—written with my 18 and 20 year old younger brothers in mind—

Dear Brothers,

It is not that I am much older than you or believe I have concrete answers to life’s burning questions. Honestly, I can rarely cut jalapeños and remember not to wipe my eyes. But having just clocked into my 35th year, here are the things I wish someone had told me when I was a younger man.

Not that I would have listened or altered my course through the storms I was headed to. Life’s greatest lessons are learned through living. But sometimes we CAN take shortcuts through someone else’s experience. So here’s mine of what life has taught me in my decade and a half of adulting. May they be seeds that grow helpful to you in your sunny days and storms.

Take Time Before the Hustle to Connect

Give yourself a least a moment of stillness everyday. Because it’s in serene silence when the quiet voice of your heart has a chance at being heard over the raucous chatter of mind. And if you don’t hear what your heart has to say, your mind will set you on a course where you’ll have to keep running. That’s the only way to lead a life without heart—to never slow down enough to feel the soul’s deepest longings and sincerest hopes.

This stillness doesn’t need to be anything specific. Go for a walk. Listen to a river. Come to know the birds in your neighborhood by their calls and tune into that music. Say a prayer. Make a habit of really tasting your coffee or tea. Read something inspiring and uplifting. Download a meditation app (Insight Timer!). Just give your heart at least five minutes a day before scrolling through your phone. That’s enough time for the heart work to happen as long as you back it with a sincere intention to truly feel and know what’s there.

In life you can’t be anyone you want to be, but you do have a chance to fully be you. If you don’t discover how to be you, you’ll end up a resentful ghost of who you were meant to be.

Admitting to Mind what’s in Heart

One of the hardest parts of my journey though life has been one of admitting to my mind what’s in my heart. I wanted to be strong, so it was easier to run away from the weak, scared, hurt places inside. And literally, I would run—up mountains for miles, past what was healthy exercise and into the realm of bodily harm.

Was what inside really so scary? No. It was only I who was terrified. So terrified, I didn’t even journal about some things I was running from. And I used to journal about everything! But I had mastered that soul-breaking art of closing the door so I didn’t hear my sobbing heart.

What was so scary hiding there? The same sort of secret shames so many of us hide. I was often very lonely. I had all this love inside and no one to give it to. The noise of loud parties and excess alcohol helped cover up that pain with fun and enthusiasm, but it was not sincere joy or authentic happiness.

I was a pornography addict for a decade before I even knew that was a thing. This fed a cycle of covering up pain, secret shame, resolve, broken resolve, disappointment, and disconnection.

So if any of this sounds like you, know that you are so not alone. In fact, most of your friends are maybe in the same boat. It’s kinda silly huh, how what we usually fear the most isn’t physical harm, but others seeing in us what we hide from the world. But is this how we want to walk through the world?—hiding from ourselves, trapped behind imaginary walls, afraid of other’s perceptions?

If there’s someone in your life you can talk to about the secret corners where you hide your hardships and shames, you have no idea how freeing it is to share openly what’s smothering your heart. The fact is, there are so many people in your life you can share with. But it takes a rare courage to open up what’s so tightly closed inside. If you can muster up the strength to do so, you’ll be giving that person you open to such a gift. By opening up and being vulnerable, you give that person permission to do the same. And they might need it as much or more than you.

But if you’re like me, you might spend many years hiding your secrets in the dungeons of your mind. That’s okay too, flowers bloom when they’re ready. So in the meantime, you can find an online support forum where you can hear the stories of others dealing with what you too struggle with. Under the anonymity of a supportive and non-judging corner of the Internet, you can share your story too. If you’re wondering where to begin, you already have.

Something I’ve found helpful in life is to fill a blank page with everything I’m hiding or afraid to be found out about and then burn the page. This is a freeing practice of letting out what we’ve kept locked away and then literally burning away the walls that incarcerate our hearts.

I’ve found on my road of trying to be the best version of myself that the energy of shame and regret just fuels the same cycle that brought us there to begin with. What I mean is saying things like, “I’m never drinking again,” the morning after a late party, when most of your friends are bar rats and partiers, or saying, “I’m never smoking pot again,” when you’ve been smoking everyday for weeks, or “I’m never looking at porn again!” after a particularly haunting late night binge after years of looking at porn—These sort of impassioned proclamations seem to just set us up for failures. There is a kinder, softer, more effective approach directed towards the same goal.

We can take that moment of stillness and from it admit what we are doing that hurts us and say, “I want to begin to direct my life away from this/these things. They’ve been very present in my life up until now, so I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do this, but I know I want to. And the first step I’m going to take is to be honest with myself and some trusted others about what I’m going through.”

While addiction and substance abuse are real in their own right, sometimes we can miss the real issues beneath them if we only focus on those things at the expense of looking at what worried, scared, and broken places within might be fueling them.

“What is it?” We can ask ourselves. “What am I so scared to touch within that I can’t even admit it to myself?” We can ask our heart. When we are truly ready to listen, our heart will answer.

Usually, it’s a form of love we lack and often that’s because we’ve closed the door in our hearts to keep out pain and rejection without realizing that healing and connection use that same door.

It’s Always about Love

So just like all the songs on Spotify, 99% of the time, it is about love. And that always begins with us. So we can really reflect upon, “How much unconditional love do I offer myself?” This isn’t the ego’s game of liking ourselves, feeling cool and accepted by some group of outsiders. Love is an insider game. And until we’ve admitted to ourselves all our fears, disappointments, delusions, regrets, angers, and heartbreaks, we have no ability to say to the sum total of all our parts, “I love you, I love you, I love you. No matter what you’ve done or do, I love you. I see you. I know sometimes you struggle—I love and believe in you.”

This self-acceptance doesn’t occur in a single moment of our lives, but is a practice for all our life—to hold ourselves in the forgiving light of unconditional love.

Oh, and Check it out and There WIlL be Girls at Life’s Party!

And bro, you’ll meet loads of girls and women along the way. You’ll want to be with some who don’t want to be with you and that will hurt. So let yourself be hurt and hold this pain love instead of giving into some sort of twisted resentment towards that person. As hard as these situations are, endeavor to find the beauty in the taste of your desire. See it as a precious jewel, to be so disarmed by someone that all the rest of busy life just sorta stops. Ultimately, whatever this shiny person who caught your eye possesses, they don’t have the most important bit—a genuine desire to be with you.

And you’ll meet some who want to be with you that you don’t want to be with and that might sting you as much as it hurts them. Remember in these situations that all hearts are marked, “Fragile, handle with care.”

Let such situations play out in the gentlest place in your heart. They are on the journey of life and love too. Don’t lead someone on just because you crave the affection they shower on you. Be true and learn the difference between someone who genuinely loves you and someone who really like the thought of you on a certain shelf of their lives.

And it’s inevitable, you’ll meet someone who will gaze at you with the same longing you gaze at them with and just as winter yields to spring, you’ll find yourselves in each other’s arms.

And that’s where the real work of honesty and vulnerability can begin. That’s why it’s so important to be honest with yourself when you’re by yourself. If you can’t do that with you, you stand little chance of being able to do it with someone else. And if you can’t be that open and honest with the one you love, what’s really the point?

Within the context of love, you’ll also find the fear of its loss. You may find yourself speaking from your wounds in order to wound. You may see yourself cut by the one you love’s broken pieces. You may try to control. Your beloved may try to control you. You guys know how it goes, love in life can get so messy.

The only solution I know is to be gentle and honest, with yourself and with her. Keep your morning centering practices close at hand during these times and see your opinions ad perspectives for what they are—one guy’s thoughts at one very finite point of infinite time. See how fears and angers can cloud your view and carry on the course without needing to be right. But hoping both of you can be understood and accepted where you’re at. And really, truly listen. Ask questions. Leave space for the other’s thought process. Really try to understand. Who is this woman looking at you? What are her hurts and hopes and needs? Can you be a safe shelter during her storms?

You’ll be tempted to try to “fix” her “problems” with “solutions.” But just like you, she can’t solve her life’s struggles in the flash of a moment. So just like you, she just needs a safe space where she can share her heart and be at home, embraced by your arms, surrounded by unconditional love.

So even if a relationship feels far away today, know that the work you are doing on yourself is also for some future parter. To be a safe place for her, she needs to trust you. And to be trusted you need to be trustworthy. To be worthy you have to be honest with yourself about yourself and take steps to clean the dusty corners within. If it helps, you can think of the women you date in life like the bosses at the end of the video game level. It takes a lot of work and struggle and sometimes ninja backflips just to get there. And often you have to get through a lot of bosses just to get to the final boss. But if you stay the course through the struggles, you’ll win the game!

And Take Care of You in Love

And take care of yourself in the face of love. Sometimes we can be so desperate for connection that we settle for someone who doesn’t give us space to expand and whittles away at our soul. So when it’s time to jump, take the dive. But don’t be pulled down and drowned by anyone. Keep the trusted council of family and friends around and listen to them without taking any of what they say as gospel. Let their advice sit at the table of your open heart. Trust that the more pure the seed of your intentions, the more certain will be the serenity of its fruit. Because people, lovers jobs, bosses, friends, groups of friends, cities, cars, apartments, cats, dogs, and aloe vera plants will come in and out of our lives and we should enjoy them like the last sips of the finest of wines, but not expect them to last longer then their allotted time. The cup of life isn’t bottomless. Sometimes it will be time to let go of things so something or someone new and not yet known can come into our lives and change everything for the better.

The Freedom of Mortals

And this brings me to the most important point of all—the freedom your own mortality can bring you. The ultimate letting go will be of your own life, and you can redirect the energy of fear into purpose. You don’t have any time to waste living less than you know you are. I mean shit son, you are the pilot of the most splendid vessel on a green and blue ball bursting with life flying through outer flipping space!

Which is exactly why anyone who gives you career advice based solely on economic gain is trying to trap you in a game you can only lose. You’d be best to run from such a person who can’t see past bank accounts. And there are so, so many who can only see your talents ad passionate energy as commodities. They do not see your soul. They cannot feel your heart. So just run. You have nothing of value to gain and everything worthwhile to lose.

What Brings You out of Bed With a Jolt

Strive to lead a life where what you do brings you out of bed with a jolly that only a soul living its depth of purpose can do. To find out what that is, you’ll need to discover who you are. To do that, you’ll need to be so genuinely open and honest with yourself.

The meaning of life is to do things where you find the most meaning. A big house, expensive cars, a beautiful, but vacant wife can’t bring you this meaning. But chasing these things can drag you so far astray from your purpose that you forget or never discover what it is.

So Strive for Simplicity

As much as you can, see if you can take some of the rocks off life’s road where others will pass to ease their journey, as so many have done for you in your time.

We all die, but too few of us fully look life in the eyes and run with it to the mountains of our highest bliss. Too many of us are caught leading someone else’s life or carrying out the ghost of someone else’s dream.

So dream. Above all things, dream. Dream for you. Dream for us all. Make life into a sacred ceremony. Nurture your smile. Dance and sing at all costs. The world is this brutal for no other reason than hearts have forgotten their songs and we’ve become too inhibited to dance.

So many preaching religion have forgotten to live with love. Trust anyone sincerely seeking answers, but be careful of anyone who claims to have them.

The real answers to life comes from living itself, they don’t come in inflexibly formulated doctrines.

Perhaps following your heart’s call will mean you’ll leave a religion. Maybe it will mean you’ll join one. Just never scoff at anyone’s religion. Churches, temples, and mosques are places where human sincerity goes to rest and find peace and humbly ask for help. Only the very jaded want to mess with that.

The great comfort we can take from the world’s greatest teachers—Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Socrates, Rumi, Milarepa, Francis of Assisi, Ramama Maharashi, Yogananda, etc.—they all lived their lives without fear of death, full of heart, without worrying about possessions or legacies, but solely concerned with comforting others, easing their pains and opening their hearts to unconditional

Seeing this as it is, who are we really to live with fear and doubt? Each of us has a lion’s roar waiting to burst from our chest. Who are we not to believe in ourselves when the world’s greatest teachers begged us to trust the intuitions of our own heart?

So whoever you are, wherever you are today, it won’t be who you are and where you are tomorrow. The next thousand days of your life starts today. So point yourself in the direction your heart knows it needs to go and have faith that that’s all you’ll ever be asked to do—to take a single breath and step in the moment called now directed towards the future place that can hold your highest bliss. A place we’ll find right now. One day. Or right now. Today. Now. It depends on how much we are willing to give of ourselves and how fully we can forgive ourselves and others for so-called faults. But trust me, you got this. All the universe is here to help. You got this. You. Got. This.