Martha Beck famous quotes

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Memories #Caring #Stuff

Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom; out goes anger, in comes discernment; out goes despair, in comes kindness. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive and expansive... The pain leaves you healthier than it found you.
-- Martha Beck

#Inspirational #Pain #Kindness

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Stars #Believe #Perfect

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

#Eye #Oxygen #Feelings

Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals.
-- Martha Beck

#Powerful #Children #Caring

Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.
-- Martha Beck

#Loneliness #Being Alone #Connections

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld.
-- Martha Beck

#Beautiful #Eye #Feelings

Every day brings new choices.
-- Martha Beck

#New Day #Choices

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Change #Thinking #Self

Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation.
-- Martha Beck

#Children #Anger #Grief

Rest until you feel like playing, then play until you feel like resting, period. Never do anything else.
-- Martha Beck

#Play #Periods #Feels

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

#Coffee #Elderly #Middle

Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.
-- Martha Beck

#Love Is #Blind #Said

Most of my clients don't realize that the way they look and the way they think about their looks are two separate issues.
-- Martha Beck

#Thinking #Two #Issues

Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you'll discover the creativity that connects you with others.
-- Martha Beck

#Creativity #Thinking #Use

Given the eclectic and constantly shifting nature of my metaphysical inclinations, I will probably never feel certain exactly what an angel is.
-- Martha Beck

#Angel #Shifting #Metaphysical

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Psychics #Giving #Choices

If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing it badly.
-- Martha Beck

#Inspirational

Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.
-- Martha Beck

#Appreciation #Fear #Thinking

When you meet people, show real appreciation, then genuine curiosity.
-- Martha Beck

#Gratitude #Appreciation #Real

The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times.
-- Martha Beck

#Children #Average #Laughing

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Arbitrary #Body #Looks

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Hope #Lonely #Believe

I really do think that any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way.
-- Martha Beck

#Attitude #Optimistic #Opportunity

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.
-- Martha Beck

#Inspiring #Pain #Soul

Seek art from every time and place, in any form, to connect with those who really move you.
-- Martha Beck

#Art #Moving #Form

Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that's basically genetic.
-- Martha Beck

#Looks #Ads

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Years #Average #Brain

I'd like to help repair the earth's ecosystems, and to fully live until I'm fully dead.
-- Martha Beck

#Ecosystems #Earth #Helping

I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there.
-- Martha Beck

#People #Helping #Helping People

Children who assume adult responsibilities feel old when they're young.
-- Martha Beck

#Children #Responsibility #Adults

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

#Expectations #Asia #Results

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Encouragement #Worry #Way

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.
-- Martha Beck

#Dating #Society #Trials

As much horror as we have always created, we are a species that keeps moving forward, seeing new sights in new ways, and enjoying the journey.
-- Martha Beck

#Moving #Journey #Sight

Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.
-- Martha Beck

#Lonely #People #Kind

To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
-- Martha Beck

#Joyful

I practice staying calm all the time, beginning with situations that aren't tense.
-- Martha Beck

#Inspirational #Practice #Calm

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Self Esteem #Loss #Arrows

Imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back.
-- Martha Beck

#People #Matter #Imagine

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Anxiety #Trying #Moments

I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life.
-- Martha Beck

#Philosophy #Chinese #Asian

Only since the Industrial Revolution have most people worked in places away from their homes or been left to raise small children without the help of multiple adults, making for an unsupported life.
-- Martha Beck

#Children #Home #People

Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past.
-- Martha Beck

#Past #Denial #Meter

Learning to let go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large, brother-in-law or end-of-quarter office lockdown—like a beach ball on water. The next time a problem arises in your life, take a deep breath, let out a sigh, and replace the thought Oh no! with the thought Okay.
-- Martha Beck

#Letting Go #Beach #Brother

Bad artists ignore the darkness of human existence. Good artists often get stuck there. Great artists embrace the full catastrophe of our condition and find beyond it an even deeper truth of peace, healing, and redemption.
-- Martha Beck

#Healing #Artist #Darkness

Most people go through their whole lives," John went on, "and never have one miracle happen to them. You've had dozens and dozens, and you still want more! It's like God gives you a brownie, I mean a really good brownie, but you can't be content with it. You want the whole pan of brownies. Nobody gets that.
-- Martha Beck

#Mean #People #Giving

Angels come in many shapes and sizes, and most of them are not invisible.
-- Martha Beck

#Angel #Size #Shapes

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.
-- Martha Beck

#People #Matter #Live And Let Live

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

#Real #Lying #Problem

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Jobs #Thinking #Nuts

I have come to believe that there are infinite passageways out of the shadows, infinite vehicles to transport us into the light.
-- Martha Beck

#Believe #Light #Shadow

In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.
-- Martha Beck

#Unconditional Love #Facts #Care

People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures.
-- Martha Beck

#Doctors #People #Medical

At times in my life, I have been utterly lonely. At other times, I've had disgusting infectious diseases. Try admitting these things in our culture.
-- Martha Beck

#Lonely #Trying #Culture

If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.
-- Martha Beck

#Levels #Want #Honest

We evolved to move and to learn with all our five senses!
-- Martha Beck

#Moving #Five Senses

We virtually never feel our age, but thinking that we should can lead to disaster.
-- Martha Beck

#Thinking #Age #Disaster

What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence.
-- Martha Beck

#Sex #Laughter #Childhood

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

#School #Parent #Attention

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Spiritual #Teacher #Religious

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

#Miracle #Events #Gallery

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.
-- Martha Beck

#Mean #Worry #Done

Menders of all times and places have taught that silencing the thoughts in our heads and opening to the experience of the body and emotions is the basis of all healing. It's the only means by which we can reclaim our true nature or feel the subtle cues telling us how to find our way through life.
-- Martha Beck

#Mean #Healing #Body