Celeste Headlee

But important, life-changing events are influenced and affected by the words we choose to say or leave unspoken.

We work best when we allow for flexibility in our habits. Instead of gritting your teeth and forcing your body and mind to work punishing hours and “lean in” until you reach your goals, the counterintuitive solution might be to walk away. Pushing harder isn’t helping us anymore.

We can and must stop treating ourselves like machines that can be driven and pumped and amped and hacked. Instead of limiting and constraining our essential natures, we can celebrate our humanness at work and in idleness. We can better understand our own natures and abilities. We can lean in not to our work but to our inherent gifts.

But at some point, drive became inextricably intertwined with dread: dread that all my work and effort would never be enough

Imagine you finally earn a million dollars. Euphoria ensues, right? Wrong. Your mind will adjust and send you right back to your happiness set point.

a human is “the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.”

I started to wonder if I was moving too fast

The idea is not that everything should be slower, but that not everything needs to be fast.

how a slower pace might reduce my stress and support a sense of mindfulness.

There is no denying that having enough money makes things much easier. But throughout all those years of struggle, I thought life with more money would mean happiness and an end to stress. That didn’t happen.