Our capacity for wholeheartednes s can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted.

To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.

Healthy striving is self-focused: "How can I improve?" Perfectionism is other-focused: "What will they think?"

You can’t dress rehearse the bad moments.

There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy.

If we own the story then we can write the ending.

If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.