The hard truth is that we are often softened, and deepened, by the moments life doesn’t turn out the way we anticipated, the way we hoped, the way we planned. The truth is that we learn more from what we do not receive than what we do. The truth is that the contrasts make us more whole than we were before. The heaviness sensitizes us in such a way that we come to comprehend the light.
The valleys in our lives can either be a waiting room, a suffering, or a preparation period. We get to choose what we do with defeat. We get to decide whether or not what hurts will simply burden and then jade us, or if it will catalyze us — if we will alchemize a sometimes brutal reality into an appreciation of our temporary, stinging, gorgeous, fleeting, surreal, confusing, perfect, chaotic, ecstatic time alive.
What ails us gives us a chance to better understand, and empathize, with what it really means to be human. And though none of us will ever meet a day in which the pain is dissolved forever, we can arrive at one where the ease arises more often. Where we channel what hurts into what heals. Where we become more of who we intend to be, and not less. Where we are not dissuaded by what has not gone our way, but inspired by the spirit inside us still fighting, still nudging, still pushing us to realize — there is so much more than this. There is so much more to see.
You cannot miss what is meant for you.
You cannot lose what is yours.
Any road you take in an effort to avoid your destiny will inevitably turn into a preparation period — a growth concourse — through which you are forced to face what led you astray in the first place. In the same way that you cannot hide from what is yours to have, you can also not run from what is yours to heal, to grow from, to grow into.
And those things are very often intertwined.
The things that are right for us are not just the ones that make us feel something special, something rare, something otherworldly — they’re the things that make us believe in ourselves again. The things that instill a hope so far gone, we thought we had lost it forever. They are the things that make us feel like we are approaching a light at the end of the tunnel, as though all the pieces have come together, and finally make sense.
The things that are meant for us make us the people we are meant to be.
When we try to move away from them, we are faced with additional lessons that prepare us in a way that makes the detour seem almost an essential part of the path. Sometimes, we are simply not ready to hold all that the world is trying to offer us, and the process of cleaning out our old habits, thoughts and attachments begins to open a space for us to finally receive. And receive we will, because what is ours never leaves us. It is connected to us a through a golden, invisible thread, one that pulls us and inspires us and calls our attention back to it, again and again.
It is with us always.
Because what is meant for us is a part of us. Part of our calling, our life, our reason for being here. Part of the mystical, untouchable, unfathomable unknown upon which we will one day reflect back and say — of course, I knew all along.
The purpose of the difficulty is to turn you into the person who can handle it with grace — not just so that the challenge in front of you transforms, but so that everything else does, too.
Growth is a required part of the human curriculum, it’s just how and when we take the course. Most of us spend years finding ways to delay the inevitable, imagining that there are lighter routes around finally seeing ourselves, surrendering, and becoming. But the paths we take to avoid this often become the roads that lead us right to it, often more abruptly than we had imagined before.
We delay our growth because the fact of it can feel like some kind of failure, an admission of our humanity that we prefer not to have to make. The very idea of us recognizing we had it wrong is strong enough of a deterrent to ensure we never get a fighting chance to get it right. Because on the way to our truer selves, we will err and we will fail, and it sometimes feels preferable not to have to reveal that process to eyes of those who would judge us for even trying.
But it is as Theodore Roosevelt once said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. There is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
The very fact of you being ready for change means you’ve surrendered your ego more than you think. The very fact of you being willing to try means you believe in yourself more than you realize. The very fact of you being willing to feel lost means you’ve let go of the predetermined way of life you’d previously felt compelled to. The very fact of you not knowing means you are open to discovering. The very fact of you reading up until this point means you’re probably on the precipice of something greater than you realize.
The life that’s waiting for you is already there.
Keep going.
I feel a genuine connection to every single one of you I have had the chance to meet, and if you have been there on one of these nights, I know you know what I am talking about. Thank you for having me, thank you for coming, thank you for believing in ‘The Life That’s Waiting,’ I hope it exceeds your expectations. We’ve been trying to run a tally of how many books have been signed between the lines and the backstock, and we’re estimating somewhere around 5,000 so far. I’m off for the next few weeks, but given that I have not developed carpal tunnel (yet), Vancouver, Victoria, San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Austin… I’ll see you next!
Tickets in my bio if you haven’t gotten them already. 🤍
POV: you spent 13 years looking toward your dreams, and then one day, they were looking back at you.
I was truly floored to learn that this was @indigo ’s biggest event to date. I cannot believe how powerfully you showed up, Toronto. I carry the memories of this night and every one of you who I had the chance to meet in my heart always.
Thank you especially to the dozens of people who made this all happen — especially @postdesigncollective for the set furniture, @beautybynate for the looks, @chanelofficial for Bianca’s clothes, our @thoughtcatalog family as always, and everyone at @queenelizabeththeatre .
Let’s do it again?
Thank you to @brainzmagazine for making me a cover girl and also for publishing my favorite childhood photo of me as a toddler pretending to read ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’ My dad is next to me reading the Harvard Business Review — he went back to school and received a degree from Harvard three decades later. How about that?
Swipe to read more. 🤍
Just a girl talkin’ about her book on TV. 🥹
Thank you @todayshow for having me back to talk about ‘The Life That’s Waiting,’ which is out today. I wrote this to be a little dictionary that can guide you through life’s mountains, big and small. I hope it’s a loving friend to you when it feels like nobody else is there.
Thank you @alroker , @craigmelvinnbc and @dylandreyernbc for our talk this morning as well.
I am so grateful, and will hold these memories close for a lifetime.
The ancient Celts used the term “thin places” to describe where the visible and invisible worlds came into closest proximity. It was their belief that wisdom would come to those who sought them out, as it was there that the clearest communication between the temporal and eternal could occur. Peter Gomes once said that mountains and rivers were considered among the “thin places,” but also that human experience was, too. In moments of suffering, awe, slowness, unencumbered presence — we’re be able to both reach just above while gazing right ahead.
I couldn’t tell you with certainty what’s on the unknown side of the “thin places,” only that I’ve found them, and return often. I could tell you that if there was an invisible character in everything I write, it would be nature itself. I could tell you how deeply it resonated when Mary Oliver said she couldn’t be a poet without the natural world, as the “door to the woods is the door to the temple.” I could tell you that I’ve had a hard time describing my relationship to the openness, what I sense I can touch when I’m in it, and what happens when I leave. Only that being immersed in the “thin places” for long enough has been my well of inspiration and source of courage and leverage to insight.
Whatever is occurring in that realm beyond — I only know that we are all there, and we are all okay.
I want to tell you that I wrote ‘The Life That’s Waiting’ while in those places, both the depth of the unanswered questions, as well as the infinite peace of the place where they’re answered. When I think of giving this book to you, I feel like I’m in elementary school and we each have a few minutes to share the projects we’ve been working on and I went home every night for the past few weeks thinking: ‘If this were my only chance to tell them something, what should I say?’
And now I’m standing in front of you looking down at the pages and reading what the thin places showed me.
My 10th book will be out everywhere in just five more days.
Pre-order/tour tickets in my bio. 🤍
Leave a 🤍 in the comments if you’d like a signed and personalized copy of my new book — I’ll be sending out 10 of them next week. I’ll DM you by next Tuesday if selected. Gentle reminder not to respond to any account but this one, and that I will not need anything from you but a mailing address.
‘The Life That’s Waiting’ will be out in less than 7 days. If you’d like to pick up your copy in person and attend a meet-and-greet or on-stage talk, there are still tickets available for some cities.
I love you and I can’t wait to see you.
Simone Weil once said that our attention is our fate.
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
That if we turn our minds toward what is good, it is impossible that “little by little, the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.” And the amount of creative genius in any period exists in direct proportion to the amount of extreme attention.
Our attention is our currency, and our forcefield.
What we offer it to, knowingly or not, is what we make of our lives.
Of ourselves.
When we stop to ask: “How could I be more at peace?”
What we are really meaning to ask is how might we give enough attention to peace, until it becomes us. We begin to see as peace would see, we begin to move as peace would move. If we are oriented toward solution, answers are everywhere. They are overflowing from every corner, every turn.
Then we start wondering: What doorways are invisible to me? What goodness do I not see? What breakthrough is around the corner? What answered prayer is already here today? What ways could I circumvent or recreate or nurture or transform or transmute or alchemize or completely change my life?
What if life is not trying to punish me, what if it’s just asking me to adapt?
What is here? What is next?
In what ways might my attention turn the river?
In what ways has it already?
