As I have begun to explore my goals and desires, one concept that has struck out to me was the concept of inner selves. In our adult world, I often find myself governed by my pragmatic, goal-oriented adult self. This self is hyper-rational and focused on achievement, and sometimes also image-conscious. This “adult” self is in contrast to my “child” self, who remains hidden behind my adult self. In this post, I want to explore the differences between my child and adult self, and allow strategies for balance between the two of them during my adult life. As a young child, I was governed by a dominant sense of self which was free-flowing, curious, nonjudgmental, and inquisitive. As a child, I was extremely curious, and I always loved to read fiction, learn about history, and read about new applications in science and technology. I remember I often spend my entire break during recess holed up in a corner, buried in a new book. The world was delightful to me, and I wanted to spend as …

In this week’s topic, we wanted to share our stories about romantic love and how it relates to our own mental health. On the surface, romantic love seems very different from mental illness. What, if anything, do depression, anxiety, and low self esteem have to do with love? However, I’ve noticed that in my own experiences they can be inextricably linked to each other. Growing up in today’s society, we are often inundated with the message that we need to find the “one,” our “true love,” our “special someone,” in order to complete us. We seek out someone else in order to fill the voids that we have within ourselves and within our own lives. When I was younger,  although I was never a huge believer in romance, I still internalized that message. In high school, I was a very high achieving, straight-A type of person, who never took a day off from work or from trying to get ahead. Instead of trying to achieve balance in my own life, I sought out romantic partners …

When people think of kindness, people often think of being kind toward others. A random act of kindness, for instance, might be giving up your seat for a pregnant woman on a train, or paying for someone’s coffee behind you in line. On a deeper level, kindness can manifest by listening to a friend in need, or helping a family member out who is struggling with his or her health. While recognized in society, kindness is often something that is undervalued in Western society, at least compared to other virtues such as ambition, beauty, intelligence, success, or popularity. Yet there’s an aspect of kindness which is less talked about, and that is kindness towards oneself.  Although it may seem like a difficult place to start, kindness towards oneself can often be a prerequisite for being kind to other people. If your heart is full of negativity and criticism towards yourself, then it is easy, even expected, that the negativity will pour back out to others. Kindness towards oneself is something with which I have always …

As someone who works in tech, I always hear the famous Steve Jobs quote: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” This can be taken in different directions: in one interpretation, the quote is a prescription to stay curious and to dream big.  However, Andrew and I were drawn to the word hunger and what it meant in the context of motivation, achievement, and pursuing our goals. Hunger by necessity is a negative word. The literal definition of hunger is to be lacking something so essential to human life that we cannot survive without it. It signals a deprivation, a lack, a need for something that is missing. Just as hunger is a powerful biological cue incentivizing living things to seek food, hunger in a goal setting sense is a powerful cue incentivizing living things to seek change, because of a lack of something in their environment. Hunger is not always a bad thing. There are times when hunger for change is the right emotion. For instance, in the context of the Black Lives Matters protests in the …

When we are young, we often think that we are our thoughts. It’s a simple assumption for our minds to make. For many of us, our thoughts run through our mind constantly, making it hard to separate our thoughts from ourselves.  It took me a long time to grasp this; what am I without the endless stream of thoughts that are running through my mind 24/7? When our thoughts are helpful and uplifting, this might not seem like such a problem. However, in the case of mental health, when thoughts can often be dark, insidious, scary, and disorienting, it’s extremely helpful to get some separation from thoughts to see the clear sky which is resting underneath. In our beginner’s blog post and podcast, we discussed the roots of our mental illness beginning in high school. Andrew and I touched on a lot of the self destructive and self-hating thoughts that we had back then: feeling like there was something wrong with us, feeling like we were not good enough at anything, and self hatred for …