The Inner Compass

Published XXIII April Anno Domini MMXXVI

Highlights

Throughout most of my youth and early adulthood, I believed that external achievements would alleviate my inner turmoils. If I wasn’t at peace, I figured that there was some ambition I needed to actualize, or some milestone I had to reach to justify a period of ease. In my mind, peace was not a given. It had to be earned, over and over again. (Location 35)
Knowledge is taught through information, but understanding is taught through experience. (Location 39)
We live in a world where people are incentivized to disturb the stillness within us, usually by making us feel inadequate or alone. (Location 45)

What I understood then was that contentment is our default condition, but it is constantly disturbed by external pressures, either subtle or direct. (Location 129)
At its core, that’s what suffering is. It’s the belief that peace can’t be found within yourself, so you have to attain it through a series of outcomes. (Location 139)

The buzzing in my ear was my pain, but my desire for its dissipation was my suffering. (Location 188)

Anytime we are in an unfamiliar environment, there are two opposing forces that emerge: The push for certainty, and The pull toward curiosity. The push for certainty is driven by fear, whereas the pull toward curiosity is driven by play. (Location 229)

Intuition is what takes you from the limits of logic to the decision you ultimately make. (Location 285)
Every inner compass starts at true north, which is the state of trusting ourselves. This is because we are all born with the gift of presence (as discussed in Chapter 2), which is when your inner state is in alignment with your external surroundings. (Location 290)
Anytime you think you “should” do something, that’s conditioning. Anytime you compare yourself to another, that’s conditioning. Anything that causes fear or worry to arise is conditioning, as peace is disturbed only when you have an expectation that lies beyond the present moment. (Location 302)
When you are conditioned, every action feels tense. But when you have conviction, every action feels fluid. (Location 323)

The very mind that encourages me to sit in stillness also produces the disturbances that nullifies this objective. Its ability to dispense false (yet believable) narratives is unparalleled, and it can do so even when I’m most aware of when it’s happening. (Location 456)
Given that an unchecked mind bends toward rumination, reflection is the checking mechanism that redirects it toward insight. (Location 463)

Writing turns you into a historian of your life, which helps you identify the old stories you’ve inherited so that they can later be reframed. Knowing this, the objective of writing here is to learn about who you are and how you operate. That’s it. (Location 551)
This is a good time to make a distinction between a diary and a journal. A diary is when you write about the “what”s of life: what you did, what you want, and what you felt. (Location 557)
A journal, on the other hand, is about the “why”s of life: why you did it, why you wanted it, and why you felt it. And given that reflection is all about asking the “why” behind everything, a journal is the very thing we want to be keeping. (Location 562)
And it’s that state—acceptance without condition—that’s the greatest aspiration when it comes to our dynamic with others as well. (Location 597)

The inner critic is a reflection of the lens you use to view others. So if you want to change the way you treat yourself, it starts with a conscious shift in the way you treat the other. (Location 627)
What distinguishes a friend from an acquaintance is not the time in which the bond has lasted, but rather in the lack of conditions that accompanies that relationship. An acquaintance always requires conditions to stay in touch, with the most prevalent examples being workplace colleagues and next-door neighbors. Once you quit your job or move to another city, you’ll see just how conditional that connection was. True friends, however, make an effort to sustain that bond regardless of what’s going on. You (Location 629)

Compassion is the ability to extend full presence to people, regardless of who they are or what they’ve achieved. (Location 679)
It’s to see that people are not defined by their proximity to your goals, but by the unity of the human experience. (Location 679)

You’ve mistaken creativity for art. (Location 708)
The level of agency that births a conversation is what frames it as an act of creativity. (Location 737)
A child doesn’t play because she’ll be paid for it, and similarly, you don’t create because you’ll be praised for it. (Location 739)
You do it for its own sake, which is the sentiment behind the adage that “a creative adult is a child who has survived.”⁠ (Location 740)
When you no longer doubt how you spend your attention, you understand what it feels like to be fully immersed in the moment. You have total conviction knowing that this is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, and this realization makes a mockery of the past and the future. The only thing on center stage is what you’re currently working on, which turns worry and fear into peripheral characters in the theater of your mind. (Location 742)
When I reflect back on my deepest points of suffering, it always stemmed from an inability to be present. (Location 746)
I was hiding in the corners of my imagination instead of basking in the light of the real. (Location 748)
If reflection reveals who you are and relationship reveals the world you want to see, then creation is what merges those two domains together. (Location 761)
remember that creativity is an avenue to knowing yourself. You can share its outcomes with others to build a sense of community, but the process itself must come from the commitment to stretch your capabilities. (Location 764)

January 02, 2026

2026 Reading List I didn't hit my reading goal in 2025 (Read 24 books in 2025), but the goal was honestly just for me t…