Not having time or energy for weight loss makes no sense. Does it take more time or energy to eat fish than prime rib? No.
— Martha Beck
The process of spotting fear and refusing to obey it is the source of all true empowerment.
I'm not saying we have power over everything in our lives - if that were true, my hair would look so, so different - but I am saying that there's no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.
I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amazing athlete.
I was learning to track rhinoceroses in Africa and tracked right up on an animal that really I thought was going to kill me.
Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do? Then drop into full engagement with whatever you're doing, and let the worry go.
Creating ways to be happy is your life's work, a challenge that won't end until you die.
Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past.
We evolved to move and to learn with all our five senses!
Sometimes a psychic tells you something and it feels wrong and others may be right on the money. It's your choice about whom to trust, and giving that trust is something we do ourselves.
Bracketing has turned all my experiences, remembered and present, into a gallery of miracles where I wander around dazzled by the beauty of events I cannot explain.
To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.
You get social pressure from your parents, who teach you to pay attention to certain things and not to others. You get it in school.
I practice staying calm all the time, beginning with situations that aren't tense.
What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence.
The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.
Seek art from every time and place, in any form, to connect with those who really move you.
In the developed world, hundreds of millions of us now face the bizarre problem of surfeit. Yet our brains, instincts, and socialized behavior are still geared to an environment of lack. The result? Overwhelm - on an unprecedented scale.
The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.
Focusing on one mildly disturbing, semi-controllable issue allows the mind to stuff much greater terrors in relatively tidy packages.
Sacred play is anything that takes you into that right hemisphere of your brain. It turns out that this move away from left to the right hemisphere, that sense of expansiveness and everything, can be accomplished through unusual rhythmic action, or any action that requires so much attention away from words that you cannot think in words.
If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you.
Friends, there are many areas in which I need encouragement, but worrying is not one of them. I worry the way Renee Fleming sings high Cs: Effortlessly. Loudly. At length.
Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.
Tiny steps will get you to your goal months and months sooner. A little is better than a lot.
As soon as you think you know someone else's truth better than they do, you are in deep water.
To live a life that is wrong for you is a form of dying. There are people who have lives that look perfect. They try to be happy, they believe they should be happy, they are trying to like it, but if it's off course from their north star, they aren't satisfied.
Whether you've seen angels floating around your bedroom or just found a ray of hope at a lonely moment, choosing to believe that something unseen is caring for you can be a life-shifting exercise.
When your entire brain is active, that means you are taking everything in through all sense perception. Your entire memory bank and your instincts are in play, so you make much quicker and more intelligent choices.
I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there.
I'd like to help repair the earth's ecosystems, and to fully live until I'm fully dead.
We virtually never feel our age, but thinking that we should can lead to disaster.
The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times.
Polite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing and solving our real problems.
For the vast majority of world history, human life - both culture and biology - was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy.
The most common reason we stumble into the delusion of powerlessness is that we're afraid of what other people would do or say or feel if we were to act as we wanted.
A designated patient 'carries' the group's dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed.
Whatever causes you to drop your plan forward and open to your vision, your own, deeply personal vision of what your life could be at its very best, that's what I call meeting your rhinoceros.
Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that's basically genetic.
You have the freedom to live and let live, to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest, most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you.
In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.
To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That's why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.
Every worldview I chose, it seemed, edged me toward belief.
My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.
Anything you're trying to will is focused on the future; it's always associated with some sort of anxiety that makes the present moment somewhat uncomfortable.
Rest until you feel like playing, then play until you feel like resting, period. Never do anything else.
When you meet people, show real appreciation, then genuine curiosity.
Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you'll discover the creativity that connects you with others.
Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.
