“A few weeks ago I was listening to a talk on Mindful Intelligence. The teacher was a former Buddhist monk who lived in Burma and worked with political prisoners. He talked about the use of creativity and courage in mindfulness and used an example of an artist to demonstrate how we can pick and choose emotional states similarly to how an artist can blend and diffuse color on a paint palette. I’m an empath and I experience a lot of the world through people’s emotions so this was super interesting to me.

“For a long time, I was really social and thought I had a lot of friends. The one time when I needed a friend I reached out to someone and realized they were only an acquaintance. After that, I started having clarifying conversations and narrowed it down to a few people who I call friends and invest energy in to. I’m so much happier.”

“I used to show up to relationships with a ‘yes’ and accept a maybe, or fight against a ‘no’. Now I only stay around if I’m met with a ‘yes’.”