Sometimes to love people, I must completely avoid them. Sometimes, to be strong, I must completely fall apart. Sometimes, to create, I must completely destroy.

When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to understand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way?

There is no quick fix-all procedure to heal your insecurities. Like any relationship, the relationship with yourself must be built and re-built one kind, loving conversation at a time.

The desire to be loved, to feel loved, is behind every diet, pill, surgery, and lie. It is behind each act of violence and every affair as well as each organized religion and every method of self-help.

I only accept your mistakes and flaws to the degree that I accept my own.

Hope for the future lies in each of us looking within. By learning to feed your hunger, you can overcome the tempting illusions all around you. By discovering who you are, you can stop basing your self-image solely on other people’s ideas about you. By connecting to your inner strength, you can stop cycling between idealistic illusions and self-hating disillusionment. By taking responsibility for yourself, you can stop relying on others to take responsibility for you.

If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea—uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can’t you sail that voyage and explore yourself?

What if each time you experienced an emotion, you acknowledged it, accepted it, and became curious about its message for you (instead of trying to make it go away or make it last longer)? Imagine how this could change your life. Imagine how heard, loved, and honoured you would feel if you really listened to yourself.

I'm just trying toFind my way backTo trust again.