If you have lost absolutely everything, don't give up hope just yet. You still have today. You still have tomorrow. And that is all you need to begin a new life.

What has happened has already happened, so regret serves no purpose. You can carry all the regret in the world, and the past will stay exactly as it was. So gather up those old stories, bundle them together, and let them go.

Your future can be bright, if you're willing to start today. Don't be embarrassed, don't be shy, and don't be afraid.

Put your whole heart into it, and keep going. Be like the lotus that rises out of the muddy pond, opening fresh and full of life.

Life will bring you difficulties, but steady effort is what carries you through to success. You are more resilient than you think: you've already come through so many challenges. Who's to say you can't meet the ones still ahead?

Every life on this earth unfolds in its own way, so there's no point comparing yourself with anyone else. Other people have their own path to walk, and you have yours.

Whatever the day brings you, make sure that by evening you take it off and hang it up, like a coat at the door. The more of it you can set down, the more peace returns to you.

Don't hold on to resentment and frustration. Nothing good ever comes of it.

Don't carry other people's burdens on your shoulders, but always be open to learning something from them. And what you learn won't always be what your ego would like to learn. Some of life's deepest lessons are found underneath our suffering.

Sometimes life turns without warning. One moment everything seems blessed, and the next we're facing problem after problem. Perhaps the causes lie in a past life, perhaps earlier in this one. We simply can't know.

Be resilient. Good fortune can come to you from today onward. There's no point in looking back.

Don't be discouraged if what you're doing today hasn't brought results yet. If you plant a seed today, of course the harvest won't come tomorrow.

When problems pile up, when you've lost someone you love, when you've put your faith in something only to be betrayed, when you've been ill for a long time, or when you've failed an important exam, any of these can leave a person wilting, like a flower without water.

You may feel utterly exhausted. You no longer want to enjoy life the way you used to. Hope runs out, until you can't imagine ever feeling joy like that again.

The main reason we fall into depression is that we don't want to fully and honestly face what actually happened. We want reality to match our own version of events. Or we simply want everything to go back to the way it was.

As long as we resist what is, we remain at war with ourselves.

Maybe it's time to take a break from work and ease the pressure a little. Give yourself enough time to rest fully. Eat well and get enough sleep.

If your responsibilities are too heavy, let go of the ones that aren't truly necessary. You'll feel lighter, and when you're lighter, you can walk further.

To feel lighter, you also need to let go of the stories that are no longer worth remembering. Let them leave your heart and go their own way.

The memories that keep rising to the surface, let them come. Like water boiling over a pot, allow them to spill over and be gone.

Then set your mind on good things: what's happening now, doing good for others, and the things that need doing in this present moment.

As for the old stories, show them the door. They're ghosts. Why invite them in?

You can start a new life. There's nothing to regret, and nothing to be ashamed of. You don't need to pay attention to people who criticize you harshly. You are the one responsible for your life, and your future can get better if you put in the effort today.

One more important thing about depression: when you're feeling low, stay well away from drugs and alcohol. They can pull you into a hole so deep that it may be very hard to climb back out.

Whose life doesn't? Whether it's a little or a lot depends on how you look at it, and on how you learn to understand them.

If you've done many harmful things in the past, you may need to put a little more effort than others into this kind of learning.

Suffering is sticky. It tends to attract more suffering.

If you're going through a lot and you're often telling others about it, ask yourself: what good comes from that? If people love you, they'll show compassion or help in some small way. But if they dislike you, they may use it to put you down even more.

Don't lose sleep over it. Life has suffering, plenty of it, and it always has. When you meet it, look for a solution. If you can set down even a few of your burdens, you may notice your energy for life starting to return.

Be careful not to create unnecessary suffering for yourself. If you're often sad, you can end up making more suffering of your own.

If you have created bad karma in the past, you will certainly face difficulties now; that's simply how things unfold. But if you burn with frustration about it inside, you only create new bad karma.

Instead, let courage rise in you. Let perseverance rise, along with a clear, wakeful awareness. Keep your eyes on the horizon and keep walking toward it, step by step, for as long as you live.

If you're angry for just one minute, you've lost sixty seconds of happiness. Think about that.

And the first happiness anger destroys is your own.

When you spend time with others, you may think it's just you and them. But really there are three of you at the table: you, them, and your anger.

Don't stay angry for long. If you must, let yourself be angry for a second, then stop and let it go. Hold on to it too long and it begins to burn inside you like a fever.

Most of the time, the other person doesn't even realize they've upset you.

Learn to notice when anger arises in you. It doesn't act on its own; you are responsible for how it behaves. That feverish, frustrated feeling is a warning sign, because it leads to more suffering.

Study forgiveness. At heart, nobody truly wants to be bad or to cause harm.

Talk with one another and try to understand each other. If you reach an understanding and they begin to change their behavior, wonderful. If they struggle and don't change, well, I'm honestly not sure what to advise you there.

But what you can do is keep that burning feeling from returning. Stop going over it again and again in your mind, trying to fix it. Do your best to guide things toward a good outcome, knowing you can't make them turn out exactly as you'd like, and be content with what you've done. Then you won't sink into such depression.

You can hold an image of who you'd like someone to be, but you can't reshape who they really are.

Listen to the monks, and listen to your heart. That's all you can do.

One second of anger can be a mistake that lasts a lifetime. Don't let anger make your decisions for you. Be the master of your anger, not its servant.

Day after day, the mind drifts from one thought to the next, and we barely notice what we're thinking about. We leave one worry and wander into another. We stop thinking about one person and start thinking about someone else. We keep walking and walking without any idea where we're going.

After a while, your spirit can feel tossed about and turned upside down, and you may no longer see the happiness that already lives inside you.

If you tend to think a bit too much about other people's stories, try not to dwell so much on what's outside of you, and try not to pity yourself.

Think of your mind as a home. Thoughts about the outside world can wait at the door; what belongs inside is your attention to your own life, here and now. This is where real change begins. Train yourself to have strong willpower and a steady mind.

With awareness, check in with yourself:

Let your mind rest in this one day. Whatever state your mind is in, ask yourself: “Am I ready to do this right now, in this frame of mind?”

One more thing about the mind: the habits of thought you've carried your whole life. When you have good thoughts, you'll probably recognize them as good. When you have bad thoughts, you'll recognize those too. It's natural for the mind to have both.

What matters is to watch and observe your thoughts as they arise. Don't argue or fight with them. Simply guide your attention, gently, back to the present moment.

Be patient and persistent with this practice, and in time your restless mind will settle, like muddy water that grows clear when left alone.

Each of us is given a different measure of strength for this life; no two people are made quite the same. Everyone has their own path to walk. There's no need to compare at all. Comparison only leads to suffering.

You weren't born to walk at the same pace, or on the same road, as anyone else. Each of us starts from a different place, and each of us moves through life at our own speed.

A child born into wealth must walk a road full of decisions. A child born into poverty must begin from wherever they happen to be standing. Don't make a habit of comparing the rich life with the poor one, and there's no need to argue over whose suffering is greater. It's simply natural that each of us will meet different kinds of suffering.

Each person has their own wisdom and outlook. We each move at a different pace, and each of our finish lines lies in a different place.

A person of great wisdom may well walk more slowly through life, yet they'll be the first to reach the finish line.

The karma we've gathered, good and bad, is different for each of us. Even so, we still need to learn from one another, and keep growing our ability to listen and to learn.