“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci
“Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.” Henry Thoreau
One of the most important things I have done to improve my life over the last few years is to focus on letting go of many things and to simplify.
Simplifying one’s life is as I have understood via emails and surveys also one of the most common aspirations of readers of this website. So for the past few months I have been working hard on a course called Simplicity.
This is by far my most in-depth product so far and will help you to practically simplify and improve the most important areas in life such as your productivity & effectiveness, your thinking, your social skills & relationships, your health, your money habits and more. Be on the lookout for more information about this in the next few days.
But for today I would like to share a couple of great ideas about simplifying that have been with us for a long time. These are a few of my own favorite thoughts about simplifying your life from the last 2500 years or so.
Focus on what is most important for you. Let go of the rest.
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” Hans Hofmann
“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” Lin Yutang
“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.” Elbert Hubbard
There are many things you can let go of. Both on the inside and the outside. I have for example let go of some busy work on the outside. I have greatly decreased the number of times I check email etc. each day and I have learned to use very short to-do lists with only 2-3 of the most important items instead of a dozen items or more.
On the inside I do my best to let go of trivial and petty stuff. I let go of negative stuff. I let go of trying to control the results of my actions. I let go of information and old self-images that don’t serve me anymore. I always remember – or remind myself via the white board on my wall – to keep things extremely simple.
I’ll mention a small and effective tip for letting go right here. First accept that you are for example stuck in focusing on something trivial. Then let it go. Don’t try to just reject what you are thinking or feeling because that will only make it harder to let it go.
By doing all this elimination on the inside and outside there is more room, time and energy for me to use for the most important things. And that makes life so much more interesting and fun.
Express yourself in a simple way.
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” Ernest Hemingway
One of the trickier things about social skills is to get your message across. One reason why people have difficulty with this is because they use more words than needed.
Now, sometimes that can be a good and enjoyable thing. Sometimes it’s just a way to feed your own ego and keep the spotlight on yourself for as long as possible. A lot of the time I think it can be useful to simplify and try to use fewer words.
Why? Well, it makes your message clearer and makes it more powerful emotionally because it’s focused. Keeping it shorter and more focused also makes it less likely that people will simply become bored with what you are saying.
So, how do you keep your word count down?
Be aware and alert. Just being aware of your problem can help you to stop the talking before it becomes excessive rambling.
Focus outward. Babbling on too much is also, at least in my opinion, something that often comes from being too focused inward and on yourself in a conversation. If you instead focus more outward you’ll be less self-conscious. This reduces nervous and slightly nonsensical babbling. And if you focus more outward, on the people you are talking to and less on your own glorious voice and golden words you’ll be more aware of what you are saying and how the conversation is going. If you focus on the other people you’ll be more focused on getting through and more attentive to the reactions you bring out.
A simpler life is one way to a happier life.
“Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” Edwin Way Teale
Society is to a large degree built on getting more.
To a degree this can be useful. But it may not be the thing that will solve all your problems.
You may not find your answer or happiness in more. It may just alter your troubles and problems. And/or give you more of them. What is already there inside of you perhaps gets highlighted and magnified when you get more. Instead of getting whatever you want when finally making all that money your wanted you may find that greed, jealousy and selfishness within you and in your world increases.
You may have thought that when you finally arrived at that place your problems would just disappear. But the ego wants more and is never satisfied.
So trying to fill your life and yourself up with more – money, stuff, power, smartness, prettiness, a feeling of being more enlightened than others – and then finally becoming happy may become like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
By simplifying and letting of a craving for more you can make your life happier and easier.
Get a life to create a simpler life.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Confucius
“Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” Katherine F. Gerould
Why do people make life more complicated than it is? Well, one answer may be old habits that you need to let go of and replace.
Another answer is that your life isn’t really that exciting. So you add drama and complications to make it more interesting and stimulating. That’s at least what I used to do in the past.
But instead of doing that you can take the more difficult path and actually get a life.
If you find yourself sitting around too much and not having enough to do then it’s very easy to get stuck in thought loops and go into a downward spiral. Simply by filling your life with more fun activities and people you become a lot more relaxed and have little time or patience for complications or drama from yourself or others.
So spend less time analyzing life and more time living and exploring it in whatever way you’d like. By doing so you are also often confronted with having to expand your comfort zones and perhaps face a fear. This leads to better self confidence and less fretting about if you can handle things that may come up.
“Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”
“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
Even if you are not an American – like me – you’ve probably still heard of Abraham Lincoln. He was the president who introduced and worked on measures to free the slaves and led the country through the Civil War. A war that had just ended when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre.
But what can Abraham Lincoln help us with today? Well, here are 10 powerful and timeless fundamentals. I hope you’ll find something helpful.
1. See the positive in people.
“If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”
“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.”
What you focus on you will find. In a situation, in a person. There is always plenty of good things and plenty of bad things to discover.
So you need to keep your focus steadily on what you want to find. Don’t let it waver just because you are in a “negative” situation or someone just said/did something “negative”. If your focus gets scattered, try to get it back into a more useful place as quickly as you can.
You can develop whatever view of the world and people that you like. You can go looking for the negative in people and feel a short burst of good emotions as find something negative about a person and feel like you are “right”.
Or you can develop a habit of looking for the positive. A habit where you can expect people to treat you in a positive way.
Because we do to a large extent teach people how we want to be treated. If we expect other people to help us and treat us well then they are more likely to do so than if we are negative and expect to be treated poorly.
This may sound a bit weird, but how we expect to be treated can have a big effect on how the world sees us.
2. Be honest.
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
This is a pretty practical thing. Being honest will for several reasons work better in the long run. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to be honest and hurt people though. You can just as well choose to be silent if you like. Here are just a few practical reasons to minimize or just stop lying altogether.
Your words aren’t everything. Words are only a pretty small part of communication. The rest are body language and your voice tonality. And it’s through those channels that the real you will shine through. People will in some way sense that something is wrong, that you aren’t being honest and authentic if those other ways you communicate aren’t in alignment with your words. So lying is just a short term solution. Sooner or later people will pick up on it.
Poor self-image and stress. Cultivating a self-image as someone who lies will make you feel worse about yourself. You’ll feel like a fake and your self-esteem plummets. And if you on the other hand are honest you don’t have to feel like someone that is trapped or on the high-wire all the time.
People really appreciate authentic communication. What separates people is to a large extent the walls that they build up between themselves. When you put aside personas and lies you can build real connections between you and other people. If you remove these walls of insulation then the people or you are interacting with are likely to reciprocate. And so your relationships can improve and are less likely to be damaged by miscommunication.
3. Unite.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Ego excludes and divides. The ego loves to make someone “the other” to strengthen its own power. It want’s to feel “more” than someone else. More clever. Prettier. Cooler. Wiser. Or more like a victim.
And by making the other even more wrong in your mind the ego grows stronger. However, the ego boosts of good feelings are just temporary. You have to reinforce them continually, just like a caffeine habit.
Consciousness and intelligence includes and accepts. You don’t have to be seduced by your ego’s wish to make people other than you. You can look at the positive in them and at the things you agree about. And be accepting.
When your thoughts are buzzing around in your head and telling you to exclude or divide in some way then you most often are listening to your ego. It may tell you that paragraphs just above this one are cheesy and stupid. You may not want to take such thoughts too seriously. You don’t have to.
The most useful advice I’ve found so far to get a handle on the need to divide is to not identify so much with my thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that I stop thinking or feeling. It just means that I realize – and remember in my everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through me. And that I am the consciousness observing them.
When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out.
When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.
4. Create a friend where there is none.
“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”
“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
This is similar to tip #1 and # 3. But slightly different, seen from a slightly different perspective. It is a helpful and a bit unusual way of looking at people who you might perceive as different or other than yourself.
Turning an enemy or someone we don’t like into a friend is difficult because first impressions can be powerful. Our concept of a person can remain intact if we don’t push further and question and explore. But if you get to know someone better you can often find out quite a few positive and interesting things about them. People are often more intriguing than your first impression of them.
Of course, since the ego needs to tell you that you are right and someone else is wrong then it can be hard to change your opinion of someone. That opinion of him/her is tied up in your ego and fuels your sense of being “right”. Again, the key and the way out here is to not take your thoughts or emotions too seriously.
This can allow you to open your mind to a change in the relationship.
Now, how can you make him/her your friend? One suggestion would be to follow tip # 1 and start looking for the positive in the person. Then to take the first step and give some kind of value – like help for instance – to that person. And then to take more steps if s/he is not convinced that you want to change the relationship.
5. Believe in and go after your own success.
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
If you think you can succeed then you can. Your belief in your own ability to succeed is essential and does not only motivate you to keep going.
You may have heard that you have to believe that you can achieve something to do it and that the how you will do it will then present itself along the way. Well, that is true in my experience. Whatever you focus on persistently you will find in your world. So be careful what you focus on. Remind yourself to keep your focus on what you want to make solutions and people who can help you “pop up” out of all those things and pieces of information that is the background noise of your world.
And don’t wait for too long. Procrastination may just leave you with the crumbs or sometimes nothing really. Taking action is awesome. But taking action with little delay will increase the probability of you actually getting what you want before the window of opportunity closes.
So develop a Just do it! habit. Learn to do some planning but then to take action quickly despite what excuses or other negative things your thoughts and emotions may put up in your way. Know that they may just want to protect you from uncertainty and risks. But also know that you are in charge of them and not the other way around.
6. Persist.
“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”
Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use.
If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence may be one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as lot other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing patience and being persistent will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for.
7. Sharpen your ax.
“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”
Instead of just starting to chop with a blunt blade for hours on end it’s a whole lot smarter to first sharpen the blade and then take on the physically harder task of bringing the tree down. This goes for everything.
If you are prepared then it will often be a whole lot easier to get something done. Sometimes it can be the thing that separates people that either keeps chopping until they can’t take it anymore and give up and the people who could get the job done.
So success is not just about doing hard work. It’s also about sharpening your ax at regular intervals and learning new and better ways to take down the trees in your life. And it’s about remembering what trees you want to take down rather than just any tree. However, you don’t want to get stuck in this stage and never take action. As with all things, you have to find a balance by experimenting.
Four suggestions for sharpening your ax are:
Educate yourself. Do some research into the whatever you want to achieve. Look for the most common mistakes and smart things people do. Read books and online. Talk to people who have already been where you want to go.
Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Knowledge from external sources is great. But to really understand you have to do things. And learn from your own failures and successes. And then do again with your new understanding in your mind.
Manage your energy levels. You don’t just have increase your knowledge and understanding of things. You also have to have the physical energy to get things done when you find your opportunity. Otherwise you may just fall into a procrastinating pattern or back down. So workout. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Basic stuff of course. But if you do it consistently then you’ll increase you chances of succeeding when it’s time to start chopping down your trees. With a high energy level it will be easier to persist until you are done.
Remind yourself where you are going. A lot of not so important busy work can dull your ax. You need to regularly review your plans and remind yourself of your goals and what you really want. If you don’t keep your eyes on where you want to go you might wind up somewhere completely different.
8. Take a responsibility for your own life.
“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
When we are kids people take care of us. They take responsibility. But to become an adult – and not just a kid in a grown up’s body – one has to take responsibility for oneself. There is no other way. Sure, letting someone else take the responsibility may be easier on you.
But without taking responsibility for yourself how can you be free?
How can you really live up you own potential and dreams?
It can be hard to break out of the comfort zone of having other people taking responsibility for us. But if you don’t then you will be trapped by other people’s standards, expectations and limitations. You have to set your own rules for your life. A bit scary. But also liberating.
9. Happiness is optional.
“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
One big upside of taking responsibility for yourself is that it lets you decide where the standards and limits are set. When you take responsibility for what you do you will also feel that you deserve to do what you feel is right for you, in your life.
And our control and responsibility not only goes for what you do out in the world. But also for your thoughts and emotions. You are to a large extent in charge here too.
When you realise this then you realise that you don’t have to play along with your old patterns of thinking and feeling anymore. You don’t have to play along with is “normal” or common thinking. You don’t have to take your thoughts so seriously. You can choose to not feel insulted when someone says something. You can choose to not to be angry whilst stuck in traffic. You can choose to see the positive in people. And you can choose how happy you will be.
Pain is inevitable in life. But how you choose to process or think about things – and if you let them get stuck in your mind or not – is up to you. Suffering is therefore to a large extent optional. And so is happiness.
10. Live your life fully.
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
This one is just beautiful. And I don’t really have much to add. But it might be useful to remind yourself of this saying regularly. Maybe when you feel like you are veering off track. Or when heading into things like small-mindedness, laziness or complacency. Perhaps you want to write it down and put it in a highly visible place so you don’t forget about it.
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“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely…” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Another morning. Another day begins.
You get up too early, stumble into the shower and in somewhat of a haze try to get things together and get work or school on time.
But by applying a few simple tips you can make not only the morning but the whole day more relaxed and smooth.
Plan the night before. Choose the 2-3 most important tasks and put them on a to-do list. By choosing just the most important stuff instead of a dozen things you are less likely to start procrastinating or realize at the end of the day that you filled it with less important tasks.
Pack your bag the night before. This very simple habit can alleviate quite a bit of stress in the morning. If you pack your bag before you go to bed then you don’t have to run around in your house half panicked tomorrow while looking for your books or some important papers.
Make your lunch the night before. Pack the leftovers of your dinner in a container and put it in the fridge. Just don’t forget to put it in your bag in the morning. You may even want make an extra serving so you can quickly heat up dinner when you get home from work/school. Doing this the night before will save you a bit of time and possibly a bit of money.
Don’t forget to just relax. You can’t get much done if you never get any rest and revitalization. Well, you can for a while but soon you’ll start to feel run down, stressed out and fill up with all kinds of negative emotions pretty much all the time. So take some time to just relax. Meditate in one way or another. Take a warm bath. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to relaxing music. Have some fun with friends and/or family. Release pressure, stress and tension that can come from a hard day’s work so you don’t carry all of that into the following morning.
Get enough sleep. It’s tempting to stay up a bit longer and let the “morning-you” take care of the problems – I do for example become more likely to revert to old behaviour patterns such as negativity and being easily stressed – that come from lack of sleep. But be good to yourself at least some days during the week. Go to bed a bit earlier and catch up on your sleep.
Use a morning ritual. What you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. We have a tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. So a morning ritual that sets the right tone for the day can be a great start. I do for example get up and drink two glasses of water, eat breakfast and drink a cup of yerba maté, brush my teeth, make the bed and declutter for a few minutes. Then I prioritize the items on my to-do list and get started with the most important task.
Keep everything in its place. If everything has its own place then it is whole lot easier to keep your home reasonably ordered and decluttered from day to day. And to find the keys as you are heading out the door.
What is your best tip for creating a better start to the day?
[hana-code-insert name=’socialbuttons’ /]“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” Charles C. Noble
“Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits.” Robert Puller
Changing a habit can be hard. To make the habit stick you have to keep going until it becomes not something you do through willpower but something you feel drawn to doing. This can take 30 days or more of taking action each day.
But we all have bad days. What do you do on such a day when you just feel like giving up on creating this new habit?
Here’s what I do.
I say to myself: Just for today!
It is important to make yourself realize that the period that you are investing in changing a habit is not the rest of your life.
As mentioned above, if you do something every day for 30 days then that will become a habit and you will feel drawn to doing it or just do it automatically. So it is not about forcing yourself to do this thing on willpower for the next few decades.
Brian Tracy has a great little phrase that makes it easier to take action and just focus on it for today. Tell yourself:
“Just for today I will XX!”
Replace XX with what you will do just for today such as getting exercise, get going on the most important task first thing in the day or eating a healthy lunch.
You can take it one day at a time with this phrase until your habit becomes a natural part of your life, until it becomes something you feel drawn to doing.
I myself don’t use it every day. But I find it very helpful on those days when inner resistance causes me to not feel like continuing doing something until it becomes a habit. Such days are pretty much inevitable.
But by telling myself that I only have to do it today I release the mental burden of the past times I did it and future times when I will do it. And so the task becomes much lighter and the inner resistance melts away.
And guess what, when tomorrow comes I’ll have a good day again with less resistance and I will most likely feel like doing the task again. And that is how I handle a bad day when I am changing a habit.
What is your favorite tip for making it easier to change a habit?
[hana-code-insert name=’socialbuttons’ /]Life is often filled to the brim. There are many things to do and if you’re like me I’m sure you feel overwhelmed and stressed out sometimes.
What to do then? Here’s what I do and the three simple steps I follow to go from a stressed and overwhelmed headspace to one with clarity, calmness and a sense of direction within minutes.
1. I reconnect with the present moment.
When you feel overwhelmed you are stuck in your mind, you are stuck on all the things you have done and all the things you have to do today and perhaps even this week and month.
No wonder you feel overwhelmed and stressed out. So when I feel this way I reconnect with the present moment. I just focus on my breathing for two minutes. Just the in- and outbreath and nothing else.
Or I spend two minutes just taking in what is right here right now. The computer in front of me. The sunlight through the window that warms me. The buses and traffic going by outside and the clear blue sky. I use all my senses to just focus on what is happening around me right now and nothing else.
By doing so I align myself fully with what is happening right now instead of being somewhere in the past or future or both of them inside my mind.
Yes, I still have the same things to do. But the overwhelm that was is in my mind because I was looking at things from a perspective that hurt me loses it’s power.
2. I ask myself: what is the most important thing I can do right now?
Usually the answer is that I need to work on things that aren’t urgent but very important such as a new digital product or looking at and starting to explore new opportunities.
3. I stop thinking and take action in a single-tasking manner.
Then, when I have come up with the answer – usually by consulting my to-do list on teuxdeux.com – I get to work. I do not think about it for a few minutes since that only makes it harder to get started and I often wind up procrastinating away much more than those few minutes.
Instead I focus on just this one task I need to do. I take breaks every hour but keep working on it by single-tasking until it is done. Then I start working on the next task that is now the most important one.
By doing so I use my work hours in the best way I can and I feel good about myself and the work I have done at the end of the day.
This little ritual of three habits can take some time to getting used to and you’ll probably stumble. But after a while I noticed that it became more and more automatic and I felt less inner resistance and could change gears from overwhelmed to focused faster.
So keep practicing even if you stumble. It usually takes at least a month to establish a chain of habits/ritual like this and probably more than a month if all three habits are brand new for you. Be patient with yourself.
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“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.” Doug Larson
“An optimist is the human personification of spring.” Susan J. Bissonette
Spring is finally here in Sweden. Well, kinda. I guess it’s more of a feeling of spring in the way that Doug Larson so awesomely points out in the quote above.
But still. After an unusually long and very cold winter it’s great to have some warmth, a few birds singing and see more smiling and enthusiastic faces as you walk the streets.
So I thought I’d share a few of my favorite sayings about spring that can help us to make this year the best one yet.
Make decisions at the right time.
“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.” Robert H. Schuller
I think this is a very good tip and something I wish I had thought about a few times in the past. When you are in the low time or a bad mood you can’t really see reality in an accurate way. Making important or negative decisions when you are in that headspace isn’t a good idea.
Nowadays I have a learned to just be still and wait out those angry clouds. Even if it feels like there is an urgent decision to be made (which isn’t always the case even though your clouded mind may fool you into believing that).
Then, when the mind is clearer it becomes a lot easier to make a good decision.
Be consistent to get some real results.
“One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.” Aristole
To live a happier life and make a real change you can’t just take action or do things on a day when you feel inspired. Sure, the spring may give you a boost of energy and inspiration right now.
But what will you do with that? Just surf on those good feelings for a day or a week? Or let it be a start to consistently taken action each day, even if that inspiration and initial enthusiasm may dissipate (which it pretty much always does)?
To take action more consistently here are a two of my absolute favorite tips:
Use a morning ritual. I have mentioned this many times, both in my e-books and in various articles. The reason for that is that this is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a ritual in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day.
Don’t hurt yourself. This is a very important reason for me. When you disappoint yourself and don’t think and do as you really deep down want to you hurt yourself by lowering your self esteem. Whatever you do during your day sends signals back to yourself about what kind of person you are. Do the right thing like being effective, kind or go to the gym and you feel good. Get lazy, negative or just plain mean and you tend to feel worse after a while. You don’t get away, there is no escaping yourself. And there is always a price to pay. This is a powerful motivator to become a better person.
Keep going.
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” Hal Borland
Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use.
If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off, learn what you can from what happened and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist.
Persistence is one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as a lot of other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing persistence will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for. But if you keep going, if you refine your approach based on what you learn from experience and other sources then better times will come.
Winter makes the spring so much better.
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” Anne Bradstreet
The winter of life is often in retrospect a gift. It makes you stronger. More empathetic and understanding. It helps you out in some way and guides you. You can always look back at it when you feel down and be happy that you aren’t in that place anymore.
Your winter and adversities expands the spectrum of human experience, understanding and emotions for you. Your capacity for genuine gratitude increases because of it.
