Positive thinking can't make up for a lack of capacity.

The less we can tie our problems to systems and circumstances outside our control, the more likely we are to buy the solutions companies sell us.

What helps you most when you feel your emotional resources are exhausted? What recharges your creativity?

goals become a sort of technology for self-erasure. We learn to recognize all the ways we don't fit in and the rungs we haven't yet climbed and define our future selves against those traits. We rarely—if ever—stop to think whether the things we're not are actually a core part of who we are. And that's not just a personal problem. It ripples out int

Practice is resistance. It reduces urgency, creates satisfaction, and reminds you that there is more to life than being productive.

so many systems for planning and goal-setting assume the user works a salaried desk job five days a week, with paid time off and fully funded healthcare,

describes what happens as a result: “our lives become about the struggle to keep up.” She continues, “To truly feel our experience with depth and presence, we would have to slow down a lot (which would make us less efficient consumers, students, workers, prisoners, soldiers…).”

Margin is space. And one thing our plans and commitments almost always lack is space. Timeframes bump up against each other, deadlines overlap, accounts lack padding. We don't leave margin between projects or items in a checklist. We certainly don't make room for error. This is a recipe for overextending ourselves. But when we leave space, we have

Activities with ameliorative value are those that prevent something bad from happening or occur in response to something bad happening.