Raw

What is failure? If I stayed, that would be failure. I had to be true to myself. You've got to listen to the voice in your gut. It is individual. It is unique. It is yours. It's called being authentic.

We don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well and living fully. For the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up.

It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not.

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I had to take off the teacher mask, which so many of us put on at the beginning; the mask that says: 'Well, I'm the teacher and I know it all. You sit there and I'll tell you.'

We keep waiting until we run out of 'untils.' Then it is too late. Our plane has crashed and we haven't done anything about it. We have passed through life without truly exploring its possibilities.

Never underestimate the power of other people's love and prayer. They have incredible power. It's as if I've been carried on the shoulders of an entire army. And they had made me weightless.

When someone close to you dies, it is not the big moments you remember, but small moments — the seemingly insignificant way Dave wheezed slightly when he laughed hard, or how he loved the way the earth smelled in the fall. If you can notice these moments, breathe them in, even for a second, then you have achieved success.

Our wounds are our best lessons, our life's biggest teachers. I have seen powerful love that has changed me forever. It has made me try to walk in other shoes, show more compassion and humility.

Our wounds are our best lessons, our life's biggest teachers.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.