The Firestarter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms by Danielle LaPorte

You become a trailblazer by virtue of being your genuine self. 

Authenticity is the muscle that helps you shake up beliefs, policies, and restraints, and gives you the strength to do the things some say can't be done.

Being genuine is the foundation of integrity -- often inconvenient and not always painless -- but the only way to go if you're here to really, truly, fully live.

Self-doubt is so insidious that it not only renders us stuck in our lives, but it also actually weakens our ability to dream about what living unleashed would look like.

Ultimately, it's your call. Even when stuff seems out of your control, you get to choose how you respond -- or react -- to everything.

Passion is in the wind in your sails, and practicality is the rudder.  You need both.

You can meditate till your sit bones are blue, pray, process, train, affirm, think positive, therapize, and if you're still not a calmer, more generous person who speaks kindly to the waiter or takes traffic jams in stride, then maybe how you measure the results of your questing needs to be recalibrated.

If you're spirit fatigued for long enough, you will downshift into unconscious enduring.  You endure the doubt, and the gray hue, and the disconnectedness.

Wisdom comes from embracing contrasting experiences.

If you try to keep your most sacred ambitions off of your weekly calendar and your most genuine traits off of your resume, then you're missing out on the power of real integrity.

Your most valuable currency is what comes most naturally to you.

So many people are looking for it: their Big Life Purpose.  Becoming you is your purpose.  You are the very purpose of your existence.

The path of least resistance isn't about shortcuts, cutting corners, or being clever.  And it's certainly not about making mediocrity acceptable.  It's about optimizing the truth.

Within the constraints of morality and maturity, you should do whatever you need to do to feel gratified in the moment.

Hesitation can be a form of wisdom. Motives become clearer; new information shows up.

Enthusiasm is a fantastic indicator of where your true strength lies.

Typically we come up with our to-do lists, our bucket lists, and our strategic plans -- all the stuff we want to have, get, and experience outside of ourselves.  All of those aspirations are being driven by an innate desire to feel a certain way.  What if, first, we got clear on how we actually wanted to feel within ourselves, and then we designed our to-do lists?

First, get clear on how you want to feel.  Then, do stuff that makes you feel that way.

Forget about being impressive and commit to being real.

Let people see the full scope of what you're doing. You can be modest and powerful.

Freedom starts when you can identify the aggravation you've been accommodating for so long.

All visions come with a how-to strategy if you look more closely at them.

It takes courage to be creative, vocal, vulnerable, and it takes stamina, because if you want the best out of life, life will demand the best out of you.

Like all of your emotions, fear just wants to be seen and heard.... Pay attention to it, but whatever you do, no not do what fear tells you to do.

Fear will tell you to contract.  Open.  Fear will tell you to plow ahead. Pull back and wait.  Fear will tell you not to rock the boat.  Dive in.

No matter the reason or the source, criticism is an opportunity for you to practice the fine art of dignity.

It's often best to do the opposite of what your fear is telling you to do.

You don't need to waste energy protecting your ego.

Trying to convince everyone that you're right is not the best use of energy.

You simply cannot plant seeds of misery today and expect to get a juicy harvest next season.

When something doesn't feel right, that's reason enough.  And that is the only reason that you need to say no to something.

Don't assume that the best ideas will come to you.

Say thank-you for what's on its way to you. Go meet it halfway.

Consistency wins.  Keep on being yourself, relentlessly.

The key to successful collaborations is respect, admiration, and the intention that you'll make something better together than you would apart.

Whatever is on your plate got there because you said yes to it.

Most often, busy is a choice.

Get clear on your desired life. Then you'll be clear on your purpose for money. Then you can match your purpose with your actions.  This is the heart of lifestyle design.

We're getting conditioned to think that little effort and quick results are the rule, not the exception.

Minimum effort for maximum results is a brilliant productivity goal. But it doesn't translate to doing your homework, being prepared, or growing your value over time.

Leaps include doubt, faith, and -- most often-- satisfaction.

Even setbacks are progress.

Create your support system before crisis comes.

Giving is the antidote to emptiness.

"I'll figure it out" is the mantra of choice.

Doubt is part of the creative process.  Examine it as soon as it surfaces.  Appreciate that it keeps you alert.

Ask yourself what you're going to give up to get where you want to go.  You can't have it all or do it all.  But you can always have and do great things.

Don't let the desire for perfection become procrastination.

Do what you say you're going to do.  This is the single most powerful behavior for success.

We can't control the outcomes of our wishes; we can control only the wishing.

Accomplishing great things quickly isn't a function of a broader focus; it's a function of laser focus.  Ask yourself what you're going to have to give up in order to pull it off.

Part of being practical is knowing just what it takes to make amazing stuff -- it takes a lot of fantastic, hard work.

Balance doesn't exist, but proportion and harmony do.

To be a whole person we need to fully recognize that we have these very distinct parts of our life, and that each part needs to be honored and tended to.

It's not the imbalances of life that will get you down -- it's doing meaningless things that aren't taking you where you want to go. 

The White Hot Truth: Clarity for Keeping it Real on Your Spiritual Path -- From One Seeker to Another by Danielle LaPorte

All quotes from Danielle's book

You think you need an architect, but you are already a temple.

Is everything you're doing to be well and liberated really helping you to be well and liberated?  Because if liberation is a chore, then you aren't really free, are you?

You can't seek approval on your way to sovereignty. 

Underneath so much of our self-helping can be a lot of self-loathing.  We create new obsessions to replace our old addictions.

Lots of believed criticism makes for lots of effort to improve.

Transformation begins with the radical acceptance of what is.

Psychologist John Welwood coined a fabulous term: spiritual bypassing.  He defines it as: "The use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs."

I need a Truth I can work with. I want a spirituality that I can apply to my everyday, ambitions, very private, somewhat public, sweet, little, big, messy, gorgeous, desirous, meaningful, normal existence.  I need a "presence" that takes my entire life into consideration. 

Our fulfillment stems from our motives.  It's not how we seek spiritual growth, it's why we seek it.

Thank the lies for showing you the truth.

Oppressors use confusion to create reliance.

We're becoming experts at being experts in things we're not really experts in.  Shallow knowledge, limited experience.  To be clear, we're living in the Age of Information, not the age of wisdom.  Wisdom comes from lived and earned experience.

No questioning = no growth.  Your curiosity is the bloodstream of your own spirituality.  Curiosity carries nourishment to your Faith -- the heart of your spirit.  The more curious you are about how life works, the more present you will be in your life.

Questioning your teachers is not a betrayal of them, or your God, or guru, or your favorite seer.  It is not an act of cynicism or mistrust. It's self-respecting optimism. It's a belief in your right to do what's best for you and Faith that you'll figure out what that is. 

Somehow we got the idea that being whole is about being perfectly consistent.… We can't put parts of ourselves aside in the thinking it will make us more wholesome.

If Jesus ran a branding campaign these days, his slogan would be: That's not what I meant by that.

If you want to take your life to the next level, you need backup from multiple perspectives and traditions.  You're complex.  And your support system needs to be as multi-faceted, robust, and weird as you are.

There isn't one medicine that alone will cure your ills. Not a single theory exists that explains everything, no sage who is always right. We're innovating how we heal, and in doing so we're creating the world in which we live.

Love yourself like it's your job.

You will experience sharp and surprising pangs of self-hatred on your way to self-respect.

Loving yourself isn't a luxury or a gift that confident people inherit at birth.  Love is the journey and the destination.  It's how you discern what stays and what goes in your life. 

The danger in wanting to uplift our consciousness is that we might neglect human rootedness.  Being multidimensional and yoga-fied seems much cooler than, say, working on your conflict resolution skills in the workplace.

"All is forgiven" includes you.

Forgiveness is usually an organic and utterly inefficient process.  You can't leap from hurt to clarity, or from anger to absolution.  You have to walk there, one revelatory, resentful, intentional step at a time.

The heart runs on its own clock, untethered from calendar days or years.

You can only help when you can help.  And  maybe you can't help right now.  Believing in an abundant Universe doesn't mean that you as an individual have an endless supply of energy to give away.

Metaphysical skill does not guarantee spiritual integrity.

Your breakthroughs have more to do with your own power than that of the expert or guru.

The sacred flourishes with respect.

Your "no" can be as life-affirming as your "yes". 

Love meets you where you're at.  No coercion. No judgments.

Mudras jumpstart electromagnetic currents within the body, which can alter the way your system functions.  They are used for manifesting, clarity, and sometimes for healing physical ailments.

Identify where you are already meeting with Spirit in your life.

Even with steady devotion to your growth, your practices will ebb and flow.  Some days you're going to be riding high, dancing to merge with Shiva himself, or fasting to feel the pulse of the higher realms.  Other days, you're just doing what it takes not to feel like shit.

If harmony at any cost is revered as the sole spiritual aim, then discernment is often unwelcome.  But if Truth is the aspiration, then discernment is a heroine.

Ask your truth what it sees.

It's not so much about attainment -- it's about attunement with your heart and Soul. 

We're not actually chasing the goal; we're chasing how we want to feel when we reach it. 

Joy is what happens when you make contact with your Soul.

Follow the joy, it's your Soul's reflection.

If you want to increase your joy, deepen your devotion to knowing the Truth.  The Truth of who you are.

The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte

All quotes from Danielle's book

You're not chasing the goal, you're chasing a feeling you hope reaching the goal will give you.

We have the procedures of achievement upside down.  We go after the stuff we want to have and accomplish outside of ourselves, and we hope and pray that we'll feel great when we get there.

We wrote out a bunch of positive feelings, and then we asked ourselves, "So what can we do to feel that way?"

Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have.  Generating those feelings is the most powerfully creative thing you can do with your life.

You have a say in your life.  There is so much that we can intentionally select in creating our reality.  What comes into our cupboards and closets, what goes into our bodies, the people with whom we spend our free time, the gifts we give, how we worship, the thoughts we focus on.  Clutter is a choice.  Anger is a choice.  Resentment is a choice.  So are spaciousness, flexibility, laughter, compassion, tenderness, and resilience.

Empowered choices are "whole choices" that take your mind, body, and Soul into consideration.

You're choosing whom to invite in, how to react, what to give, where to go, how to move, how and what you'll worship.

You're not chasing the goal itself -- you're chasing the feelings that you hope attaining those goals will give you.

When you get clear on how you want to feel, the pursuit itself will become more satisfying.

The essence of your desire is a feeling.

Desire is at the root of our divine impulse to evolve.

Life can disappear on us just like a cup of coffee consumed on autopilot.  In other words, to really experience life itself, as opposed to just more thinking about life, we need to remember we're having an experience.

Everything we do is driven by the desire to feel a certain way.

Awareness is realizing that our life could always be better. Growth is doing what it takes to make it better.

When we choose the positive over the negative, liberation over repression, truth over illusion, we become real creators.

Feelings are neither the facts of what actually happened nor of a shared reality.  They are indicators of your personal reality.

The soul always desires that which will most reveal its true nature.

The surest sign that you're working with the life-affirming kind of discipline, rather than the spirit-depressing kind, is that you don't complain very much about doing what it takes.

Your Soul is the destination -- and your feelings are the road signs directing you to it. Your feelings lead you home by giving you moment-by-moment signals. 

You can't always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how you feel about it. 

With clear desire, you can say yes to the right opportunities.  

To feel the way you want to feel as often as possible, you just need to do easy things to help you feel that way every day. 

Bitch if you need to.  Get it out.  Just don't let it end with that.  Do whatever you have to do to get your thoughts back on a positive creative track so that you're in line with your Soul. This is the good, hard work of grown-up awareness.  Don't judge how you want to feel.

The ways in which you get your needs met will evolve. 

We create wellness or dysfunction in our lives by how we go about getting our needs met. 

If we're condemning it, we're creating stuckness. 

Every unwanted emotion and experience you encounter is a wish for something better.

Upping our willingness to feel the full range of our feelings is a surer way to create healing. 

To be whole is to make space for the full range of human emotion.

Feeling good increases your flexibility, resiliency, effectiveness, and magnetism.

Trust is crucial to creating goals with Soul.  Without numbers and targets to hold on to,  your heart becomes the pilot.

When you honor your limits-- rather than act like they don't exist -- you decrease the stress that is sure to creep in when your goals start to test your reality. 

Life is full of circumstantial desires that don't easily mesh.  How we organize those conflicting wants is the act of designing our lives.

The guilt associated with following your heart is a weight you can bear if your desires are strong enough.  It's the price of admission to fulfillment.

The cosmos doesn't measure sweat and hours for reward.  The cosmos deals in the currency of emotion.  When we feel good, goodness flows.

Spiritual maturity includes the capacity to acknowledge our fears while maintaining our confidence and faith.

Healthy entitlement believes that everyone is entitled and that there's enough to go around. It's rooted in self-worth and love.  Unhealthy entitlement usually comes from a place of lack and fear.  These folks want more than they're willing to give up front. ... Unhealthy entitlement makes people frantic below the surface because they don't trust they can nourish and nurture themselves. 

There's a beautiful twist that happens when you assume your worth: you value other people more.  Because when you're operating from a place of wholeness and value, you see value in other people and you reinforce the belief that there's enough to go around for all of us.  So in this sense, your self-worth is a service to humanity.

How we relate to people is how we relate to life.

We need to get real about what's not working, so that we can change it.

Set out to do three or four things that year with gusto and excellence, rather than doing a dozen things just sufficiently.

Look in the mirror and tell the truth: I’m scared.  I really want this to go well.  I most desire to feel energized, creative, leadership, and love.  State some beliefs: I believe in the goodness of humanity.  I believe that I’ve got what it takes.  I’ve got the best intentions and I’m full of creative bliss.  Recall your successes: I nailed this last time.  I won the debate competition.  The team raved about my last round of ideas.  Give voice to what you’re doing that’s working in your life right now: I see that I am already living this in my relationship with my best friend.  I am courageous with my husband.  I’ve been having my most creative ideas ever this week.

Pour on the desire: I want this job.  I really want to feel at ease. 

State your intention: I am going to give this my all.