figured it out. All this time I had been trying to define myself by someone else’s standard. For the majority of my life it was my parents, then became my first boss, and then my friends and eventually strangers I wanted to work with. But now I was defining myself by my own standard; I was doing what I wanted to do and what made me happy.
Looking back, I’ve been making videos for years now covering hundreds of topics from developing friendships, starting conversations, and feeling like you’re good enough to asking out your crush, managing school stress, and more. I’ve spoken to thousands of people along the way online, in schools, and in person with all kinds of life stories and struggles—but the one thing I’ve learned from my own experiences and from what I’ve heard is that each and every single person has exactly what they need to embrace the awkward and be somebody great. I didn’t realize this at first, I didn’t even think it was possible; it wasn’t until I developed skills and confidence that I understood what purpose really is.
Not everyone has it all magically figured out. In fact, probably no one does. Life is a journey, and no one has the map. But a meaningful experience in life begins by simply taking steps in the right direction.
That is exactly what I want to help you come to realize through this book: that YOU can be somebody great—that building confidence and finding purpose take some small steps, but together, we can get there.
When you wake up in the morning and start your day, how much thought do you put into the idea of being awake? I’d imagine it isn’t a lot, considering there are so many other things to do, like getting ready for school, preparing your lunch for work, or even just picking up your phone to dive into any notifications that may have come in after you lay down to go to sleep. For the most part, we’re always ready to jump into the next moment ahead of us, ready to do something else even when we are in the process of doing something in that moment.
Have you ever brushed your teeth and thought about what clothes you were going to wear? Have you ever gotten on a bus or a train and thought about what you were going to do when you finished your classes for the day? Sometimes it feels so natural to do this, to just allow our minds to drift off into things we want to do. There are even times our minds drift backward and start to remind us of things that have happened, both good and bad. Maybe the night before you got into an argument with your parents, or you saw a post online by a friend that made you feel a little jealous; maybe you just feel trapped in your day-to-day cycle, and the idea of changing it seems completely out of your hands.
While the thoughts we experience can vary from time to time, it seems pretty consistent that we aren’t really being in the here and the now. We’re letting our mind jump forward into our future or we’re delving into our pasts—we’re anywhere but here. If this is such a normal thing that everyone does, what’s the problem then? And if there is a problem, what can we do to resolve it?
First, let’s take a few minutes to dive deep into this moment right now. As you read this book, I want you to step outside of yourself for a bit and observe whatever sensations you may be feeling as we walk through them. To start, think about how you’re positioned. Are you sitting down on a comfortable couch or chair, are you standing on a bus or a train or are you lying in bed with a pillow behind your neck? However you’re reading it, that simple sense of awareness you experienced for a brief moment about where you are is being in the here and the now. It can get even deeper than that if you’re willing to continue with me.
As you continue to read I want you to focus now on your breath. Feel the air enter your lungs as you breathe in, hold that breath for just a second or two, and then exhale to let the air escape. Inhale one more time, feel the oxygen enter to a point where your lungs are full and whole, and then exhale again. While you breathe, try to imagine the air as something you can see entering your body, something you are bringing into it by your own sheer will. It’s easy for us to forget how important breathing is, usually because it becomes so automatic to us and we just accept it as a part of life. But when we take a moment to be fully aware of it, we stop focusing so much on ideas of the past and the future. We take full control of the present moment that exists in the here and the now.
When you are conscious and aware of a specific moment in the present, you are practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness can seem like an abstract concept or can even come off as a buzzword to you, but there is a lot of power behind it. Being mindful can help you respond to all kinds of situations like not feeling good enough measured by someone else’s standards, dealing with hurtful words from someone you care about, or worrying about a test you’re taking later in the day.
When we think about mindfulness, we tend to imagine practicing it in a context that exists entirely on its own, outside of the real world that we live in. However, let’s walk through each of those examples and see how we can use mindfulness to manage the emotions and feelings we have during those situations. Imagine you have a crush on someone that you’ve liked for a while. You’re completely captivated by the way they look, they way they talk, and every other quality you’ve gotten to know about them. There may even be times where you find your mind drifting off into fantasy scenarios where you two are dating or how you would ask them out if you had the opportunity to do so. These type of thoughts can make you feel happy, but they don’t have a chance of coming to be unless you do something about it.
When the time finally does come for you to approach the person and talk to them, you mess it all up. You don’t say the right kind of words, your body language is awkward and nervous, and they tell you they don’t have romantic feelings and just see you as nothing more than a friend. Moments like these can feel soul-crushing, it can take all the expectations you’ve had and flip them upside down, leaving you feeling like there’s something wrong with you, like you’re not good enough to date them, or that happiness is just not possible for you now.
It’s moments like these where mindfulness training can help us work toward feeling whole again. Otherwise, we will allow ourselves to naturally fall into the cycle of thinking of those painful events and reliving all the things we could have done differently, despite not having the ability to change the past at all. What we can do instead is close our eyes and focus deeply on our breathing once again. Rejection and heartbreak are part of the past, not the present. And as we bring ourselves into the present, the past can stay where it is. If you find your mind wandering back to those thoughts and feelings, understand that they exist and they have their reality, but they don’t need to be here right now with us. Think of these thoughts as waves of water coming onto a beach and wetting the sand. As the thought comes in, you may feel like it’s here to stay, like it’s a part of your present existence and there’s nothing you can do about it. But once you recognize you are thinking it, center yourself once again and come back to the present. Come back to the breath, and let the waves gently retreat back into the ocean. Or maybe your mind isn’t centered around your mistakes, perhaps your mind is focusing on how you can recover from your mistakes and what needs to be done to fix the situation. These thoughts too can also be put on hold for now, the key is to remain here in the present because it’s in the present where your feelings exist. There will be a time to work on changing things, but without a clear mind your decisions will be driven by your anxiety and fears.
Where you stand, as you feel your body breathing in, everything in this moment is OK. You are not being rejected, you are not trying to recover from a mistake, you are simply existing as you are, right here and right now. There is no other time that exists but this moment, and in this moment, you are whole. You can become grounded in the idea that this
