Cultivate a growth mindset by believing that your basic qualities can be developed through effort, enabling you to pursue a more fulfilling and authentic life.
Actively question your unexamined assumptions, preconceptions, and judgments about yourself and the world to free yourself from limiting beliefs and open up to new possibilities.
Recognize that identifying your self-worth solely with external roles, titles, and accomplishments creates attachments that act as chains, preventing true fulfillment.
Approach all your feelings and reactions with kindness and honesty to move from painful constriction to expansion and freedom, realizing your full capabilities.
Develop awareness of feelings of contraction (anxiety, guilt, craving, rumination) and consciously change your habitual responses to them to avoid perpetuating suffering.
Develop an inner environment where you can surround states of constriction with spaciousness, ease of heart, and kindness, fundamentally changing your relationship with these states.
Cultivate moment-to-moment presence as an antidote to the “badgering, contracting bully” of the mind, fostering wonder, awe, and appreciation.
Practice looking at the world with “quiet eyes,” letting go of grasping and straining for what you desire, to find peace and allow experiences to unfold naturally.
When worries arise, investigate them by asking about their underlying story, origin, and reality, staying with the feeling until it’s processed, and then letting it go.
Actively reflect on the messages you’ve received about your identity, belonging, and capabilities to understand how they might be shaping your current beliefs and actions.
When needing to explore deep feelings, create a safe environment of silence, such as through a retreat or dedicated quiet time, to facilitate introspection.
Practice letting go of physical possessions, emotional baggage, old assumptions, and habitual reactions when transitioning or facing significant change, rather than clinging to them.
Do not delay embarking on a new journey or making a change by trying to get everything perfectly in order beforehand; trust that you will manage in the new place.
Consciously choose whether to internalize or release assumptions and thoughts, recognizing that you have agency over what defines your reality.
Challenge your self-imposed limitations and assumptions about the boundaries of your possibilities, as often the solution lies in thinking “outside the box” you’ve unconsciously created.
Recognize your agency in shaping your life story, actively writing or rewriting it rather than passively accepting a predetermined narrative.
Strive to become increasingly accepting and loving of yourself and others, moving away from perpetual discontent and battling reality due to a sense of deficiency.
Shift your focus from constant “doing” and accumulating to “being” more, especially when reformulating self-worth away from external credentials and goals.
Prioritize direct experience and feeling over the accumulation of knowledge, as direct experience tends to be more expansive and less reductionist.
Understand that personal growth is not a rigid, linear process; you don’t need to fully satisfy one need before addressing others, as development involves moving two steps forward and one step back.
Instead of a linear path, view spiritual or personal development journeys as cycles, allowing for returning, renewal, and deeper engagement with practices each time.
Conceive of the path to liberation as a double helix or a circular journey, rather than a linear one, allowing for returning to and deepening understanding of core practices.
Engage in your journey consciously, knowing that every moment, regardless of success or failure, contributes to your learning and growth.
Develop confidence in your inner potential for openness, spaciousness, clarity, and freedom, and actively nurture this inner “Wyoming” within yourself.
Use mindful awareness, cultivate friendships, and foster a greater sense of meaning in daily life to embark on an inner journey toward expansive freedom.
Take risks in your imagination, explore internal states and people you usually avoid, practice appreciation and accountability, and redefine community to manifest expansive freedom.
Reflect on your own experiences of suffering to cultivate empathy and motivate yourself to help others who are currently suffering.
Assess the moral quality of your actions based on the intention behind them, rather than external criteria or social status.
Establish a secure foundation of safety and stability in your environment, as this trust enables you to take risks and explore the world more freely.
Acknowledge that feeling connected to others is a fundamental human need, and seek out relationships characterized by unconditional positive regard.
Foster connections where you feel seen, cared for, and safe to express your full range of feelings and experiences, embodying unconditional positive regard.
Strive for self-actualization by living with openness and curiosity, fully expressing your potential and bringing personal growth and peak experiences into your life.
Frame your life choices around what will lead to greater integration and wholeness within yourself, rather than being driven by perpetual discontent or anxieties.
Engage in the process of shedding external narratives about yourself to discover your genuine identity, deepest values, and what truly contributes to a better life.
Focus on cultivating personal goodness through your own effort and volition, recognizing that this is the only status that truly matters, regardless of external criteria like birth, caste, or gender.
Undertake the journey to liberation to personally discover the elements of life that truly sustain you and bring you closer to understanding reality.
Counteract “blunted aspiration” by allowing greater dreams and possibilities to awaken within you, fostering a new sense of agency in your life.
When you find yourself obsessing over a grudge, use the phrase “I let him live rent-free in my brain for too long” as a trigger to consciously release the negative thought.
Cultivate a deep sense of belonging and inherent right to exist fully in the world, recognizing your connection to the vastness of the universe.
Understand that self-esteem ultimately boils down to genuinely liking yourself, encompassing self-worth, accomplishment, and respect from others.
Actively loosen your attachment to inherited, linear models of success and failure, allowing for a more cyclical and integrated view of progress.
Engage with “Dharma” as a set of practices designed to lift you out of conditioning, assumed limits, and pervasive resignation, leading to a vital, creative, and free life.
Understand that true letting go is an honest acceptance of reality, not a refusal to feel or care, and this honesty brings profound release.
Recognize that the mind can be a “badgering, contracting bully” and that simply accumulating knowledge often fails to shift this internal dynamic.