From my vantage point, you’d have seen many, many people who are deeply loved and still lonely, beautiful and still horribly self-conscious, professionally successful and still so terrified of failure that their nocturnal tooth-gnashing could crush diamonds. Here’s something you’ll need to hold in your mind, at least temporarily, if you want to get a good look at your own North Star: External circumstances do not create feeling states. Feeling states create external circumstances.
— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life No Matter What!, p. 6