Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

To begin, find a notebook and something to write with. Take these tools to a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed for at least half an hour. Ideally, it should be a place outside your home: a playground, a restaurant, a mountain road. Once you’re there, take a few relaxing breaths, climb fully into your body, and focus your attention on y

You never hear about truly self-actualized people, like Buddha or Christ, telling people they’re stupid losers. It goes against the nature of enlightenment. On the contrary, people who exemplify truth are always turning up in the lives of “stupid losers” and telling them that they’re priceless and beloved, that their essential nature is literally d

If you’ve really positioned your life by consulting your internal compasses and setting a path to your own North Star, you’re going to experience a lot of good things. Celebrate them. Comment on them, frequently. Tell people about your reactions to both success and failure. Be both overwhelmed and open. You’ll maximize your own happiness and lay th

focus your attention on some activity you enjoy very much. It can be any aspect of your work, relationships, hobbies, or leisure pastimes. Now imagine pushing this favorite activity to the boundary of what you think possible.

I made myself a promise: I would do one thing that scared me every day, provided it was something I really wanted to do.

All of the advice in this book boils down to just one thing: You are designed with the ability to find the life you were meant to live. I can’t do it for you. Neither can your mother, your lover, your religious leader, or anyone else. The instructions in this book are worth exactly nothing unless they help you free yourself from all instructions an

discovering beauty.” Not creating beauty, or reproducing it, but discovering it. That was the first time I realized that an artist’s real contribution isn’t what he paints, but the way he sees.

Hemingway wrote that although life breaks us all, some of us manage to become “strong at the broken places.”

Step 4: Accept Others’ Compassion and Learn to Extend It to Yourself