Shitty values involve tangible external goals outside of our control. Better values are process-oriented. - Mark Manson

Values underlie everything we are and do. If what we value is unhelpful, if what we consider success/failure is poorly chosen, then everything based upon those values — the thoughts, the emotions, the day-to-day feelings — will all be out of whack. Everything we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.

What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame.

This fixation on the positive- on what's better, what's superior- only serves to remind us over and over again of what we are not, of what we lack, of what we should have been but failed to be. After all, no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she's happy. She just is.