A relapse doesn't mean you'll never walk down the path you prefer. But I think relapses are almost an inevitable part of any course of self-development.

We don't have to have suffered brain damage to take advantage of the plastic nature of our brains.

We need to look at the repetitions in the stories we tell ourselves [and] at the process of the stories rather than merely their surface content. Then we can begin to experiment with changing the filter through which we look at the world, start to edit the story and thus regain flexibility where we have been getting stuck

Our brains do not have to be fixed, they can be plastic.

If we think of our brains as a map, those early roads are like grooves, tram tracks, easy to fall into.

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

Meditation is focused attention and the more we practise focusing our brains the more connections we build up.