Winter 2015. Nothing seemed to go right. Dreams were being scattered by the Moscow snowstorm, and it felt like spring would never arrive.
But in those moments of cold and hopelessness, one certainty remained: this was not a rehearsal. This was life. There was no time for despair, only the choice to live each day as though it mattered.
Monday begins today. That became the mantra — not the Monday of new beginnings perpetually postponed, but the Monday that starts right now. You cannot abandon your goals simply because others do not believe in them.
Going against the wind is hard, but if you learn to move with it, you can travel further than you imagined. We are not born with inner strength, and no amount of education or money can supply it. We build it ourselves, through the slow work of realising who we are.
There are no paths without mistakes, just as there are no heights without lows. Strength grows precisely in the falling and the rising. Four years after that winter, a journey through India led to the foothills of the Himalayas, where the most famous refugee on earth had found shelter decades before.
He offered a simple observation: every person’s strength lives in their smile. Within the smile is the power of love and ease — the two qualities that all psychologists spend their careers trying to foster in others. The simplest path to that elusive harmony is to stand before a mirror, smile at yourself, and say the words you have been waiting to hear: I love you, which means we will succeed. Today. — Lara Palmer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief