It’s easy to act as if you are a weathervane, always changing your beliefs and words, trying to please everyone around you. But we were born to be lighthouses, not weathervanes. Imagine a vertical axis running through the center of your heart, from your deepest roots to your highest aspirations. That’s your lighthouse. It anchors you in the world and frees you from having to change directions every time the weather shifts. Inside this lighthouse there is a lens and a light. The light represents who you are when nobody else is looking. That light was meant to keep shining, no matter how dark or stormy it gets outside…when you find that light inside you, you will know it. Don’t let anyone else dim it…and one more thing: remember to look for the light inside others. If at first you can’t see it, look deeper. It’s there.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.
—Phillips Brooks (1835–93) American Episcopal Clergyman, Author
Persecutors, like Victims, act out of fear. The may seem fearless, but actually Persecutors are almost always former Victims.
—David Emerald
In the yogic tradition, this principle of using intense effort to burn through life’s distractions is called Tapas. It’s another Sanskrit word, roughly defined as “heat” or “essential energy”. The concept is that through a disciplined approach to work and self-sacrifice, Tapas will burn away the negativity that separates us from God. By working our hardest and happily enduring the hardships of life we are able to create a sense of peace and clarity in ourselves.
—Russell Simmons (b.1957) American Music Promoter
It seems mutants have something in their lives called gravy. They know truth, but it is buried under thickening and spices of convenience, materialism, insecurity, and fear. They also have something called frosting. It seems to represent how they spend almost all the seconds of their existence in doing superficial, artificial, temporary, pleasant-tasting, nice appearing projects and spend very few actual seconds of their lives developing their eternal beingness.
—Marlo Morgan (1937–98) American Novelist, Author
We can’t control the world, but we can control our reactions to it.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
From now on, I want you to practice reframing other people’s negativity as a reminder of how not to be.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
If you want to move to a new level in your life, you must break through your comfort zone and practice doing things that are not comfortable.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Too many of those with unrealized aspirations have set them aside due to fear of failure. The bigger the dream, the greater the fear. Doing less than our best allays this fear. I could have done better if I’d tried, we assure ourselves. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing it’s not our best that’s on the line. By not trying too hard, we avoid learning what our true potential is, and having to fulfill it. Doing our best can be deeply threatening. It forces us to consider what we’re actually capable of accomplishing. Once we learn that lesson, we can’t unlearn it. Our true potential becomes both a shining light we can follow and an oppressive burden of expectation that might, or might not, be met.
—Unknown
TED—The Empowerment Dynamic—counteracts the poison of DDT, the Dreaded Dram Triangle. TED is the antidote for DDT.
—David Emerald
Once you uncover the history of this pattern and trace its roots, you will see that your reaction in the present moment is really a reaction from the past, a shadow character’s attempt to protect you from reexperiencing an old emotional wound, which instead sabotages you in the present.
—Connie Zweig (b.1949) American Minister, Columnist, Psychotherapist
You can actually shift your thinking in such a way as to make a wrong decision or mistake an impossibility.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
All of life’s experiences are teachers in some sense, challenging us to grow and evolve. Although the Persecutor certainly provokes a reaction, the Challenger elicits a response by encouraging the Creator to acquire new knowledge, skill, or insight. Both roles provoke change, but in different ways.
—David Emerald
The truth is more important than the facts.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
I’ve always believed in magic. When I wasn’t doing anything in this town, I’d go up every night, sit on Mulholland Drive, look out at the city, stretch out my arms, and say, “Everybody wants to work with me. I’m a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers”. I’d just repeat these things over and over, literally convincing myself that I had a couple movies lined up. I’d drive down that hill, ready to take the world on, going, “Movie offers are out there for me, I just don’t hear them yet”. It was like total affirmations, antidotes to the stuff that stems from my family background.
—Jim Carrey (b.1962) Canadian Actor, Comedian
In reality, there is no such thing as a “should” or a “shouldn’t”. These are only thoughts that we impose onto reality. The mind is like a carpenter’s level. When the bubble is off to one side—“It shouldn’t be raining”—we can know that the mind is caught in its thinking. When the bubble is right in the middle—“It’s raining”—we can know that the surface level and the mind is accepting reality as it is. Without the “should” and “shouldn’t,” we can see reality as it is, and this leaves us free to act efficiently, clearly, and sanely. Asking “What’s the reality of it?” can help bring the mind out of its story, back into the real world.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The person who understands Dharma will have the opposite reaction to a “hard” job. That person will be eager to get started, no matter what kind of work is in front of her, because she understands that she’s doing God’s work. And when you’re working for God, nothing is too hard.
—Russell Simmons (b.1957) American Music Promoter
Happiness is a state of activity.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
A hundred things may come up to distract him and attempt to drive him away, but his picture is of paramount importance.
—Roger McDonald (b.1941) Australian Novelist, Poet, Screenwriter, Writer
The beginning is half of every action.
—Greek Proverb
The more comfort becomes your priority, the more contracted you become with fear.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Responsibility of any kind can seem intimidating and for this reason man may often be afraid of truly deep relationships with other human beings. A relationship suggests to him the most extreme of responsibilities. It implies a burden, a restriction of freedom, seldom the converse. A student in love class, for instance, commented, “I’ve always been afraid of deep relationship because of the responsibility it seemed to impose. I was afraid of the demands it would make of me and I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet those demands. I was amazed to find that when I did get the courage to form a relationship, I actually became stronger. I acquired two minds instead of one, four hands, four arms, four legs, and another’s world. In joining forces with someone, I got twice the strength to grow, with twice as many alternatives. Now it’s easier for me to love others. I am stronger and I am less afraid”. He had discovered an important insight.
—Leo Buscaglia (1924–98) American Motivational Speaker
I am talking about the power within the self. This means power over your perceptions of the world, power over how you react to situations in your life, power to do what is necessary for your own self-growth, power to create joy and satisfaction in your life, power to act, and power to love.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
The shadow disguises itself in our projections, when we react intensely to a trait in others that we fail to see in ourselves.
—Connie Zweig (b.1949) American Minister, Columnist, Psychotherapist
I don’t believe that people create their own visions. Rather, I believe that visions are actually God’s way of communicating with us.
—Russell Simmons (b.1957) American Music Promoter