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The Alchemy of Hardship: Transforming Difficulty into Wisdom
Last Thursday at 6:30 a.m., something terrible happened: A beloved friend of mine died. And as if to hammer home the point, writing about returning to how things were just made no sense to me. So, I stopped.
Michelle Lewis was not just a friend and an icon in my Fort Greene, Brooklyn neighborhood—she was a community member. She was a How to Live subscriber and one of its most ardent champions.
Without fail, she’d send me a note every Wednesday after reading the new piece to tell me how perfectly timed it was, how much it helped her, or what she learned.
She was also the sort of friend who made me feel seen, valued, and cherished. No easy feat for someone who was also brash and proud, hysterically funny, irreverent, and found to be intimidating by those who didn’t know her.
She cursed, she was inappropriate, and we laughed our asses off together. But for a person who was proud, tough, and not particularly forthcoming with her emotions, she was very free with me, which made me feel special.
More important than that was her love for dogs: Michelle was a small business owner who cooked 600 dog treats every morning in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen and sold the treats to the local cafés, coffee shops, and other stores. Every morning, she’d go to Fort Greene Park, sit on the same bench, and give the leftover treats to the dogs.
There was no dog she didn’t know, no dog who didn’t love her.
They would wait for her to show up, sprinting across the park when they saw Michelle arrive. God help anyone who sat in that spot before she got there, or the dogs would jump all over the unsuspecting person. Michelle’s treats were so good that I held an intervention with my dog, Busy, and threatened her with rehab.
After being unable to write the original piece about returning to “normal” life, I thought about what Michelle loved most about this newsletter. As I perused her text messages, I saw that she most valued the bits of wisdom and advice I offered each week.
So to honor Michelle’s memory in this week’s newsletter, I will do just that and offer some of the best advice I have ever heard, thought, or given.
With wisdom from my sister Kara thrown in for good measure.
And, as always, I invite you to please add your advice/wisdom/insight in the comments.
The memorial at Michelle's bench in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn.
Lack of attribution means I heard it from the wind, and out in the real world.
The hero's journey is an arc, but the heroine's journey moves in spirals or circles.
Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it. - Lori Gottlieb
All great thoughts are living thoughts, and they can grow and be changed. And they change and grow as a tree, and not as a cloud.
You cannot control others. No matter how much you push, cajole, or threaten, they will not change. You need to find your own happiness. Do not rely on others to make you; that's on you. It's an inside job.
Uncertainty should feel like a challenge and not a threat.
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. - Winston Churchill
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act; it's a habit. - Will Durant
Frustration is a matter of expectation (All of the Stoics)
When people seem like they are mean, they’re almost never mean. They’re anxious. - Alain de Botton
We're not an object, we're a process. - Justin Mager, MD
Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.
The nature of life is change, and the nature of people is to resist change.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. –Marcus Aurelius
Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. - Tim Ferriss
You don't find the time to do something, you make the time to do things. Debbie Millman
Don't do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation you have with yourself. You'll always know.
We get rewarded in public for the rituals we have in private - Matthew Hussey.
Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. - Jerzy Gregorek
Original art for How to Live by Edwina White
What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt. It is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else. - Hal Boyle
I believe the key to self-sufficiency is breaking free of the mindset that someone somewhere owes you something or will come to your rescue. - Amelia Boone
We are always the same age inside - Gertrude Stein
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
It’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling- Marc Brackett.
Doing things for others out of fear isn't love, it's selfish anxiety - Abby Medcalf.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.-
It's easier to repair strong children than to repair broken men - Frederick Douglass.
If you refuse to hear criticism, you choose not to learn.
Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying too zealously to make it easy for them. - Lori Gottlieb
Everything is neutral; we're the ones who give things their positive or negative charge.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau
Insights from inside my head.
Most of your mental anguish is believing the "should" instead of accepting the "is."
Most of all suffering is created by pushing back against reality
Whenever you’re afraid or worried, project yourself into the future and ask your 90-year-old self what she would do.
If you keep finding yourself in the same damn spot, ask yourself, “What am I not letting myself know?”
And you? Tell me the best advice, insight, wisdom, or quote that's gotten you through a hard time.
Please leave them in the comments!
Thank you for reading.
Until next week, I will remain…
Amanda
Paid subscribers read essays examining the psychological forces that determine behavior; why we repeat patterns we claim to reject, how we mistake performance for authenticity, why we pursue desires we've inherited rather than chosen.
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Quick note: Nope, I’m not a therapist—just someone who spent 25 years with undiagnosed panic disorder and 23 years in therapy. How to Live distills what I’ve learned through lived experience, therapy, and obsessive research—so you can skip the unnecessary suffering and better understand yourself.
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