in the pursuit of happiness

"I may look confident all the time, but honestly, there are many moments when my confidence wavers. Whenever that happens, I remind myself that confidence isn’t a fixed trait — it shifts and grows with life. I try to restore that balance by focusing on my inner strength."

"The best parts are always ahead if you keep moving. If you stay curious. If you resist cynicism. I still wake up with ideas. That’s enough."

"It means resisting cynicism. Cynicism corrodes instinct. The older you get, the more it creeps in. You start thinking you know too much, that you’ve seen it all before. You lose your naïveté — and that’s a killer. I’ve always tried to hold on to mine — maybe way past the expiration date. But it’s what keeps your instincts sharp."

"But what has brought me an extraordinary amount of peace in my life is when I finally fell in love with myself. Genuinely, I think that is the path of all spirituality. You can say it’s about finding god, but when you find your god you’re still going to have to face yourself. And either you’re going to cross that Rubicon or you’re not, but that in and of itself is a theology. The moment where I finally loved myself in a way that I could actually forgive myself and forgive the people in my life that may have caused me trauma and have that currency going forward to forgive and have compassion and empathy for other people—that is, I think, spirituality in a nutshell."