The Mountain Is You

DO YOUR INNER WORK
This is perhaps the most important and yet most com-
monly overlooked, because it is the least comfortable.
To do your inner work means to evaluate why something 
triggered you, why something is upsetting you, what your 
life is trying to show you, and the ways you could grow 

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from these experiences. Truly powerful people absorb 
what has happened to them and sort of metabolize it. 
They use it as an opportunity to learn, to develop them-
selves. This type of inner mental and emotional work is 
non-negotiable if you want to be truly powerful.
Powerful people are not the most aggressive; aggression is 
usually a self-defense mechanism. Powerful people are the 
ones most unfazed by small disturbances and most willing 
to fully process and work through the big ones.
Of course, this is the foundational stuff. Next, you have 
to work on simplifying your life, talking less about your 
ambitions, and showing more of your accomplishments 
once they are completed. Gradually make health im-
provements. Assume that everyone, and everything, 
has something to teach you. Become comfortable with 
vulnerability, as vulnerability precedes almost every sig-
nificant part of your life, and intentionally design your 
daily routine.
Through everything, you must be thinking as your most 
powerful self would. If you learn to see the world and your 
life through that lens, you can create a life that reflects the 
intentions of that side of you. It already exists; you just 
need to know how to tap into it.

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L E A R N I N G T O VA L I D AT E
Y O U R F E E L I N G S
If we want to be effective in therapy, in politics, in rela-
tionships, in teaching kids, in talking someone down from 
the edge, in keeping peace, making friends, fostering con-
nection, and making progress, there’s one technique we 
have to employ first.
It’s a little secret, and it’s one that requires very little ef-
fort. But it disarms people. It opens them, makes them 
receptive, willing to listen and adapt. It is healing, it is 
mind-altering, but most importantly, it is the first step to 
progress. It is emotional validation.
Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t mean you agree with 
them. It doesn’t mean you concede that they are correct. 
It doesn’t mean that those feelings are the healthiest; it 
doesn’t mean they are informed by logic. Validating feel-
ings does not mean you make them more true; it means 
you remind someone that it is human to feel things they 
don’t always understand.
How often do we just need a partner to stop trying to 
strategize and just say, that must really suck?
How much of a weight is lifted off our shoulders when we 
think: Yes, I really am stressed right now, and I deserve to be?
How light do we feel when we see another person’s story 

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splayed out across a screen, one that we can relate to, and 
understand, no matter how devastating it is? 
How much better do we feel when we simply allow our-
selves to be aggrieved and pissed-off and irrationally mad? 
When we let ourselves have it—the feeling, that is—
something incredible happens. We no longer have to take 
it out on other people, because we are no longer relying on 
their validation to get us through it.
We can be aggrieved and pissed and mad and do our own 
processing without hurting anyone else.
When people are crying out or acting out in their lives, 
they aren’t just asking for help. They are most often just 
asking for someone to affirm that it is okay to feel the way 
that they do. And if they have to inflate and exaggerate 
circumstances for you to truly feel the weight and impact 
that they do? They’ll do it. They’ll do whatever it takes 
to get someone else to say: I am so sorry for what you are 
going through. This is not because they are incompetent or 
dumb. It is because in a world that does not teach us how 
to adequately process our own feelings, we must often rely 
solely on our maladaptive coping mechanisms.
When we cannot validate our own feelings, we go on a 
never-ending quest to try to force others to do it for us, 
but it never works. We never really get what we need.

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This looks like needing attention, affirmation, compli-
ments. But it also looks like being dramatic, negative, and 
focusing disproportionately on what’s wrong in our lives. 
When someone is complaining about something simple—
and they seem to be doing it more than the given situation 
would call for—they aren’t trying to get your help about a 
small issue. They are trying to have their feelings validated.
This is also a common root of self-sabotaging behaviors. 
Sometimes, when we have deep wells of grief within us, 
we absolutely cannot allow ourselves to relax and enjoy 
our lives and relationships. We cannot just “have fun,” be-
cause doing so feels like a betrayal. It feels offensive. We 
need to feel validated, but we don’t even know why.