A More Exciting Life: A guide to greater freedom, spontaneity and enjoyment

In our eyes, the price of safety is the maintenance of a permanent semblance of composure.

What am I really trying to do? What do I actually enjoy and who am I trying to please? How would I feel if what I’m currently doing comes right? What will I regret in a decade’s time? By contrast, the easy bit can be the running around, the never pausing to ask why, the repeatedly ensuring that there isn’t a moment to have doubts or feel sad or sea

True toughness isn’t about maintaining a facade of military robustness, but about an artful negotiation with, and unfrightened acceptance of, one’s regressive, dependent aspects.

Furthermore, the flatterer tells their prey about their strengths, whereas the reassurer does something infinitely more valuable: they hint that they have seen the weaknesses, but have only tolerance and compassion for them on the basis of sharing fully in comparable examples.

Because everyone refrains from uttering their truths, the price of breaking cover remains impossibly high.

Learning not to lie would not only be of egoistic benefit; our vulnerability would invite, and rehabilitate, that of others. Every confession we could muster would allow our companions to let go of a part of their own loneliness. Every move towards greater honesty would edge us towards a less needlessly isolated and painfully shame-filled world.

At the root of our failures lies one woefully familiar psychological problem: self-hatred. It is because we haven’t learnt to love and respect ourselves that we say nothing, believing that we have no right to take our own positions seriously.

we can count on one thing about anyone we meet: they will be beset by a sense of insecurity and, beneath some excellent camouflage, of desperation.

To learn how to assert oneself steadily and graciously might be ranked as a feat no less worthy of celebration (and much more useful) than climbing a mountain or making a fortune.