The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest

 

The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest

165- You are not going to suffer forever…but to trick yourself into thinking that healing is getting progressively better until you have unraveled all of your past experiences and can return to the version of yourself you were before you got hurt…well. That is to miss the point entirely.

166-healing is not merely what makes us feel better the fastest.  It is building the right life, slowly and over time. …Healing is [not] refusing to tolerate the discomfort of change because you refuse to tolerate mediocrity for one second longer…there is no way to escape discomfort…We are either going to feel uneasy pushing past our self-imposed limits, breaking boundaries and becoming who we dream of being, or we’re going to feel it as we sit and mull over fears we fabricated to justify why we refuse to stand up and begin.

172- Nobody is looking at you the way you think they are.  Nobody is thinking about you the way you wish they would.  They are looking at themselves….This isn’t sad; it’s freeing….the closure is for you.  The growth is for you.  This change is yours.  This is you vs. you, you meeting you, you seeing you for the first time.  This is about you becoming who you know you can be….But mostly, this is about you recognizing that you were not your best self before….whenever we want desperately to prove someone else wrong, we are really trying to quell our own lingering disappointment that we didn’t live up to our own expectations.

So remember this:  The next time you’re trying to craft a glow up story that is compelling to others, ask yourself why you are still waiting for their approval. 

The answer, almost always, is that you still do not have your own.

188- emotional validation.  When people are crying out or acting out in their lives, they aren’t just asking for help.  They are most often just asking for someone to affirm that it is okay to feel the way that they do.  And if they have to inflate and exaggerate circumstances for you to truly feel the weight and impact that they do?  They’ll do it.  They’ll do whatever it takes to get someone else to say: I am sorry for what you are going through. This is not because they are incompetent or dumb.  It is because in a world that does not teach us how to adequately process our own feelings, we must often rely solely on our maladaptive coping mechanism. When we can’t validate our own feelings, we go on a never-ending quest to try and force others to do it for us…it looks like needing attention, affirmation, compliments.  But it also looks like being dramatic, negative, and focusing disproportionately on what’s wrong in our lives.  When someone is complaining about something simple- and they seem to be doing it more than the given situation would call for- they aren’t trying to get your help about a small issue.  They are trying to have their feelings validated.

 

210- We often think that the measure of physical strength is how much weight we can bear, how long we can run, or how pronounced our muscles are.  In reality, physical strength is a measure of how efficiently the body runs itself…effectively performing day-to-day task and occasional challenges when they arise.

 

Mental health is the exact same way.  It is not a measure of how happy we seem, how perfect things are, or how unconditionally “positive” we can be, but that we are able to move through day-to-day life and the occasional challenge with enough fluidity and reason that we aren’t stifled or help back by ourselves.

 

211- Inner peace- the understanding that no matter what is happening around you, there is a place of total knowing and calmness within you.  (“knowing that everything is okay and always will be”)

216-7.  Make list of following:

              Everything you have intensely worried about in your life. (response:  remind you that you have worried constantly in your life, and yet they were mostly unfounded.)

              Every difficult situation you swore you would never get through or never get over. (response wil show you just how much pain you thought was insurmountable…and how, in retrospect, you don’t really ever think about those things anymore.)

              Every time you have genuinely felt happy and at peace. (happiness has never come from things being perfect on the outside, but from being present and open and connected to yourself and to the moment).

218 Finding your inner peace is just connecting to your deepest wisdom.  It’s not something you have to create, justify, image, or reach for.  It’s always within you, it’s always an option, and it’s constantly a choice.  You just have to make it.

What holds so many people back from finding their inner peace is the fact that they can’t tell the difference between which is correct: their fear or their peaceful feeling. 

Remember this:  The feeling of peace is the one telling you the truth.

 

225- You are not supposed to feel happy all of the time.  Trying to feel happy all of the time is not the solution; it’s the problem. 

Instead of the ability to sustain positivity at all times, mental strength requires that you develop the ability to process complex emotions such as grief rage, sadness, anxiety, or fear.

 

228- The most effective and healthy way to change your life is slowly..

When we are growing, we are actually expanding and restructuring our comfort zones.

Triggers are not random; they are showing you where you are either most wounded or primed for growth.

 

229- The greatest gift that life will hand you is discomfort.

Discomfort is not trying to punish you! It is just trying to show you where you are capable of more, deserving of better, able to change, or meant for greater than you have right now.  In almost every case, it is simply informing you that there is more out there for you, and it is pushing you to go pursue it.

 

236- Happiness is refusing to fill your schedule to the absolute brim so you can wring the most you possibly can out of every second of your life.  It is also taking time to embrace the mundanity of everyday moments.  Its’ sitting back and reading a book, talking over dinner with someone you love, or just enjoying the small things each day.  Taking this time won’t happen on its own: you have to plan for it.

 

237 when you get to the end of your life, you will begin to see your mountains for what they really were.  Gifts.

Mastery is to finally understand that the years of discomfort you endured were not some sort of purgatory you had to just get through.  They were your deepest inner self informing you that you are capable of more, deserving of better, and meant to transform into the person of your dreams.

One day the mountain that was in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance.  But who you become in learning to climb it?  That will stay with you forever.

That is the point of the mountain.