“Resentment in some ways is like a projected regret. Instead of trying to show us what we should change, it seems to want to tell us what other people should change. However, other people are under no obligation to live up to our ideas of them. In fact, our only problem is that we have an unrealistic expectation that someone was meant to be exactly as we think they should or love us exactly as we imagined they would.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
“There is no job, person, or city that you can force to be right for you if it is not, though you can pretend for a while. You can play games with yourself, you can justify and make ultimatums. You can say you’ll try just a little longer, and you can make excuses for why things aren’t working out right now. The truth is that what is right for you will come to you and stay with you and won’t stray from you for long. The truth is that when something is right for you, it brings you clarity, and when something is wrong for you, it brings you confusion.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
“I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It open you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action. When you are a kid, everything is new. You don't know what's under each rock, or up the creek. So, you look. You notice because you need to. The world is new. This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child - why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns that patters of living. Ever second has value.
But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what's next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand.
But travel has a way of shaking the brain awake. When I'm in a new place, I don't know what's next, even if I've read all the guidebooks and followed the instructions of my friends. I can't know a smell until I've smelled it. I can't know the feeling of a New York street until I've walked it. I can't feel the hot exhaust of the bus by reading about it. I can't smell the food stands and the cologne and the spilled coffee. Not until I go and know it in its wholeness. But once I do, that awakened brain I had as a kid, with wide eyes and hands touching everything, comes right back. This brain absorbs the new world with gusto. And on top of that, it observes itself. It watches the self and parses out old reasons and motives. The observation is wide. Healing is mixed in.”
― To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what's next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand.
But travel has a way of shaking the brain awake. When I'm in a new place, I don't know what's next, even if I've read all the guidebooks and followed the instructions of my friends. I can't know a smell until I've smelled it. I can't know the feeling of a New York street until I've walked it. I can't feel the hot exhaust of the bus by reading about it. I can't smell the food stands and the cologne and the spilled coffee. Not until I go and know it in its wholeness. But once I do, that awakened brain I had as a kid, with wide eyes and hands touching everything, comes right back. This brain absorbs the new world with gusto. And on top of that, it observes itself. It watches the self and parses out old reasons and motives. The observation is wide. Healing is mixed in.”
― To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
“What you have to realize is that money and success are tools. They buy you back time and offer you the opportunity to help, employ, influence, and change the lives of others.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
“Don’t worry about doing it well; just do it.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
Colin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Colin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Colin
Lists liked by Colin








