I remind myself that I don't have the ability to completely manipulate reality to be exactly what I want it to be.

Each day, I would feel new wisdom and new intuition and I would follow that. Most everything I was doing was coming from that voice in my heart, which was affirmed by the ancient texts.

My message is believe in yourself. Have courage in your capacity. Listen to your inner voice. And then the critical component of all this is, do the work.

I feel vulnerable to the astonishing beauty of being alive and to Mother Nature.

I was charging forward too hard, into too many war zones, working too long, drinking too heavily, pushing forward, pushing forward. And who knows, had this not happened, maybe I would have been one of the casualties as a journalist covering the war. Who knows, maybe I would have been captured and tortured somewhere along the line, because I always pushed things to the limit.

You now have permission to be strong and healthy and calm and relaxed. There's no place else to go. There's nothing else to do.

I remind myself that I don't have the ability to completely manipulate reality to be exactly what I want it to be. So now that reality is antithetical to what I want, how I can feel into it and act skillfully rather than react? How can I choose my best course of action while not pretending I don't have the pain, or running away from the pain, or blaming someone else for the circumstances of my life?