Best 229 quotes of Martha Beck on MyQuotes

Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.

A confession you make merely to illuminate the murky corners of your little life may end up lighting the path to freedom for a thousand other hearts.

Adults under threat feel like children.

A joyful life isn’t about others; it’s about the brightness that is associated with being alive. Your path to it is through anything that replaces thinking with pure flight, pure joy.

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

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.

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.

A lot of my clients say they don't deserve to mope about their sad little memories while children are starving in India. I say that just because your broken arm isn't as serious as someone else's gut wound, that doesn't mean your injury isn't excruciating or doesn't require attention. If you want to help the Indian children, or make the world a better place in any other way, you have to start by becoming whole yourself.

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

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

Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.

Any moment you spend attacking yourself is a moment away from your higher purpose and your power to love. Don't go there.

Anyone who comes into your life, under any circumstances, has something to teach you.

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.

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.

As any good Buddhist will tell you, the only way to find permanent joy is by embracing the fact that nothing is permanent.

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.

As soon as you think you know someone else's truth better than they do, you are in deep water.

A true leader is not someone who feels fully informed but someone who continuously receives insight and guidance.

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.

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.

Bad habits fill needs, so find good alternatives for them.

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.

Be brave enough to turn away from shiny objects, and toward the light that makes them shine.

Breathe in, breathe out, no fear, no doubt.

By the end of your incredibly arduous, disappointing, stressful journey, you will be your true self, in a place where you belong, with friends who truly understand you and bring all sorts of opportunities your way.

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

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

Conflict in close relationships is not only inevitable, it's essential. Intimacy connects people who are inevitably different.

Connecting with the people who are meant to be part of your own North Star is much more important than any aspect of business. It's the essence of happiness, the full realization of your potential for joy.

Constantly measuring ourselves against others sours and shortens our lives, robbing us of the very things we think it will bring: prosperity, love, inner peace, the knowledge that we’re good enough.

Creating ways to be happy is your life's work, a challenge that won't end until you die.

Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It's blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else's creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again.

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

Does this feel warmer or colder?

Don't expect the future to look like the past. Clear away expectations, and let yourself picture a wild, grand new world.

Don't fight fearful thoughts. Just match each one with an alternative thought that brings you more peace.

Don’t hide love. If you feel it, express it-not to demand that others love you back, but simply to live outwardly the best of what you feel inwardly. The worst that can happen to your heart is not rejection by another person but failure to act on the love you feel.

Don’t worry that you’ve wasted time. Each moment -- no matter how frozen or confused -- was a useful and necessary lesson.

Do something today that you think is too delicious, too selfish, too wacky to fit within the rules of your life.

Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self.

Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it’s not a safe bet, even if it’s like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you’re wrong or bad or crazy.

During the times we think we’re being “unproductive,” the seeds of new worlds are germinating within us, and they need peace to grow.

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.

Every aspect of your life, whether it's a task or relationship, personal or professional, will be based on love and joy. And when you get right down to it, nothing else really matters.

Every day brings new choices.

Every instance of heartbreak can teach us powerful lessons about creating the kind of love we really want.

Explorers depend on the North Star when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot.

External circumstances do not create feeling states. Feeling states create external circumstances.

Fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured. Without it, we wouldn't even know what it means to be brave.