Martha Beck quotes - page 2

Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you'll discover the creativity that connects you with others. (Martha Beck)
Most of my clients don't realize that the way they look and the way they think about their looks are two separate issues. View quote
Martha Beck
Children who assume adult responsibilities feel old when they're young. View quote
Martha Beck
No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone. View quote
Martha Beck
In one century, we've added 28 years to our average life span - a change so rapid that our brains couldn't possibly have evolved to accommodate it. View quote
Martha Beck
Polite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing and solving our real problems. View quote
Martha Beck
If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you. View quote
Martha Beck
Every instance of heartbreak can teach us powerful lessons about creating the kind of love we really want. View quote
Martha Beck
Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis. View quote
Martha Beck
To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing. View quote
Martha Beck
Basic human contact - the meeting of eyes, the exchanging of words - is to the psyche what oxygen is to the brain. If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can. (Martha Beck)
Realizing that we've surrendered our self-esteem to others and choosing to be accountable for our own self-worth would mean absorbing the terrifying fact that we're always vulnerable to pain and loss. View quote
Martha Beck
I always felt that it was my job to try to help other people get it and deal with it. View quote
Martha Beck
My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day. View quote
Martha Beck
Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury. View quote
Martha Beck
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. View quote
Martha Beck
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. View quote
Martha Beck
Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self. View quote
Martha Beck
Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to be what we're not, feeling lousy about ourselves when we fail and sometimes even when we succeed. We hide our differences when, by accepting and celebrating them, we could collaborate to make every effort more exciting, productive, enjoyable, and powerful. Personally, I think we should start right now. View quote
Martha Beck
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. View quote
Martha Beck
I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there. (Martha Beck)
I practice staying calm all the time, beginning with situations that aren't tense. View quote
Martha Beck
Every day brings new choices. View quote
Martha Beck
Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding. View quote
Martha Beck
Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don't. Emotional pain or numbness are symptoms of living the wrong life, not a long life. View quote
Martha Beck