
This is what it means to come into deep awareness of what it means to be human to understand that we all live with an internal longing of some kind.
Have compassion because no matter how it appears on the surface, every person, including you, has a mountain all their own.
EK #11
Figuring other people out isn’t as hard as it might seem.
People are so much more direct and transparent than the stories we wind around them.
The way they are behaving is the way they feel and people contain complexities.
They’re acting hot and cold because they are confused.
They’re making time for what they value, they’re showing up for what feels comfortable and aligned.
They may still care, but if they tell you, not now, they mean it.
If they tell you, not me, they mean it.
If they tell you, you deserve more, they mean it.
But they also mean it when they say they love you and show you that they do.
They mean it when they stay to weather your toughest storms together, and when they show you respect.
They mean it when they look at you with love.
Take away all of the words a person has ever spoken to you, and observe what they do.
That is how they feel, and that is who they are.
Your choice is how much of them you want in your life.
EK #12
Once you introduce a new thread into the fabric of your reality, it is all different.
It has all changed.
Instead of thinking you have to reinvent yourself all at once, shift one, tiny aspect of your existence, and watch as the simple act of that victory becomes a wave of transformation that will pierce through your life as a whole.
EK #13
Placing down what you carry isn’t just putting it down, it’s unpacking it piece by piece.
It’s holding it up and asking is this mine, is this true?
This is what it means to find yourself and to heal.
This is what it means to truly move on.
To take the things that you cannot loosen your grip on and ask why you are so tightly wound around them.
To discover what they are meant to show you, to alchemize them into catalysts for change.
EK #14
Please do not allow the heaviness of what holds you to dissuade you from believing in the vision that calls you.
Please do not assume that your fear is a finality, a sign of impossibility.
And please do not think that just because it is hard, or will take time, or feels far off right now, you will not one day arrive.
One day, everything you fear will never come will be right in front of your eyes.
