First things first, stop sleeping with liars.

Stop crawling into bed at night, pulling the covers over your body, and letting liars hiss inside your ear: you’re unworthy. You’re not good enough. You’re falling short. You’re a burden. You’re alone.  

These liars take up room. They snicker and grow when you give them credit. They hold tight to your ankles. They make you feel like less: less of a lover. Less of a mover. Less of a shaker. Less of a person.  Please– for the love of lovelier things– do not fling away your life and feed it to the liars in your head that tell you you don’t add up.

You need to stop holding yourself back. The pity party must cease and you must de-invite the little liars to your darkest parts. You need to stop thinking you have never deserved good things for your life. 

 

It’s a relentless grind to figure out the point of this life but life is not a puzzle.

It is not a race. It is not a mystery to be solved by human hands. Life is a dance. A hands-all-in, feet-all-in sort-of dance that we start living the second we stop pulling it apart for answers.

And sometimes life (mentioned above) is just too short to buy groceries. Or do the dishes.

We all have a life we didn’t live. It’s there. It exists. It grows with every choice we didn’t make. I want to say the golden spot in all of this is reaching the point where that life you didn’t live can be surveyed without regret.

Not everyone in life is going to care about you, your favorite breakfast foods, or your pet peeves. Don’t even try to make them. Just appreciate those who come into your life and do care.

Find the line– the one single line of poetry or prose or song lyric– you would tattoo to your face. No, really. If someone came up to you and was like, “Today you MUST get a face tattoo,” you should know what pretty little line would inked on your face for all of eternity. If you don’t know yet, go out there and figure it out.

Self-pity doesn’t have an expiration date. That should terrify you.

Keep a diary. A real diary. And write down silly little details like the way his jeans were ripped or how the air seemed to smell on the morning after you two broke. You’ll want the memories later. You’ll never regret that diary on the day you crack it open and get to say, “I wrote it all down. It’s all right here.”

 

We’re all trying.

Really, we are. We all want to matter. We all want to count. We all want to be seen. So there’s your purpose for the day: Want people. Count on people. See people.

Tweets that get stuck in draft form are a sign from God that you weren’t supposed to write them. Don’t send them.

You already know the truth. It sits inside of you like a rock. Give yourself more credit. Stop saying you don’t know. You know. You know. I repeat, You. Know.

Not everything will be okay. And you know what? That’s okay. Sometimes you’re gonna lose. You’ll be a loser. And you’ll join the loser club, just like all of us. And then you’ll win again. It will be great.

Don’t write fear a love song. Fear has never deserved your love songs. 

It’s hard to leave. It’s always going to be hard to leave. It’s like there’s something stitched in our DNA that makes it feel nearly unbearable to let people and places go. But, at the same time, hard stuff is important. And sometimes you know it is time to leave. Don’t deny your feet when they tell you it is time to walk away.

Either life will be an adventure or it will be a waiting room. You pick.

Stop waiting for someone to come along and tell you that you can do something. You can. It’s already within you. You’re getting lapped by the people who never waited on approval. Hustle. It’s a real thing. This is your tough love siren going off in the distance: if you want it, step up. Stop telling yourself weak stories and just step up.

They might not change. You have to be willing to see that. People don’t always change. Even though we want to. The takeaway from that is this: People aren’t projects. They’re just people. We don’t get to fix them. You can’t build a life around an idea of person. You have to build your life around real things. Real and good things.

Write poems. Without rhyming or worry about iambic pentameter. Without judging them. Just write poems because they are groovy. Write poems because life is poetry. We’re the poems.

Drink hot chocolate. Abandon chairs to sit on counter tops. Screw the calorie count every once in a while. Find an author whose words are like truffles for you. Sit on the countertop, drinking hot cocoa, screwing calories, and reading Neruda out loud.

 

Not everyone will be your cheerleader.

Not everyone will understand. Let people think you are crazy. Crazy is a good thing. Wild hearts are necessary.

Stop waiting for someone to come along and tell you’re brave and capable and ready and here. Don’t hitch your life and all your hopes on someone coming along and telling you you’re brave and capable and ready and here. Sometimes people will tell us those things. Sometimes they won’t. Proceed believing in them anyway. You’re brave. You’re capable. You’re ready. You’re here. Do something about it.

Also– you’re human. That’s it. You’re not super human. You’re not subhuman. You’re just plain human. You make mistakes. You don’t scale walls. You hurt people without ever intending to. You get your heart ripped out of your chest. Some days the only language you can endure is tears and you’re like, “I’M SO FLUENTTT IN TEARSSSS. WHATTT ISSSS WRONNGGG WITHHH MEEE???” Like I said, you’re human. Go with it.

There is a time to tell the truth. And then there is a time to do anything but tell someone the truth—you have be so careful over the things you’re willing to let someone carry for the rest of their life.

There is an underlying storyline to all of us. It’s common and it’s overlapping: we all want to belong somewhere. For that very reason—be kind. Be graceful. We are all just trying to make our way home to one another after time on a road that left us tired and wanting for someone to ask us to stay.

Stop waiting for someone to come along and tell you that you can do something. You can. It’s already within you. You’re getting lapped by the people who never waited on approval.

We all have a life we didn’t live. It’s there. It exists. It grows with every choice we didn’t make. I want to say the golden spot in all of this is reaching the point where that life you didn’t live can be surveyed without regret.

 

You’re a vault.

Don’t let anyone tell you different than that. You’re a vault. You’re deep. You’re an onion with all the layers intact. Give yourself that credit. Don’t let people belittle you into acting like you are less than worthy—you are equal to everyone else on this planet.

Suffering is a real thing. I wish I didn’t have to type those words. But it’s real and it is, a lot of times, secret. Be kind to people. You don’t know the secret suffering they take to bed with them every night.

When you reach a point in life where it is nearly midnight and your friend asks you to go on a boat ride– to see the lake at night– you’ll be tempted to weave towards your bed instead. You’ll make some comment about how old you are getting. Hold up. Rewind. Accept the offer. The night will kiss you with stars. You’re gonna feel so small and lovely.

Accepting yourself will prove to be one of the biggest journeys of this lifetime. Pack the bags. Bring the toothbrush. March for the door and go. That journey is worth taking.

We make choices every single day. That’s what we do. Life is just a stacking of yes and no questions. Yes, I want this. No, I don’t. Yes, this is worth it. No, it isn’t. And each choice takes us farther and farther from away from the person we did not end up becoming. You make the choices though. And you get to pick the person who will stand in the rear view mirror. You get to decide if you’ll miss that person you didn’t become or not.

We live in a world where it’s easy to associate being single with missing pieces. That’s a tangled little lie that doesn’t deserve the energy it takes to untie it from itself. Being single doesn’t mean you are missing pieces. Single serves a purpose that has nothing do with the hunt to find someone else. In your own singleness, you can kick some serious ass. Don’t miss the chance.

Be open to criticism. Let it come from the lungs of those who want to see you better and thriving. Guard yourself against haters. In the words of Taylor Swift, the haters gonna hate. It’s up to you to shake it off.

Ban Adele. Not forever. Not for always. But in times when you feel low & down & insecure, Adele doesn’t help the situation. She enlarges the wound with her haunting language of loss. She makes us want to gouge our eyes out with pencils because WE. FEEL. SO. MUCH. If you are fragile right now, pump the brakes on Ms. Angel Pipes for a little while. Find some rap music. Listen to jams that reek of baller-status.

The quest to believe in something is personal and sacred. It’s a battlefield and a pilgrimage, all in one breath. And people will believe in a lot of things: God, boyfriends, altars, plane tickets, the works. It might not be your job to dictate to a person where to go or how to open up their hands. Some people will want your roadmaps. And some people will only want to know that you’re the reliable kind, the kind to stand at the front door with the light on– promising to be there waiting when they find their way home.

 

Love is a severely underestimated word.

We don’t give it enough street cred. That word should have you crawling on your knees in a struggle to just get better with it. You should surround yourself with people who challenge you on that word. What better honor in this lifetime than to be surrounded by people who make you constantly think and say, “My god, I want to learn how to love you so well.”

Turn your whole life into a quest to be good to those people. Like, make your whole life into a quest to figure out how to show up for them. At airports. On birthdays. On days where you know there is a decision lurking around the corner and they’re scared and wondering. Those good people are your people—fight for them.

And again, it’s worth repeating: stop sleeping with liars.