The Exact Words You Need to Hear Today If It Feels Like Nothing’s Working
- Guest
- Mark Nepo
- Read time
- ~4 min
- Uploaded
- 13 Nov 2025
- Duration
- 1:13:53
- Views
- 375.9K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
When you feel powerless, start by admitting what's true.
Poet and author Mark Nepo says we often fear things that have already happened: 'I'm afraid of being lonely, and I already am. I'm afraid things are going to change. They've already changed.' Naming the truth stops you from spending energy dreading it. His shorthand, from one of his poems: 'Fear wastes air.'
- 02
Life is always where you are. There is no 'there.'
Nepo calls the modern belief that real life is happening somewhere else (FOMO) one of our most menacing assumptions. 'There's only here.' He adds that the difficulty of any moment is only half of reality. The other half is what's still beautiful and alive right now.
- 03
People learn by willfully shedding or by being broken open.
'If you don't willfully shed, don't worry, you'll be broken open.' Great love and great suffering are the two great teachers. Hard times are often what open us to grace, he says, because pain lowers our defenses.
- 04
Ask a struggling person two questions: 'What's it like to be you right now?' and 'What do you care about?'
These are non-judgmental questions for loved ones and students who've lost their spark. Don't tell them they're stuck or to cheer up: 'Did that ever work?' Invite their story instead. The questions open connection both with others and with yourself.
- 05
Love comes from tending your own soul, not reinventing yourself to be desirable.
In 'The Bee Comes' (May 19), which made Mel cry: 'The flower doesn't dream of the bee, it blossoms and the bee comes.' Nepo describes reinventing himself to seem more deserving of love, only to learn again and again that caring for his own inner life is what invites love in.
- 06
Follow what makes you come alive, even if it keeps changing.
His mentor Joel Elkes told him: 'You have a gift. Honor it and let it be your teacher.' Nepo's friend Paul followed his aliveness from running an art gallery in Albany, New York, to sumi painting to apprenticing with a foreign-car mechanic. Your 'gift' might be watching the sky, cooking for friends or stamp collecting.
- 07
A ritual is a habit done with an open heart.
The same act can be a dull habit or a grounding ritual depending on whether you're present for it. If you notice you're on autopilot midday: 'Stop. No judgment. Back up. Do the simple thing openheartedly.' Some days it will still feel like a chore, and that's being human.
- 08
Do what matters first.
For years Nepo did the tedious things first and saved the sacred things for after. He calls that backwards. Starting with what matters widens your 'aperture of heart and mind,' and the tedious tasks lose their edge. It doesn't make them wonderful, but they become easier to carry.
- 09
Aging is like a meteor: flaking off while getting brighter.
From his book The Fifth Season, on creativity in the second half of life: most meteors burn up, getting brighter as they shed until only light remains. At 74, with back surgery and arthritis, he sees each loss as flaking off while his light grows. Since more years are behind him than ahead, he says the real purpose of looking back or forward is to make that light brighter.
EXAMPLES
- 01
The cancer that started The Book of Awakening
In his early 30s, just out of graduate school, Nepo was diagnosed with a rare lymphoma in his skull that had grown to the size of a grapefruit. He also had a rib removed. One night, vomiting every half hour from oral chemotherapy, he watched the sun come up and realized that somewhere nearby a baby was being born and a couple was making love for the first time. Life was still going on beyond his pain.
- 02
'The land where nothing is true'
At a retreat at the Sophia Institute in Charleston, a mother said she and her 28-year-old son, Jack, were 'stuck' because he thought nothing was true. Nepo suggested that if Jack had moved to China, she'd ask what it's like there and what brought him. So why not ask him, 'What's it like to live in the land where nothing is true?'
- 03
Feeding his father applesauce
Nepo was estranged from his parents for many years and reconnected with his father, a master woodworker, in his 80s. His father lived to 93. After a stroke, in a noisy, beeping hospital ward, Nepo fed him applesauce with a spoon, a 'sad and beautiful and bittersweet' moment that felt like his whole life in a single act.
- 04
Nepo's three morning rituals
He opens the blinds to let light in, takes care of something living by feeding his yellow lab Zuzu, and does something for someone he loves by making coffee for his wife Susan, a night owl, before she wakes.
- 05
Two Monkeys Sleeping (June 6)
He read an entry about two monkeys at the Central Park Zoo sleeping peacefully with their heads bowed toward each other, while tourists tapped on the glass. Mel and Chris each keep their own copy of the book by their beds because they don't want to share.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Choose three simple rituals
Morning, midday or evening: open the blinds, water the flowers, make someone coffee. Pick three and stay present for them.
- 02
The Book of Awakening
Daily reflections, one per date. Mel reads a page most mornings. Nepo says it's fine to skip days, and an entry opened a month later can greet you 'like an old friend.'
- 03
Lines to keep
'Fear wastes air.' 'What's it like to be you right now?' 'Life is more than anything we could dream of if we truly meet each other and meet ourselves right here, right now.'