“I think at this point in my life, to use that the airplane analogy, when oxygen masks drop down, and I’m supposed to make sure my oxygen mask is on my face before helping others. But that’s not something that I’m the best at. Oftentimes I will lean into helping others before helping myself. Before making sure that I’m in a good spot. But I think right now I need to take care of myself, knowing that taking care of myself puts me in a position to help others even more.”
If you want to be a better person, start actually doing the things that that sort of a person would do. And then eventually it will just become the new you. It will be your second nature and then you won’t even have to worry about it anymore.
“Everyone has those moments when they think their life is the worst thing ever, but it’s really not. You just have to think of all the amazing things you’ve done in your life. That you’re lucky to be doing what you’re doing.”
“One of the best parts about life is figuring it out. There is a joy to screwing up and finding your own answers.”
“Always try to remember the good things. But make the best of it. Be happy. Especially when you’ve got your parents. That’s the most important thing. That I can give. Honor your dad and your mom.”
“Forget about the talent, as a person, I feel like I’m a good person, and I feel like that’s going to carry me through.”
“You’ve heard that we accept the love we think we deserve. There were a lot of people who tried to help me, but I just couldn’t accept it and it doesn’t make me any less grateful for what they did for me.”
“We’re all coming from a place of struggle. But we also are all wanting love, and needing love, and so even just to say “Hi” to a stranger, it’s such a beautiful thing when you see it, you know? When you say “Good morning,” and they’re not expecting you to say “Good morning,” and then they light up, and say “Good morning.” That energy makes a difference to make this world a better place.”
“Something that I need to work on is to not be so negative on myself. Because I’m here to grow. I came here for that reason. To learn and get better.”
“I think that I’ve been dealing with depression my whole life to varying degrees. I mean I remember at one point walking down the streets of New York, and wanting to throw myself in front of a cab. Not really understanding what that was about. Feeling very alone. And my divorce was the thing that, sort of, was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I went to multiple treatment programs, and sort of had to step away from my whole life for a while to break all of the pieces apart. Look at each one of them and decide which ones I wanted to keep, and which ones I wanted to let go of and rebuild myself”
“Life is too short. Life is way too short to do what you think you should do, or what others think you should do. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to not be 100% happy, or at least try to be there. So I decided to follow my dreams instead of follow the practical path. “
You have to be bold enough to say what you really think, and I’m very bold, needless to say. Take life a little more lightly, it’s not that serious.
“Everyone has a different path, it’s interesting to look at them and analyze them. Even if it’s just a point of being like ‘No we don’t need to be there in our life yet, it’s going to be a different schedule for us.'”
“For me personally, I like to set goals, and I like to run after them. So when I find myself accomplishing these goals even if it takes me 4,5,6 years, I get really excited.”
“I’m definitely a people pleaser. That’s a good thing, but it can be bad if it’s not allowing you to be happy because you are pleasing other people. So just finding a balance with that.”
“I don’t know what I want, but I know what I do not want. Which is stagnation.”
“Part of it is the media, we see the people that we idealize on TV, and we want to be like them. And we aren’t able to, because we can’t physically. So, we think less of ourselves. And at some point or another, I think every human being has done that. I compared myself to the people who I thought were perfect.”
There are going to be a lot of ups and downs, you know? Life is a roller coaster as they say. But be able to just learn. To be able to feel and still progress from that. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a serene feeling. What I will say just to keep pushing.
“They say they love you. They say that you’re like family, and it’s all great as long as you’re doing what they want you to be doing. As soon as you show your ass, or a side they don’t like, it’s kind of like they’re looking in a mirror, because people don’t want to deal with grief. They don’t want to have to experience it, they don’t want to go through it, and if they did maybe they didn’t deal with it properly.”
“I don’t know if there is a specific thing that gives me happiness. I feel like happiness is a choice. You could have the same things every day, but you can have those really bad days when you have to choose to be happy.”
“I think the overall goal for myself at least, and a lot of other people is just to really find happiness. Find that thing that is technically a job, but you don’t see it as a job. It makes you happy, because you’re doing what you love. People tend not to do that because life gets in the way. “
At the end of the day, when you’re a hundred years old, you are gonna look back and think “Man, that was a funny time, that was a funny time when she cheated on me, that was a fun time when I got fired, because that opened doors to this and that. So, just enjoy the ride.
“Part of what really drives me is I like to prove people wrong. I’ve had a lot of people in this city over the last 18 years try to tell me that I can’t or that I shouldn’t. I love proving someone wrong, and showing them that yes I can do that, and yes I will, and I will do it better than you ever imagined.”
“Communication is something that is really tough right now. I feel like not a lot of people are listening. If you were a superhero what would your power be? I always think about that, and I think it would just be fluent in every language as I would want to be able to communicate with everyone”
There is only one thing that scares me about getting older. It’s that I didn’t do all the things on my bucket list. If I can keep getting older, but be who I am, moving and grooving, then I have no fear of aging. I just want to stay youthful as long as I can. My name is Dyan Lopez and I was born on May 12th.
“I want to be a kid forever. When I’m 18, I’m going to be a legal adult, so I’m kind of scared about that. I have friends that are a little bit older, and they’re broke. And they tell me how broke they are, and how they are struggling. When they tell me stuff like that, I tell them “There’s always downs before there’s ups,” stuff like that. I would hope that I think that way when I’m in that position, but I don’t know. I might just be depressed.”
“If you got love man, everything else is freakin’ nothing bro. You need to love man. You need to love other people. You need to learn to love yourself, to stay out of trouble, to stay off of drugs, and that love is God man. Only God’s love can do that man.”
At my core, I’ve always been a very supportive person. I’m always there to help my family, take care of my sister, be friends with people. I think that a lot of my doubts and insecurities have come from not getting that validation from a straight society and household, and having to live with that shame. And not even being able to express it. Because a lot of people can’t relate to you when you are this way.
Luck is being prepared when opportunity presents itself. Growing up in a small town you don’t necessarily know what all the options are, and I think that’s been the biggest revelation for me. Being an adult and having that wide-eye. I want to tell young people to do dream big. Challenge yourself. Make goals.
One of the things that I think is exciting is that I don’t have as much fear as I used to bring with me all the time. Like to do something like this. To talk to you in front of a camera and actually be, I guess “who I really am.” That would’ve been much more of a challenge, and I think over time, over going to school in psychology, over the losses that I’ve had, the joys that I’ve had. I’ve accepted myself more.
“Depression is often a byproduct of frustration. It’s when you really want something to change, and you just don’t know how, and that’s when we tend to go to the deep end a little bit.”
Every time I catch myself complaining, I’m like “You’re fine. You’re OK. You’re living. Just cut it out!” If I catch myself like “oh that sucks!” I just tell myself to cut it out. Because if you have a negative mindset, that is going to be your day. My name is Amanda Sorensen and I was born on May 11th, 1991.
I struggle with “what is the purpose of life.” Because it all feels so meaningless, if the world is going to keep turning after you die, and then in a billion years the sun is going to explode. So, what does the hopefully 80 years on this planet matter? If I do this or if I do that. I think thinking that big is also meaningless. I’m trying to think on a smaller scale. Like in my life, I think my purpose is to just try to bring joy to other people. Whether that has a bigger role in the universe, it probably doesn’t. So, maybe I should just stop putting myself on that scale.
Traveling. It makes you feel small. And I think a lot of people would feel depressed about that concept. Whatever community you’re in, whatever thing you’re doing that is beloved by everybody. It’s really nice to go someplace where no-one has every heard of you, or the thing that you do.
After a decent amount of self-inspection, I think I know the things I could have done better. And one of them is not always looking for the giant star, but focusing on what you have and making it the best.
“Ya, the meaning of life, you’re making it, it’s your choice to make it. You know, people may believe all the things I believe in, that four rainbows and a rhinoceros are here, and in four years they will come and knit me a blanket. Because no one else will do it for you, and you should make it, you should make the meanings.”
“You know, you figure it out, and you grow and you learn how to do things that you didn’t know how to do before. And you just have to adapt, and I think that’s a part of college. It’s learning how to live your life and learn how to be an adult”
“What would your art look like if you had no fear?” I think at a certain point, when we start making art or start being creative in any way, we start with this child like sense of “I can do anything. I can make anything, and I don’t care what it looks like. If anyone looks at it, I don’t care what they think about it. And I wish that I could get back to that sense a little bit more. I think the farther you go in a creative pursuit, the older you get, and the more you study it, the harder it becomes to escape the art. In good and bad ways. I wish that I could go back and write without this notion of, it has to be structured this way.
As a millennial I’m no different than my mom or my dad, or someone born a hundred years ago. What’s different is the world that I was born into. There’s something about this time that makes my generation more anxious than other times.
I had to have friends tell me “You’re an amazing person.” You need to accept who you are, and once you’re happy with who you are, and you accept the things in your life, you will care less. And its so true!
Be yourself, but be your best self. And I think there are aspects of myself that I can certainly refine to not just be myself, but be my best self.
I think sometimes adults treat people younger than them like they are less than them, and it can be discouraging.
“It’s a generalized anxiety about not feeling safe in the world, and hyper-vigilance. That just constant feeling of being on edge. By practicing yoga you start to feel that your body is a safe place to be. We get to have the experience of feeling like, ‘I can take a breath, I can breathe into this anxiety, and feel that I’m still here and it’s okay. I’m safe. I’m safe in this moment. I don’t have to be hyper-vigilant.”
I want to be more confident in myself, because I feel I am too shy, I’m too introverted. At this point in my life, I feel like it’s time I get out of that and be more open, and be able to talk to people without thinking about their judgement or what they might think of me. I shouldn’t have to worry about what they are thinking about me.
I find the most exciting things are scariest things. So, I like being pushed out of the comfort zone, as much as it is awful. That’s where I find the growth.
“Growing up I think I wanted to be Walt Disney. I would send in drawings to toy companies saying, “Yo, you don’t have this toy. I think it needs to exist guys” I just thought that Disneyland Imagineers should be asking me at age 6, what rides need to come to the parks. I was just that kind of kid. Really creative.”
I can’t help but be so interested in so many different things that, I don’t know how I’ll channel it. Maybe it will just be like a moment, and it will just happen, and I won’t have to worry about it.
<!–
–>