This is a phenomenal read by YUNG PUEBLO. His real name is Diego Perez which means “young people”. It discusses his upbringing, the abuse he endured, and his healing path. Lighter is beautifully written with intention, compassion, self awareness, and to release old burdens and to heal and cultivate this within ourselves. Below are my favorite passages from the book:

 

Pick the path that lights you up, the one you know deep down is the right choice, stop listening to doubt, start connecting with courage, do not let the idea of normal get in the way, it may not be the easy path, but you know great things take effort. Lean into your determination, lean into your mission, and lean into the real you. 

People who have experienced deep suffering and are still gentle with others do not get enough credit to not let the hard thing of balas that happened to you win to you win is heroic work, to drop the bitterness and still live with an open heart; despite it all, is a massive gift to the world.

Healing isn’t about filling your life with pleasure or never having a hard moment again. It’s about being real and facing what you feel so that it doesn’t accumulate in unhealthy ways. Being with the down moments is better than carrying unprocessed pain everywhere you go. 

The basic things we are taught and start practicing as children- to clean up after ourselves, to tell the truth, to treat other other fairly, to share, to be kind to one another, not to harm each other- have not yet been successfully applied at the level of society.

All people do not need to be perfectly healed for us to live in a peaceful world, but as more and more people progress in their healing, this will create waves that can change the trajectory of human history. As more people heal themselves, our actions will become more intentional, our decisions will become more compassionate, our thinking will become clearer, and the future of the world will become brighter. 

I discovered that the appreciation you seek from others will not hold the same rejuvenating power as the appreciation, attention, and kindness you can give yourself.

Real self love is a total embrace of all that you are while simultaneously acknowledging that you have room to grow and much to let go of. Real self-love is a tricky concept that requires a sense of balance to be able to use its transformative power- it is nourishing yourself deeply without becoming self-centered or egotistical. It is no longer seeing yourself as less than others, but at the same time maintaining the humility not to see yourself as better than others. The greatest benefits of self-love come from the positive interactions between you and yourself. Self-love is not only a mindset but a set of actions. 

Taken to its highest form, self-love is an energy we use to evolve. Ultimately, I define self-love as “doing what you need to do to know and heal yourself”. 

Radical honesty, a form of authenticity that begins inside you, is a warm recognition that you gently apply to your conscious life. This view of radical honesty is not about telling everyone what you think. Instead, it is the root from which self-awareness grows. Thoughts and emotions that were once discarded or ignored are now embraced. Where you once felt the urge to run away, you now challenge yourself to face whatever is there. More than anything, any lie that you formerly told yourself is examined so that the truth may come forward. The key to radical honesty is that this is not about you and other people, but about how you relate to yourself in all situations, whether you are alone or with others. 

Self-love is an invitation to our inner world.

A deep connection with another being is not possible if you are deeply disconnected from yourself.

Radical Honesty is not just observing what you find-it also requires us to approach ourselves with curiosity. 

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. (James Clear; Atomic Habits)

When you allow your self-love to inform your decisions, it will challenge you to raise the standard you have for yourself. 

When you deeply get to know yourself through the energy of self-love, you start to learn about the human condition, and how your own heavy emotions and traumas have shaped your behavior and reactions over time. 

Whenever your ability to see yourself increases, so, too, does the patience you have with the people around you. 

I had to wholeheartedly commit to a long journey of healing. 

Self-love and healing are deeply intertwined, and if you take one of them seriously, the other will be immediately activated. They rise and fall together. Similarly, if the two are flourishing, a profound transformation is bound to take place. 

Lean into pausing. This ability to pause is not easy and it takes time to build this quality of the mind, but the results of this practice are immense. Giving yourself time to witness reality without immediately reacting is a sign of progress in your healing. 

PEOPLE WHO HEAL THEMSELVES ARE LIONS, HEROES WITH EXCEPTIONAL BRAVERY. 

Change is not possible if you cannot see what needs to be changed.

The conscious mind is sometimes able to forget, but the subconscious mind accumulates every reaction from the past. These reactions harden over time and develop into specific behavior patterns that arise when the mind is reminded of a past situation. 

Old memories from hard moments may come up even after deep healing has taken place, but what shifts is how we react to them when they arise. If the intensity of the reaction is decreasing, then real progress is being made. 

Your immediate reaction does not tell you who you are. It is how you decide to respond after the reaction that gives you real insight into how much you have grown. Your first reaction is your past, your intentional response is your present. 

What you are doing should click with your intuition. The key is to find something that is challenging but not overwhelming. 

Real healing is a deconditioning process that helps you unravel the blocks, narratives, and inflexibility that create space between you and your happiness. Healing starts with knowing yourself and loving yourself. When you see and feel how much you carry, it becomes clear that it is time to start letting go. 

When the healing begins, the strong emotions that surface are sometimes triggered by the present, but when you are feeling is actually from your past. 

Fear is the craving for safety. 

Before you can set yourself free, you first need to understand how you make things harder for yourself. 

The absence of reaction also means the absence of tension. 

Without intention you would be aimless. Through intention, you reveal who you really are. 

Craving is the cause of our suffering. Craving is what keeps the mind full of tension and what keeps us far away from being fully present. 

The practice that is right for you will be something that you find challenging but not overwhelming. 

People who are serious about deep healing are not afraid of the long journey. 

If your strategy is to avoid, it will make the distance between you and yourself wider and wider. At first, this strategy will feel like relief, but later it will feel like you are no longer at home within your mind and body. 

Through avoidance, we end up becoming alienated from ourselves. 

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions without running away is the gateway to entering into healing and the path to accessing your human nature. When you break down the layers of old conditioning, your inner revolution begins. You experience the revival of a mind that is no longer heavily weighted down by the past.

When you start saying no to old patterns and choosing actions that better align with how you authentically feel, your human nature starts to shine through. In a dark room that is lined with concrete, if a small hole is made, the darkness will no longer be all-consuming. In a similar way, if we keep chipping away and breaking down the walls of old conditioning that confine us, more light will get in and we will be able to see the outside world with a wider and clearer perspective. 

The lightness, clarity, and skill you have from observing yourself took time and intention to build, but now they are yours. 

Signs that your Self Awareness is growing:

• Being able to feel your emotions as they come and go
• Coming to terms with your past and noticing the way it shows up in your present
• Watching your mind as it processes difficult situations
• Taking note of behavior patterns that show up repeatedly in your life
• Observing how your own thinking affects your emotions
• Examining your inner narrative 

Emotional maturity gives you the strength to see things outside your own perspective. Being able to place yourself in another person’s shoes and see their context is an active form of compassion.

Your emotional maturity deepens when you can acknowledge that you have much to learn and heal. 

A common thread for many, once they start building self-awareness, is that they see how surface level and superficial a lot of their relationships were. 

Treating your energy like a precious resource has a deep effect on your life. Your fulfillment is now derived from your self-care and the wholeness that is uncovered from your healing work. You do remain open to healthy connections, but you are intentional about those you let into your inner circle. You give more time to your rest so that you can prosper while you are in the midst of your journey. 

There may be moments when your intuition tells you something but you are too afraid to hear it. And that is OK. Just don’t forget the message. Return to it when you feel ready. 

When we think about healing, there is often this idea that we want to go back to being who we were before the hurt and trauma. Who we were in the past only remains as a memory; that person is not someone we can truly go back to. 

Attachment has a self-centered approach to love, where you focus too much on how you want your partner to make you feel and not enough on treating them well. 

If a person can only focus on getting their preferred outcome, even at the cost of their partner’s happiness, that means their mind is dominated by attachments. If someone only cares about how you make them feel and puts little effort into finding a middle ground where you are both giving and receiving support, this is an unhealthy connection. Real love feeds connection, not attachment. 

The feeling of being complete and no longer alienated from yourself cannot really come from another person’s love or approval, though it may bring a fleeting sense of satisfaction. It is nowhere near as powerful as you cementing within yourself a profound sense of self-acceptance. The only way loneliness will ever end is if you are no longer far away from yourself. 

A perfect stream of happiness, joy, and unending fun is not possible between two people. Your imperfections, ego, and survivalist habit patterns will occasionally cause ruptures that create friction in your relationship. The outside world will also pose difficulties you will need to navigate and adapt to. 

Whether due to hardened old patterns that get in the way of loving each other right or a lack of self-awareness that doesn’t let you see when you are projecting your emotions, unjustified blame and displaced anger are common when we are unaware of our mental movements. Relationships are often situations where the love is clearly there, but what makes them hard is all the emotional weight you have been carrying with you that slows the flow of clear observation and the compassionate support of each other’s happiness. When your mind is burdened with tumultuousness and unresolved pain, the people around you will be impacted by your inner struggles. Even if you try to forget those struggles, what goes unprocessed will reveal itself in your actions, words, and thoughts. If you let your past rule you, it will be difficult to love others well in the present. 

The healing work that both partners take saves relationships and allows it to become a pillar of strength in each others lives.

All these blind habit patterns were getting in the way of loving each other well. 

You have to be intentional about loving the person who is in front of you now. 

When people are in close proximity, there is bound to be some conflict, but emotionally mature individuals will try to use conflict as an opportunity to build understanding and develop deeper harmony. 

If both of you keep trying to win the argument, both of you will lose. Ego craves to win, but loving clarity seeks to understand. When you both let go of winning, what is left is doing your best to understand each other. 

THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP (Signs of a deep friend connection):

• Laughter is abundant. Honesty is encouraged. Support is real and active. Vulnerability is welcomed. You can put your guard down. You inspire each other to grow. You give each other good advice. Both of you feel stronger together. You help each other weather storms. 

The friends who last are the ones who appreciate you as you grow, see the value of your healing, and support you as you undergo transformation. They don’t appreciate you because you put on an act; they appreciate you because they love your realness. 

A great friendship doesn’t need to last forever for it to be an incredibly profound part of your life story. 

Have you both shifted from trying to win to trying to understand each other? Have you succeeded in releasing unfair expectations of each other- for instance, expecting your partner to be perfect all the time or expecting your relationship to always be fun?

Healing is for the brave and for those ready to face what lies within. If letting go was easy, no one would be hurting. 

How you see yourself and the world may shift so much that you start to feel as if you are living a new life, as if a rebirth has taken place. 

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron once said, “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.” 

 

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