Texts

Darkness and light are only meaningful in relationship with each other. 

When we finally get to the end of our lives
l’Il leave just before you so I won’t have to cry
However long you live
I hope I exist one day less

**One Day Less · Anson Seabra**

The thing that surprises you is what frees you because it has always existed, your world just hadn't yet expanded to include it

One thing I still need to practice: "If you're explaining, you're losing." (Ronald Reagan)

Basically, if you're talking to someone, say about politics, and you have a difference in opinion, the moment you start explaining to them why you're right, is the moment you lose them.

When you explain, you communicate that you're right and they're wrong, that you're smart and they're dumb. That always ends badly.

Instead, the goal should be to understand the other person's viewpoint. Chris Voss calls this tactical empathy.

Empathy doesn't mean you have to agree with the other person or even like them, it just means that you ask enough questions so you can repeat their viewpoint back to them in a way that they agree with it.

If you do that, you make people feel understood.

Most disagreements turn ugly not because there is a disagreement, but because people feel like the other person isn't listening. So more listening, less explaining.

To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all. 

Can't set fire to my soul just to keep you from burning alone

**Burning · Lewis Capaldi**

If you listen to what the majority of people say about how you should live your life, you will never enjoy it.

Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. 

Letting go of the need to justify rest is the first step toward actually resting.

The most convincing sign that someone is truly living their best life, is their lack of desire to show the world that they're living their best life. **Your best life won't seek validation.**

As soon as you use a label to describe what you’re working on, there’s a temptation to conform to its rules. 

Thinking something nice about someone? Tell them. | Derek Sivers

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time.

— Nayyirah Waheed

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

Daily sketchbooks – iancul.com

Manifesto – Minimalism Life

Marcel – Design, code & some of the things in between

If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time. 

You were born whole and complete.

You don't need fixing.

You don't need to strive to change yourself.

Accept yourself.

Love yourself.

And reveal your best self to the world It's been in there all along.

"I want to be alone... with someone else who wants to be alone."

**Dimitri Zaik**

Any preconceived ideas and accepted conventions limit what’s possible. 

It is often in your weakest moments that you have the opportunity to be the strongest. However, this does not mean putting on a brave face and pretending that the heaviness does not exist. No, instead this means sitting with your feelings, and experiencing them as they are - letting them wash over you like rain. This means choosing to confront the voids, instead of filling them or numbing them or distracting yourself from the fact that they exist. In an age of extreme stimulation, in an age where we can sweep our pain under the rug, and focus on everything outside of ourselves that is readily available and seeking our attention, it takes a lot of courage to face what hurts. To look it in the eyes, to give it a name, to understand that you cannot outrun yourself forever. That is what makes it an act of strength. That is where the healing begins.

Another year of living without – Manu

"For me, success is not a public thing. It’s a private thing. It’s when you have fewer and fewer regrets." — Toni Morrison

What “Work” Looks Like

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

The last problem is that if you check social media any time you feel a twinge of boredom, you train your brain to expect constant stimulation. It’s okay to feel bored! Boredom is a skill. The more you can tolerate boredom when you’re doing nothing, the easier it is to rest in deep thought when you’re facing a difficult challenge. - Michael Lynch

Design Principles

Because there's an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in.

Beautiful souls recognize beautiful souls. Keep being genuine. Your people will find you.

Creativity is an internal discussion between these aspects of self.

You can’t step into the same stream twice because it’s always flowing. Everything is. 

It's not always easy to follow the subtle energetic information the universe broadcasts, especially when your friends, family, coworkers, or those with a business interest in your creativity are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing. To the best of my ability, I've followed my intuition to make career turns, and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe than those around you.

If a beautiful thought out phrase comes to mind, or if you see a beautiful sunset, one’s not better than the other. Both are equally beautiful in different ways.

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

If you hold your hand closed, nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives.

— Biddy Mason

When you like a flower, you just pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it daily.

We have everything we need right inside us to transform and change. ⁠

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Love deeply, love freely, love unconditionally – for under any condition it is not love anymore.

Instead of saying “I wish I could…” flip the script to “I’m excited for when I can…”

This small mindset shift helps you envision the future you want, reminds you that you have the power to take action toward your goals, and helps you be more content where you are. 

Rather than pitting your current circumstances against a wished-for alternative, your present becomes part of the journey. A place you can fully embrace and enjoy as you move toward an even more fulfilling future.

And focusing on your excitement for this future helps you avoid the toxicity of envy and comparison and instead provides motivation and hopeful optimism for the road ahead.

Because yes, it’s important to be grateful for what you have. But it’s also possible (and good!) to simultaneously want — and work toward — something more. 

**You can’t fall in love with a company.**

But if you start by looking within it, you can find the rich, and deep, and complex, and beautiful things that shape its truest self.

That core is made of things like who its parents are, where it came from, what it’s been through, what it believes, what it’s interested in, what it thinks about, what it finds important, where it spends its time, where it spends its money, how it talks, what it wears, how it treats itself, how it treats others, who it surrounds itself with, and what it has to offer the world.

Maybe you’ve not taken the steps to clearly capture that, or maybe you haven’t figured out the best way to codify or communicate that, but it sits there — for every company — waiting with so much potential. It’s called a brand.

A brand is an experience of a company’s truest self. And you can fall in love with that. 

It’s staying up too late at night and laughing under kitchen lights

So hard you start to cry



**Only A Lifetime · FINNEAS**

The universe is only as large as our perception of it. 

“Do not expect others to do things simply because you would.”

“What do we do when our hearts hurt?" asked the boy.

"We wrap them with friendship, shared tears and time, till they wake hopeful and happy again.”

**Charlie Mackesy ·  The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse**

The Brand Identity

"It is the fate of modern life that we repeatedly lose touch with nature, the environment, the planet. But we try to regain it again and again." — Hayao Miyazaki