“Everyone has a supremely low moment somewhere along the AT, usually when the urge to quit the trail becomes almost overpowering. The irony of my moment was that I wanted to get back on the trail and didn’t know how. I hadn’t lost just Katz, my boon companion, but my whole sense of connectedness to the trail. I had lost my momentum, my feeling of purpose. In the most literal way I needed to find my feet again.”

It’s a great metaphor for regaining your purpose. 

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson has a way of maintaining three difficult things at once: (1) getting to the heart of a hiker, (2) the history of the Appalachian Trail, and (3) doing it with laugh-out-loud humor. His writing is affable and encouraging. It’s also a beautiful, surprisingly complex story.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction.”

Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify. People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

It reminds me of the idea that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. It’s also a statement directed at those practitioners of religion who do nothing to advance humanity, but only divide us further. The truth behind religion, what Jesus preached and practiced, was a compassion based on empathy and grace.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“Stepping out of a normal routine, finding novelty, being open to serendipity, enjoying the unexpected, embracing a little risk, and finding pleasure in the heightened vividness of life. These are all qualities of a state of play.”

We have understood how fundamentally important play is to our fulfilment and to “becoming who we are” from the likes of D.W. Winnicott. Now, much more recent research is proving why. This quote suggests the “how” we are to achieve it.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“Success, in the words of Winston Churchill, ’consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’. The greatest barriers to success so far have been the fear of failure and the failure to learn from mistakes.”

It would seem it is time to make some dramatic changes to our archaic financial systems. Where there is a will there’s a way.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“Change the language in the tribe, and you have changed the tribe itself.”

It’s similar to changing the story, or changing the script you’ve been following or telling yourself. It applies to groups every bit as much as to individuals. The application here for Big Self is to realize that while so much of the work of transformation and growth begins with you — the self — we are also always in relationship with others. The next step beyond the self is the “other” and we know ourselves through others and how we present ourselves to others, as well as our awareness of how others present themselves to us. Many of us are in, or have been in, professional organizations at a variety of degrees of health. 

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”

The demon, Screwtape, is speaking to the demon, Wormwood, who is on his first mission. He is observing how powerful courage is in whatever virtue his “patient” possesses, and isn’t just a virtue in itself. It’s an interesting point to consider. Whatever healthy habits or actions we’re taking in our lives — whether the work is inward or outward or both — we should consider the place of courage within what we are doing.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“If, with a warm heart and patience, we can consider the views of others and exchange ideas in calm discussion, we will find points of agreement. It is our responsibility — out of love and compassion for humankind — to seek harmony among nations, ideologies, cultures, ethnic groups, and economic and political systems.”

You would think these aspirational thoughts would be entirely possible. It sounds so easy, yet when faced with reality feels so discouragingly impossible. The least we can do is try. We can hitch up our pants and realize it is our responsibility to have compassion for others. It always begins with ourselves. Who do we think we are?

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“Expect change. Accept death. Enjoy life. As Marcus Aurelius explained, the brains that got you through the troubles you have had so far will get you through any troubles yet to come.”

I like the direct way she states each considerable and challenging idea. All this is easier said than done, but it is worth saying, and it is worth striving for, all of it. Don’t worry about what’s to come. Meantime, enjoy yourself. You got this.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

America’s most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the pressures of society in American life. How do you remain true to yourself even when virtually everyone you know wants you to be, to do, to believe, something? What does it mean to be yourself? Well, that’s part of the journey and part of the reason for this book and all the readings and meditations.

This podcast focuses on self-exploration and personal identity -- to help you construct who you are, and how you want to feel, think, believe, and behave for yourself. Check out our gratitude challenge for the month of November at bigselfschool.com/gratitude.