Life itself is about constant beginnings – renewing ourselves again and again and again. Life is actually a never-ending flow of new – each moment is new, each breath is new, each thought is new. In fact, we ourselves are constantly re-newing and changing. With this in mind, the truth, as Sharon Salzberg suggests, is that really, “nothing has been ruined, and there is no such thing as failing.”

During this talk Shell explores how we can let ourselves off the hook for all the ways we believe we’ve somehow failed, reminding ourselves that every single moment is an opportunity to start over, that nothing has been lost, that our lives can and do and are in fact always changing.

*Shell gave this talk as a guest teacher for Jonathan Foust's weekly Monday night class in Arlington, VA, regularly attended by about 150-200 people.