Analyzing the Author's Distinctive Stylistic Elements in Sample Texts

Given the following sample text, please analyze and identify the author's distinctive stylistic elements in terms of tone, diction, sentence structure, point of view, pace, literary devices and techniques, mood, and perspective on time. Print them in a bullet list.

<text> ## Building Trust in Yourself

I find that almost all problems are a breakdown in trusting ourselves.

If we could trust ourselves fully, so many things become effortless.

Let me give some examples of where we don’t trust ourselves:

• Procrastination: We procrastinate when we think we can’t handle the stress or difficulty of one or more tasks, or we don’t trust ourselves to handle any bad outcomes we fear from doing those tasks (people judging our work, for example). If we trusted ourselves completely, we could just do the task and deal with the stress that comes from it, and deal with whatever comes after.
• Overwork: We work hard often with hopes of clearing our todo list or inbox, and getting a sense of peace if we finish everything (which never comes). We don’t trust ourselves to handle the work in future days, and don’t trust that the work we’ve put in by the end of a reasonable work day is enough.
• Social media addiction: The urge to constantly check social media (or other distracting websites) is usually driven by a fear of taking on harder tasks, or a fear of missing out. If we trusted ourselves completely, we could calm those fears while taking on our more important tasks or taking care of ourselves better.
• Lack of exercise: While we might want to exercise, it’s something we put off, often because of a fear that we won’t get all our tasks done, because of fear of missing out on things like social media, or because of fear of the discomfort of the exercise itself. If we fully trusted ourselves, we could take on the discomfort and joy of exercise, while trusting that we could get to the work and social media later.
• Overwhelm: When we’re overwhelmed, we don’t trust ourselves to be able to handle all the things that are in front of us. If we fully trusted ourselves, we would trust that we could choose one thing from the list, be fully in that task, and then take on the next after that. And deal with whatever situation arises, one thing at a time.

Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list of problems you might have, but I’m hoping you can start to see where self-trust is the key factor in all of the above, and many other problems.

So if that’s true … how do we develop trust in ourselves? Let’s first look at what’s possible if we fully trust ourselves, then look at how to develop that trust.

What’s Possible with Full Trust

If we fully trust ourselves, life becomes so much easier. We can step into the unknown, out of our comfort zone, take risks, and act with confidence. We can ask for what we want, and trust that it’s OK to want something. We can choose from the heart, and trust the heart’s desire.

Here are some things that become possible with full trust:

• We can choose what we feel called to work each day, at the beginning of the day, so that we line up our day with our priorities.
• We can trust ourselves to choose the next task from the list, from our hearts. Then trust ourselves by taking that task on with full devotion, trusting that we’ll get to the rest later.
• We trust ourselves to handle any situation that arises, any consequence from our choices. If someone is upset or disappointed with us, we trust ourselves to deal with that. If we feel sadness or frustration, we trust ourselves to deal with that. The future, then, becomes less stressful because we trust that we can deal with anything that comes.
• When we have an overwhelming number of things in front of us, we trust ourselves to choose one thing, and deal with that.
• We trust ourselves to fully take on difficult things like exercise, difficult tasks, difficult conversations, meditation, and more, because we know we can be with whatever stress is there.
• We begin to create a life of impact, because we’re taking on the things that are impactful and important.
• We create a life where we are taking care of ourselves, because we’re trusting that it’s OK that we can take care of ourselves.
• We create the ability to have difficult conversations, because we trust ourselves in those convos. Our relationships get better, and we’re less stressed by whatever the other person is doing.

That’s just the start. More trust leads to us being able to fully be ourselves, and our lives become more alive, more relaxed, more joyous, more effortless.

How to Develop Trust in Ourselves

So how do we develop that kind of trust? With intentional practice.

Pick one area where you aren’t trusting yourself, and set an intention to practice:

• Procrastination: take on one task at a time. Trust yourself to take on that task, even for 2 minutes. You don’t have to finish, just start. With practice, you’ll go longer, up to 30 minutes. That’s enough for this practice.
• Overwhelm: Make a list of tasks. Practice choosing one, and taking it one. Trust yourself to deal with the rest later, and practice just taking that one task on at a time.
• Urges and addictions: Cut yourself off from the urge/addiction for 3 days. Practice trust in yourself to deal with the stress that results from not indulging. Find other, healthier ways to deal with that stress: meditate, exercise, go for a walk, talk to a friend or therapist.
• Difficult convos: Make a list of the difficult conversations you’ve been putting off. Practice trust by reaching out to the easiest one on the list and asking for a few minutes (in person or over the phone). Don’t rehearse the convo, don’t let yourself overthink it. Just show up, and practice talking with this person, trusting yourself to navigate without overthinking. Practice trust by being mindfully with any emotion that comes up, for you or them. Repeat this once a day.

These are where I would start. The practice of developing trust is a lifelone one. Beyond this, I would suggest you get some support — reach out to me if you’d like to work with me as a 1-on-1 coach, I’m here for that work! </text>

<text> ## The Possibility of Slowing Down

Our days are a busy rush, often from the moment we wake up. Even in our moments of rest, we are often on our phones or using technology to distract ourselves. The result is a life of stress, overwhelm, and habitual patterns.

What would it be like to slow down? To find stillness in your day, moments of rest and quietude?

The possibility of slowing down goes much deeper than just having a bit less busyness in your day …

Slowing down, if we go deeper, allows us to:

• Notice what’s coming up for us, and to attend to our emotions. This is much, much more important than people realize — most of our problems come from an inability to regulate our emotions or even recognize that they’re there.
• Make decisions from a place of choosing from the heart. If we have a decision to make, instead of overthinking it, we can slow down and sit in stillness for a few moments, and notice what our heart chooses. This makes decision-making much more effortless, once you learn to trust this.
• Make time for creating, instead of just busywork. We rush to do busywork because of fear, and because it’s easier than setting aside time to create. By slowing down, we can make the time to create, and slow down with our fears that are keeping us from doing this.
• Focus on what’s really important. What’s most important to you in your life? Spending time on loved ones, on your health, on your most important work? Whatever is most important to you, by slowing down, you can become more intentional and purposeful, and fully be with whatever you choose to do.
• Start to break up our habitual patterns. We live our lives mostly on autopilot, driven by old habitual patterns. This isn’t bad, but it means we struggle to do things the way we’d really like. We can begin break up those old patterns by slowing down, and noticing that we’re caught up in them.
• Start to get some rest and self-care into our lives. When we are rushed and busy and distracted all day long, it leads to feeling depleted and exhausted. This is a huge problem for many of us. Slowing down can create a bit of spaciousness to choose into rest and taking care of ourselves.
• Start to truly appreciate life. Rushing through our day, we barely notice the world in front of us. What if we could start to slow down and find wonder in the everyday moments?

These are just a handful of the possibilities of slowing down. It’s a deep, sacred, beautiful practice that can transform our lives, if we really engage with it regularly.

If you’d like to practice with me, I invite you to join me in my Deepening Into Slowing Down Retreat.

The Deepening Into Slowing Down Retreat

I’m holding an online retreat, Deepening Into Slowing Down, from June 21-23, 2024, and you’re invited.

In this retreat, we’ll meditate together, I’ll teach about the depths possible in slowing down, we’ll look at our old habitual patterns, and do some work on this together. It’s a 3-day retreat designed to have you leave a changed person.

I’m also offering a $100 discount on the retreat if you sign up by the end of May, so grab your seat now. </text>

<text> ## The Chaos & Abundance of Spring

For many of us in the Northern hemisphere, Spring has fully arrived: gorgeous sunshine, warmer weather, green trees, blossoms. It’s glorious!

With Spring comes life springing into action, full of abundance. This is the chaos of life, full and energetic and exuberant. It’s chaotic but in the most affirming of ways.

This abundance and chaos can fill us up, if we let it. If you’re feeling drained and empty, then you can let yourself feel the nourishing abundance of life all around you. Chaos can be stressful, or restorative — depending on our attitude towards it.

Here’s the practice:

• Go outside and look at the sunlight and abundant nature all around you.
• Let yourself relax and open to this abundance, and soak it in as a way to fill up your cup.
• Imagine that seeing the abundant life and greenery can relax you, bring life into you, make your heart sing with joy and wonder.
• Soak in as much of this life energy as you’d like!

The amazing thing is that this abundant, chaotic life energy is always available to us, no matter the season. It’s the joyful play of little kids, the chaos of our lives, the energy of a crowd in a subway, the emotions of a loved one, the uncertainty in your heart. This is all the abundance and chaos of Spring, come to life, unpredictable, in transition, creative and powerful.

Can you practice being more open to receiving the abundance and chaos of life all around you, and within you? </text>

<text> ## Honoring Your Word to Yourself

There is a power to our word that is very often underdeveloped — words are magic, and can create the world around us. But most of us use this magic as if it weren’t powerful.

The first way we see this is that we often don’t honor our word to ourselves.

In his wonderful book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz puts “Be impeccable with your word” as the first and most important of the four agreements that can change your life. There’s a lot more depth to this agreement, “Be impeccable with your word,” than you might first realize … but I’m only going to cover one aspect of that: honoring your word to yourself.

Some ways we don’t honor our word to ourselves:

• We say we’re going to exercise today, but then put it off because we’re busy.
• We vow to stop eating so many sweets, only to give in the next day and eat a bunch of ice cream and cookies.
• We say we’re going to work on a meaningful project, but that keeps getting pushed back another day, and another, until months have gone by.
• We say we’re going to meditate, but instead check our phones or email.

None of this is “bad,” and it would be a misuse of our word to harshly criticize ourselves for any of this. But what if we could start to honor our word to ourselves?

What if, when we tell ourselves we’re going to do something, we actually follow through and do it?

What would that change for you, in your life?

If you could 100% trust yourself to honor your word to yourself … this could change everything.

Let’s look at how to develop the power of our word to ourselves.

The Practice of Honoring Our Word to Ourselves

Start by committing yourself to take your word to yourself as sacred. It’s a vow, and when you say it, you’re fully committed to it.

Remind yourself of this each time you’re about to break your vow to yourself.

Then start by only making small promises to yourself — things you know you can definitely do. And follow through on every single promise, over and over, with full commitment.

For example: promise to go and drink a glass of water, and then do it. Promise to answer this one email, then do it. Promise to go for a walk around the block, then do it. Small promises, and then take them as sacred.

Remove the possibility of not doing it. My coach says if you’re a parent, you don’t even question whether you’re going to feed your kids or not — it’s a commitment you don’t question. Treat your commitments to yourself in the same way — unquestionable.

When you do it, acknowledge yourself for honoring your word to yourself. This is a victory to be celebrated. Even if it’s a tiny victory, it’s important.

If you mess up, honor your word by acknowledging the mistake, and apologizing. Take responsibility, without blame or shame. And then commit yourself to growing from this mistake.

Only once you’ve gotten good at the easy promises should you go to harder ones. Instead of promising to write for an hour, promise to write for 5 or 10 minutes. Instead of trying to meditate for an hour, just meditate for 5 minutes. Same with exercise, or anything that requires focus. Small promises, executed impeccably.

Don’t make indefinite promises — like that you’ll never touch another drop of alcohol. Make small promises, like you’re not going to eat a cookie for the next hour. Then make the promises easier to fulfill — get rid of the cookies, or remove yourself from the vicinity of the cookies.

Over time, if you work on developing the power of your word, it will become something you don’t question. And then your word will be like a powerful magic spell you can cast anytime you need to make magic happen. </text>

<text> ## How to Break Dependence on the Phone

On average, people spend more than 3 hours on their phones each day, picking up their phones nearly 60 times a day … with some people spending closer to 4 hours.

These numbers aren’t meant to be judgments — it’s not a bad thing to look at your phone — but instead are meant to bring some awareness to our phone usage.

A lot of people I talk to want to decrease their usage of phones — not necessarily decreasing to zero, but decreasing impulsive usage of their phones.

Many of us tend to grab our phones anytime there’s a lull, and once you get on your phone it can lead to mindless scrolling.

So how can we develop more mindful use of our phones, and become less dependent on them?

Let’s explore together.

Becoming More Mindful of Phone Usage

If you don’t have awareness, you can’t change something. So the most important first step is to start to bring mindfulness to your phone usage.

Here’s how:

• Get a small notebook or scrap of paper, and each time you reach for your phone, make a tally mark on the paper. This will bring awareness to reaching for your phone.
• Notice what you’re feeling when you reach for the phone. Write that down on the paper or notebook as well. Boredom, anxiety, overwhelm, sadness, loneliness, fear, frustration. This is the reason you’re reaching for the phone — in hopes of dealing with this emotion (hint: it doesn’t work).
• Take three breaths before you actually unlock the phone. You have the phone in your hand … pause for a moment and take three breaths. Notice the feeling you’re feeling that makes you want to reach for the phone. Do the breaths help with the feeling?

Commit to doing this for a week. You’ll develop beautiful mindfulness around your phone usage, even if you don’t stop using the phone.

Breaking the Habit of Phone Dependence

At this point, your mindful practice has set you up for success to break the habit.

Let’s look at how to change the habit:

• Understand your Why: Before you start, ask yourself why you want to make this change. Is it important, or is it a “this would be nice” kind of thing? If it’s just going to be “nice” to make the change, you won’t stick with it, because it’s not more important than your urges. You need a more meaningful reason: it’s going to lead to better mental health, better relationships, better productivity with your meaningful work, or whatever would be meaningful for you. Write this reason down and have it somewhere you’ll see it each day.
• Set an intention: Commit yourself to making this change. Is your intention to not look at social media or certain apps on your phone? Is it to only use those apps twice a day for 30 minutes each session? Is it to never use your phone except for reading or music? Set a clear intention, and commit yourself to it for a certain amount of time (let’s say 4 weeks).
• Lock screen reminder: Make your phone lock screen something that will remind you of your intention. A nature scene, a quote, a photo of your kids, whatever it takes. This will help you bring awareness whenever the urge comes up.
• Find other meaningful activities: What do you want to do instead of look at your phone? It should be something that 1) addresses the emotions you identified in the “mindful” section above and 2) you enjoy or find meaningful. For example, if you reach for your phone when you feel overwhelmed or anxious … maybe sitting in meditation, doing a few yoga poses, or going for a short walk will help you deal with those emotions, and lead to greater health or mental clarity. Other ideas: connect with a friend, do some stretches or pushups, drink a cup of tea, do some breathing exercises, or write someone a love note.
• Pause practice: When you are about to use your phone, practice taking a short pause. Breathe. Notice your emotions. Tend to them. Consider your meaningful Why and your intention. If you can’t avoid using the phone after this pause, don’t beat yourself up. Just introducing the pause is a huge, huge step. Celebrate any progress.
• Be willing to be with all of life: We most often use our phones because there are things we don’t want to feel or experience. It’s an avoidance mechanism. But what if we train ourselves to open up to all experiences, all parts of life? We don’t need our coping mechanisms anymore. So each time you reach for the phone, practice being with and opening to the experience you want to avoid. This is a training, and with practice, you’ll increase your capacity to experience and love every experience that life has to offer.
• Daily review: At the end of each day, before you go to sleep, set a reminder to do a short review. How did you do with your intention? What got in the way? What feelings did you resist being with? What can you improve tomorrow? Be compassionate with yourself. But use this daily review for continual learning and improvement.

This is not an easy habit to change, but it’s changeable … if you commit yourself, and find a meaningful reason. And if you let yourself continue to learn and grow in this process. </text>

<text> ## Slow Down to Fall in Love Again

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Recently I got a running watch, and have been keeping most of my runs below a certain heart rate, to build up my heart’s aerobic fitness with lots of slow running.

The pace of my runs has been incredibly slow for the last month.

It’s helped me to fall in love with running again.

I’ll share more about that, but it has me wanting to share a more general thought: slowing down can have us falling in love with anything if we let it.

Let me share a few examples:

• Music: Often we listen to music while rushing through our day — while going somewhere, while working, while cleaning. But there’s a sweet pleasure in just sitting around listening to an entire album, the way we used to do, not doing anything but enjoying the music.
• Work: We often give work a bad name, because it can feel burdensome, overwhelming, exhausting. We have to coerce ourselves to do work. But if we slow down with our tasks, give them some space and allow ourselves to fully immerse ourselves in each activity … it can transform the experience. It can feel spacious and luxurious.
• Eating: Many of us rush through our meals, scrolling on our phones as we eat, watching TV or videos, doing work. It’s hard to enjoy food this way — the food has no flavor if we’re not paying attention. There can be something delicious about slowing down and giving our full attention to our food, even for 5-10 minutes. Savor, and find gratitude for this nourishing beautiful meal in front of us.
• Walking: Usually if we’re walking, we’re in a hurry to get somewhere (at least, I am). Or we’re walking for exercise but we have music or a podcast loaded up so we don’t have to pay attention to the walk. But there slowing down and just enjoying the way — even if it’s on the way to get somewhere — can be transformative. Enjoy being outside, enjoy the short journey to go from one place to the next, enjoy the space between things, enjoy moving your body through space.

Of course, the same idea can be applied to anything, not just these examples. Reading, exercise, relationships, drinking tea, a bedtime ritual. Let me return to the topic of falling in love with running again, before I talk about the way to slow down in order to fall in love all over again.

How Slowing Down Helped Me Fall in Love with Running Again

I read a bunch of articles (and a book called 80/20 Running) that inspired me to slow my running pace down to an easy breezy conversational pace. Running slowed way down, but that allowed me to run longer (in distance and in time) and not feel very tired or risk injury. I started running almost every day.

These longer, slower runs became a place to reconnect to myself. Sometimes I load up an audiobook or listen to an album. Other times I just enjoy the outdoors going by at a slower pace.

The biggest surprise is how much I started to look forward to my daily runs! Instead of this hard, tiring workout that I would have to “overcome” … it became a place of peace and play. Running slower comes with its own challenges (I often feel I’m going too slow), but it came with unexpected joys.

After a couple of weeks of this, I realized that I had fallen in love with running again, for the first time in a decade.

The Way of Slowing Down to Re-Fall in Love

So how can we apply this not only to running, but to anything that we’re not excited about anymore?

The Way of Slowing Down starts with simply setting an intention to slow down. I did this with running, because I was convinced of its benefits. If you think there’s a beautiful possibility available to you if you slow down with a particular activity, set the intention.

Then find a way to remember. For running, I had the running watch to give me feedback if I was going too fast. For eating, it helps to put technology away and only have the food in front of you. Same thing for reading, writing, or drinking a cup of tea.

Next, find a way to savor the deliciousness of the activity. What is there to love about the experience? What joys can you discover, if you keep your mind and heart open? Can you allow yourself to relish in it?

Finally, I love having a sense of anticipation. It’s the feeling of “I can’t wait to be with my lover again!” It’s the sweetness of looking forward to play, joy, pleasure, spaciousness. Always leave the activity with a little longing — don’t exhaust your desire. This way, the next time you are about to do the activity, you’ll feel a lift in your heart.

What would you like to fall in love with again?

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
~ Winnie the Pooh

p.s. if you’re interested in practicing slowing down with me, join me in my London retreat in April: the Practice of Slowing Down. </text>

<text> ## Cultivating Stokedness

How many days do you wake up excited for life, stoked to be alive and take on the day’s challenges?

If your answer is “often,” then congratulations! That’s an amazing way to live life — but you’re in the minority.

Most people are unenthusiastic about their lives, not looking forward to what the day has in store. That’s not a bad thing — if that’s how you’re feeling, it’s just how you’re feeling. There isn’t a “right” way to be.

That said, if you’d like to be more stoked about life, then there are ways to cultivate that. We’ll explore some of those ways in this post.

Living a Life of Stokedness

What would it be like if you felt more excited by life each day? Or by what you were taking on at work, in your relationships, in your workouts?

Life is incredible, and we are immensely privileged to be alive in this miraculous world. We don’t always appreciate it — and that’s OK, to not always be grateful or excited — but there is the possibility of feeling more awe and wonder in our days.

Let’s say you wake up and you have a bunch of work to do (in addition to other things going on in your life). You could feel a sense of burden, overwhelm, and anxiety about all of it … or you could feel really excited by the meaningful things you’re taking on. It’s not that one approach is right and the other is wrong, but they are entirely different approaches and experiences. We have a choice.

What if you took on each thing with a sense of wonder, and an open heart? What if each act of your day were an expression of your love?

What Gets in the Way

All of that sounds good, but there are things that get in the way of living life this way:

• A default of not being enthusiastic about life. This comes from years of having our enthusiasm dampened, from feeling disappointment over and over, from learning to be jaded.
• A sense of pointlessness that comes when we feel like we’ve failed at things over and over, or that people have let us down over and over.
• Built-up pain from things that have hurt us, to the point where little things can agitate the wounds in our hearts, easily causing frustration, anger, explosions of outrage.
• Built-up fear from things that have gone wrong, leading to a general sense of anxiety and overwhelm, and worrying about everything.
• Built-up resentment and anger from injustices and offenses, large and small.
• Built-up self-judgment from all the things we think we’re doing wrong, failing at, etc.
• Built-up sadness from many losses, both large and small, so that the world and people around us can easily trigger sadness.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but I hope you can get a sense of what gets in the way of our enthusiasm and stokedness about life. Our hearts are closed more than open.

There is nothing wrong with any of this — it’s a natural consequence of life! We build up conditioning from lots of things that happen to us, from grief and loss to hurt and anger and fear. It builds up, and we lose the open-heartedness with the world.

Releasing the Blockers

If all of the above represents blockers in our hearts, then wouldn’t it be freeing to be able to release these blockers?

The process to release the built-up blockers is simple but not necessarily easy:

• When the world triggers a conditioned blocker (anger, resentment, fear, sadness, hurt, overwhelm, anxiety, jealousy, grief, etc.) … notice that it’s there, and decide to release it.
• Sit still for a few minutes, and let yourself feel whatever you feel. Relax, and allow the feeling as fully as you can. Surrender to it, allow it to just be an experience of energy in the moment.
• Know that you’ll be OK. It’s just energy, and if you relax instead of resisting the energy, it will just pass through you. That said … only do it if the intensity is a 7 out of 10 or lower. You don’t need to work with a 10/10 intensity, unless you have a therapist working with you.
• After it passes, give yourself some gratitude and love. You have released some of your blockage.

It might take a number of these kinds of releasing sessions to actually release a blocker, but the more you’re able to surrender and feel it, letting it pass through you, the less it will remain in you. You’ll be freed.

How to Cultivate Stokedness

If you commit to practicing with the releasing practice above, you will be much more open-hearted toward life. You will naturally be more and more enthusiastic.

In addition, you could actively cultivate a stokedness toward your life:

• Try to find moments to appreciate the wonder of life. It could be out on a daily walk, or a quiet moment in the morning, or when you’re eating a blueberry. Set reminders so you can make this a regular practice.
• Find something to get excited about. Recently I bought myself a running watch and have not shut up about it for weeks. What have you been excited about lately? Let yourself get caught up.
• Get curious about people. What could you discover that’s interesting about the person in front of you? What makes them tick? What is the light beneath their shadow?
• When you’re taking on a work task, could you connect with why it matters to you? Could you find something meaningful and awesome about it? If you do this regularly, you’ll find a new enthusiasm about whatever you take on.
• If you’re going to do a workout, instead of doing it because you should, could you find something fun about it?
• Let yourself approach things with a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder and play, as often as you can.

In general, see if you can purposely open your heart and let love move you. And see what such an open-hearted life could be like. </text>

<text> ## Become Quiet So You Can Listen

“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”

― Rumi

There’s rarely a moment in the day when most of us stop moving and stop the noise. For most of us, we’re working, we’re moving, we’re driving, we’re listening to things on our headphones, we’re watching things, we’re filling up the little spaces by checking our phones.

This isn’t wrong — it’s a very human tendency to want to be busy, productive, filling every space with something useful or entertaining.

But what if we could let ourselves become quiet?

What happens is something magical: we start to discover a new way of being alive, and a deeper experience starts to reveal itself to us.

What does it mean to become quiet? There isn’t a simple answer to this, but here are some of what I’ve been learning:

• It means slowing down for at least a few minutes, physically — refrain from moving around doing a lot of things, refrain from doing a bunch of tasks on your computer or phone, but instead just sit or come to some kind of stillness or slowness.
• It doesn’t mean you need to meditate — though of course that’s one way to do it. Instead, you could go for a quiet walk in nature, or sit watching the sunset, or lie in a hammock and just feel the breeze.
• Move away from technology, at least for a few minutes. Disconnect. Let go of reading and listening as well. Just sit still or move slowly, not trying to get anything done or consume anything.
• It means you let go of being productive or being entertained. You don’t need to achieve anything, prove anything, be excited. You let go of these kinds of compulsions, even for a few minutes.
• It means you don’t need to feel a certain way, or avoid feeling a certain way. For example, a lot of people want to feel productive, competent, entertained, so we do whatever we can to get those kinds of feelings. Also, we don’t want to feel bored, lonely, sad, helpless … so we do everything we can in order to avoid these feelings. Becoming quiet means we can allow ourselves to feel however we feel, just allowing it to be our experience. This gives us a freedom for life to be just as it is, and for ourselves to be just how we are, however we’re feeling.

Stillness and quiet aren’t the sexiest things, where you can make a lot of money or get a bunch of followers or viewers. We don’t usually realize we’re craving quiet. But in my experience, this is where the deepest experience of life lies, in the quietude.

What might you hear in the stillness and quiet? What life has to say.

“In stillness, the world is restored.” — Lao Tzu

</text>

Now i need you to identify 5 segment of the text provided that captures the unique writing style of this author. Each segment can be up to 400 words verbatim and span multiple paragraph. Choose a good chunk of the text so that it can be understood in context

After each segment add a short commentary on why it's chosen. wrap each segment with a example tag, ie:

<example> segment </example>

commentary

<example> segment </example>

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