Give yourself permission

The first step

At the end of the day, life is a game you're playing with yourself.

You're the one holding the keys. You decide when you can and when you can't.

If you're not content with your life, that's because you're not giving yourself permission to live it the way you know you should.

You're one decision away from the beginning of a shift that can ultimately transform your life into something that would be unrecognizable to the current you.

That decision to stop withholding from yourself that which you yearn for most - to drop the cynicism that it's impossible - is the first step. It initiates things.

From there, guided by trust, you start to put in the work.

The macro will take care of itself. Your task is to work the micro.

Take something simple you know to be true and implement it at the moment-by-moment level of things. For me, it's "more experiencing, less thinking."

With consistent practice, you build a groundswell of momentum that irresistibly spills over into every aspect of your life. If you keep going, a seachange is inevitable.

None of that can happen, though, if you keep telling yourself that it can't.