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. – 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. – 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. – Martha Beck
As a life coach, I love makeovers, from new clothes to surgery, pedicures to highlights. But redoing makes you feel better only if approached with the right attitude. – Martha Beck
No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth. – Martha Beck
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. – Martha Beck
Indecision may come from an instinctive hunch that there’s more you need to know – which means it’s time to learn everything you can about the pros and cons of each option. You can continue on this track, however, only as long as you’re unearthing genuinely new information. – Martha Beck
Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories, and after an evening of smacking one another, we’d sit and have a beer while the students swapped tales of martial arts disaster. – Martha Beck
One reason most people never stop thinking is that mental frenzy keeps us from having to see the upsetting aspects of our lives. If I’m constantly brooding about my children or career, I won’t notice that I’m lonely. If I grapple continuously with logistical problems, I can avoid contemplating little issues like, say, my own mortality. – Martha Beck
The great power of separating the watching mind from the thinking mind is that the watching mind is innately loving. Some call this part of the psyche the ‘compassionate witness.’ Sharing our difficult feelings with a compassionate witness is the crucial step that heals the infinite small wounds inflicted upon the soul by everyday life. – Martha Beck
Given the eclectic and constantly shifting nature of my metaphysical inclinations, I will probably never feel certain exactly what an angel is. – Martha Beck
Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven’t had our coffee, in which case we feel 107. – Martha Beck
As I obsess about my ancient problems, I feel more like I’m sinking in quicksand than lighting a torch. I’m creating neither heat nor light, just the icky, perversely pleasurable squish of self-pity between my toes. My only defense is that I’m not the only one down here in the muck – our whole culture is doting on tales of personal tragedy. – Martha Beck
Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you’ll discover the creativity that connects you with others. – Martha Beck
Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals. – Martha Beck
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. – Martha Beck
If we’re stuck with having expectations, there’s a very good reason to embrace positive ones: It’s that we often create what we anticipate. – Martha Beck
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. – Martha Beck
Once we’re willing to confront our emotional suffering, we begin making choices based on attraction instead of aversion, love instead of fear. Where we used to think about what was ‘safe,’ we now become interested in doing what seems right or fun or meaningful or ripe with possibilities. – Martha Beck
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
Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to. – Martha Beck
I’d like to help repair the earth’s ecosystems, and to fully live until I’m fully dead. – 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
Our thoughts about an event can have a dramatic effect on how we go through the event itself. When our expectations are low, it’s easy to be pleasantly surprised. When they’re not, we’re vulnerable to painful disappointment. Because of this, many people spend a good deal of effort trying to avoid developing high hopes about anything. – Martha Beck
