25 mantras

For the past few months, I have developed the habit of collecting mantras—short sentences that resonate with directions I want to steer toward. I write them down on cards that I carry with me. They act as reminders for my future selves, lighthouses that are good to keep in sight as we navigate the waves.

Some are aspirations, sentences that capture a state that intrigues me and that I would like to know from within. Others might be insights I grasped in moments of clarity but are likely to slip away as time passes.

Here is a list of mantras accompanied by comments to clarify their meanings or sources.

1. Keep your head high amidst the storm.
   1. The chaotic changes in the world around you are not a reason to look down.
2. Broad attention to the here and now.
   1. Notice when your attention crystallizes into one point, and massage it. This is a generalization of the driving advice that you should try to avoid fixating on a single point and instead pay broad attention to the road. This but not just visually, also in idea space.
3. You can expand yourself without losing yourself.
   1. You can care for people who are suffering without having to carry their burdens.
   2. You can hold a belief temporarily to see how it feels without changing your mind.
4. Follow your heart.
   1. This is how you coordinate with your future selves, by repeatedly going back to your heart.
   2. The heart knows things that the head doesn’t. This is where your visceral motivations are stored, which is evident in burnout, for instance.
   3. You need to build a muscle to practice discernment. At first, following your heart sounds like doing whatever, being whimsical, changing ideas every day. But it’s the opposite; it’s about attuning to the slow-moving forces within you and getting in tune with the tree growing in you.
   4. Feelings are always closer to reality than thoughts (from Jacob Collier)
5. Luck is looking deeply at the world and letting the world look at you.
   1. Serendipity comes when you increase the area between you and the world. Allow your people to find you.
6. You cannot teleport in thought space.
   1. Our past thoughts form the grooves in which our current thoughts evolve.
   2. It may feel like thoughts are light, but we don’t feel the heaviness of the groove-making process.
7. Are you present and open to your experience?
   1. Are you holding onto a prior expectation or frame that prevents you from being open to your environment?
8. Don’t try to build a tree, plant a seed.
   1. Create with care and precision, but without control.
   2. It requires practicing what feels like a leap of faith.
9. Open like everyone has something special to offer you.
   1. Everyone is holding a gem, unique and specially for you.
   2. It is your job to unwrap the (sometimes) thick paper that prevents this gem from reaching you.
   3. It requires humility to expand and bend yourself in order to initiate gentle contact with someone else.
   4. Related: “3. You can expand yourself without losing yourself.”
10. The absence of proof never screams.
    1. We pay attention to what exists, but sometimes the most important information is in what is missing.
11. What could you do now that will matter in 10,000 years?
    1. Try to think beyond myopia, making now longer
12. Love is what you come back to.
    1. From Fish: a tap essay.
13. Look at your fish.
    1. From Fish: a tap essay.
14. Are you being adult right now?
    1. Is there a right decision you are postponing or refusing to look at straight in the eyes?
    2. Are you seeking short-term comfort, leading to a long-term messy situation?
    3. With what posture do you walk in the world?
15. If you are true to yourself in what you produce, you will find your people. It’s like a magnet.
    1. From Jacob Collier.
16. Deepen your craft
    1. From Jacob Collier
17. Trust the process, not the state.
    1. You are a long trajectory, you are never static.
    2. You don’t walk alone, there are the selves from the past, from the future, your ancestors, and your descendants.
18. You can think more clearly by writing.
    1. The harder the medium, the easier it is to iterate and go deeper, but the harder it is to produce.
    2. Writing enforces a consistency that thoughts alone don’t provide.
19. You can deliberately cultivate kindness.
    1. You can just make gifts to people.
    2. You gain by giving.
20. If you are not failing, it means you are not trying hard enough.
    1. Have you ever failed?
21. If you are not leaning on your support circle, you are not trying hard enough.
    1. Are you relying on the people in your life?
22. Be the stone on which to sharpen your knife.
    1. You are both the generator and the discriminator. The generator needs to be abundant, the discriminator needs to be sharp and ruthless.
    2. You are the best placed to hold yourself to your own standards and to follow through on your own commitments.
    3. If you have the option, find someone else to be the stone. This is how good mentoring can make you sharper. Over time, you will be able to internalize the mentor taste, and make your own stone stronger.
23. Being here is enough.
    1. Being as you are in this instant is the base. Nothing needs to be done from there.
    2. Thoughts can be convincing and may sometimes make you doubt this fact.
24. Nature feels like home.
    1. When is the last time you have been in nature?
    2. It’s a strangely reliable cure for all the ailments of the mind.
25. A visual mantra, co-created with the wonderful Merlin.

1. Focus bring life.