We’ve gathered nuggets of wisdom from our exclusive conversation with New York Times Bestselling Author, Yung Pueblo, to support you on your camino towards mindfulness and healing in 2023.

While New Year’s resolutions are often about external goals and achievements, remember to pause, go within, and determine how to build a steady inner world. After all, your inner world determines your external world. So who better to infuse your spirit with wisdom as you embark on 2023 than the acclaimed author and meditator Yung Pueblo? Last month, he joined our AMIGAS community for an exclusive conversation about his latest book, Lighter, and we’ve compiled some key points he touched on during the conversation (one of two he gave us in 2023.)

You can watch the recap video below if you didn’t join the live conversation.

We all navigate our internal world differently – tap into what works for you.

“Different people need different things, and we need to be okay with that. Today, we live in this profoundly globalized world. We all have access to all these Indigenous practices that are emerging and all of these Asian practices that are global now. And all of these practices are starting to be more accessible. Yes, interacting with your own shadow is difficult. So it helps to do it through a particular medium or process. Now we can go out into the world and ask, ‘what works for me? What works for my conditioning?’ [For me], a good place to start building self-awareness is realizing how much trauma I have taken on through my life, and that will help me determine if it is meditation, therapy, journaling, or prayer. Find what works for you, even if it doesn’t work for your friends or family.”

Acknowledge your emotions, but don’t let them overpower you.

“When the mind gets heavy, it’s so easy for it to get illogical. And even if it’s heavy for a reason that has nothing to do with other people, it will still try to find a reason to make it for other people. So we have to be aware of these tendencies. Communicate about where you are in your own emotional spectrum because it is a spectrum. Check-in a few times a day about where you’re at. It takes mad power away from it.”

Pausing your mind will lead you to balance.

“We need to realize the mind is just like any other muscle. You are not just going to run a marathon. It’s the same way that the mind has these qualities of compassion, pausing, presence, love – all these things need to be cultivated like a muscle. When I go to these meditation courses, I realize I’m at the mental gym – I’m literally working out my mind to be more balanced. A lot of the pausing is about not speaking. I need a moment to process what I’m feeling.”

Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

“Your intuition is going to ask you to step outside your comfort zone. It’s going to make you take that action that kind of scares you and shake up your life, but it’s going to lead to better things.”

Maintain your strength by maintaining your inner peace.

“You can be the wisest person in the world, but there will still be ups and downs and moments of loss. Everything is temporary. There are going to be challenging moments in life. What do we do in those moments? All we have is fortifying ourselves internally. Being able to cultivate those qualities of balance so that when the challenging moments come, we can feel okay, but at the same time, we can be supportive of others who have fewer skills than we do.”

Make sure to watch the replay of our conversation with Yung Pueblo here, and watch our IG live with Yung Pueblo here as well. If you are interested in joining more exclusive conversations with trailblazers in the Latine community, be sure you join the AMIGAS online community. It is free and full of nourishing and inspiring content. 

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