Never make anyone feel small, not even yourself. If it stops stretching, it contracts. Not giving up doesn't mean putting up with it when you're wrong. The action is all that counts.
You can read all the knowledge you want from books, but there's no better way to learn than by doing. Has anyone ever given you advice about love? Chances are you haven't listened. You had to go through that experience yourself to really learn your lesson. There is a general understanding that it takes 7 to 10 years to master anything in life.
So, if you live to 88 years old, after age 11, you have 11 chances to be great at something. Most people never let themselves die. Perhaps out of fear or lack of ambition, they hold on to that one life that doesn't serve them, without finding the courage to explore anything else. A few years later, I launched a collaborative platform for storytelling where people could upload a photo and write a short travel story about it.
My goal was to inspire people to go out and explore the world around them. The project was short-lived, as it failed when my accident occurred, but after spending three weeks in bed recovering from surgery, I wrote a 100-page autobiography. Today, at 31 years old, I have learned that life is what you make of it. Now I realize that it's the normal course of life because life isn't a straight line that goes from A to B, it's a canvas of circles and waves, ups and downs, ups and downs.
Instead of thinking that your life would be better if only X or Y happened, try looking at your own life through a gratitude filter and watch its brightness increase. Journaling is simply the act of reflecting and thinking about certain aspects of your life, and writing them down and translating your thoughts into words can have a profound impact on all areas of your life. When you recognize that life is just an experiment, you'll stop kneeling in the face of fear and you'll significantly reduce your chances of living a life full of regret. This is a lesson that took me years and years to learn that anything significant in life requires a long-term commitment.
This has been one of the best lessons of my life and I'm not sure I really understood it unless I had thrown myself into the wolves of adventure.
