50 Mindful Steps to Self-Esteem by Janetti Marotta

All quotes from Janetti's book

Our tendency is to compare how we’re doing against others and wrap our identity around stories we tell about ourselves.  

Basically, we can’t control life, we have difficulty with this lack of control, and we take this inability personally. 

From the wakefulness of awareness, the warmth of compassion, and the wisdom of the journey comes connecting to others, caring for a larger whole, and committing to your core values no matter what comes your way. 

Mindfulness involves opening to the present moment just as it is, without trying to hold on to what you like about it or get rid of what you don’t like.  Part of mindfulness is thus “being with” yourself as you are, despite your desire to be otherwise. 

It’s not what happens, but how you relate to what happens. 

Rather than saying, I’m inadequate, you say, Ah, so this is what inadequacy feels like! 

Mindfulness teaches that life is to be experienced through the senses, not through the mind’s running commentary. 

Staying in the present shifts your focus from what’s wrong to what’s not wrong. 

With intention comes attention – looking deeply into who you really are what life is all about. 

Mindfulness takes you out of automatic patterns of behavior; rather than mindlessly reacting, you consciously respond in more productive ways. 

Acceptance doesn’t mean that everything is okay; it means recognizing things are as they are and reducing your resistance to them. 

Journaling allows you to slow down your thinking, step back, and gain perspective, clarity, self-knowledge, and emotional healing. 

By being aware of my thoughts and feelings and not letting them define me, I was able to work from the inside. 

Focusing on finding Band-Aids for your wounds creates a vulnerable sense of self. In trying to fix a broken sense of self, you become lost to who you truly are. 

By using your breath as a constant, you learn how not to be swept away by disaffirming thoughts, and how to smooth out the ups and downs of believing you “should” be like this and “shouldn’t” be like that.  As you learn to relax into your breath and trust your mind to stay put, you begin to unhook from your conditioned state of control and mistrust and to rest in awareness itself: a space that’s empty of preferences and full of life. 

Your body is a teaching manual of what you carry in your mind and heart. 

Yoga, meaning “to integrate” in Sanskrit, reestablishes the union and balance of mind and body. 

Learn to pay attention to the present moment and be the person you already are. This ignites a change from a self-esteem driven by “doing”—striving to be someone you’re not – to a self-esteem cultivated by “being” -- witnessing your own unfolding nature. 

Nonjudging implies that there’s no such thing as success or failure, right or wrong, or winning and losing.  Mistakes simply happen. 

Nonstriving means replacing the myth that life is happening somewhere else with the belief that what’s happening now is what really matters. 

The seductive nature of thoughts reels you in because you believe that you are the thought, and emotions like fear and anxiety confirm it. 

When you constantly seek the comfort of a sense of control, you try to impose your will on the world.  Your mind is seduced into an endless loop of judging, obsessing, planning, fantasizing, and rehearsing that keeps you keeps you stuck in “doing” mode. This depletes your energy. 

Relaxing into the moment creates a space for you to unhinge from your conditioned reflex of control, fear, and vigilance. 

So much of what we do is driven by a desire for distraction from ourselves. 

Patience means experiencing life in process. 

Mindfulness sets the conditions for your heart to become spacious. 

Every time you notice a need to avoid suffering by shutting down and losing touch with yourself, you can use the quality of openness to “be with” what’s inside – your fears, faults, and failures. 

See the emotion as a challenge or friend, rather than an obstacle or enemy. 

Joy means rejoicing in what is. Joy is freedom from regret, resentment, and blame. 

When feeling deprived in some way, we tend to hold tightly to what we have, because it doesn’t feel as if there’s enough to go around. 

Emotional baggage may be a way to disown yourself and deem yourself unacceptable. 

When your speech is true, useful, and timely, it’s intentional, thoughtful, and effective.

Chi Nei Ching by Mantak Chia and William U Wei

All quotes from Mantak and William's book

In Eastern medicine, fascia is a structure for and a conduit of chi.  The meridians and channels pass through fascia, keeping the tissue moist and dense with chi.  When the chi is deficient, fascia becomes dry, hard, and brittle; movement can become painful.

To maintain your energy, meditate every day to reconnect with the outer forces and burn our sick and undesired energy.

Dreamhealer 2 by Adam McLeod

All quotes from Adam’s book

You have the rest of your life to change your future.

Accept the primary responsibility for maintaining your health.

Wellness involves an open, positive, responsible and participatory attitude toward one's own well-being.

Start by being aware of what pushes our buttons.  What situations drive us to distraction?  What characteristics in others drive us crazy? What triggers our positive and negative emotional responses, which in turn flood our systems with energy?

Remember that you are always the person in charge of your own wellness.  You are the driver of the car.  You make all of the decisions -- where you go, when you go there, and now fast you travel.  The healer is the navigator or map reader, advising you on the easiest route to your destination and assisting as required. 

Balancing of mind, body and spirit is what a healing journey is about. 

Ill health is an imbalance of energy.  Energy imbalance manifest itself in the form of different ailments, depending on where we develop an energy blockage.  Energy blockages, frequently first experienced as stress, manifest differently from person to person. 

How to Get Along with Anyone by Ophira and Tali Edut

All quotes from Ophira & Tali's book

Sometimes you need a challenge in order to evolve.

Often, we attract “difficult people” unconsciously because our souls yearn to grow. We need to wake up, pay attention, learn something.  

Making Marriage Simple by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

All quotes from Harville and Helen's book

Romantic love is the powerful force that draws you to someone who has the positive and negative qualities of your parents or caregiver. 

We call the result of not getting all of your needs met your "childhood wounding".  You become sensitive in the present to what was missing in the past.

Your unconscious mind chose your partner.  It knew that in order to heal your childhood wounds, you had to feel these emotions again as an adult.  Marriage gives you this chance to relieve memories and feelings from your childhood, but with a different happier outcome.

Ninety percent of our frustrations with our partner come from experiences from our past. 

People's reaction to stress and conflict fall into one of two categories: minimizing or maximizing.... When Minimizers are anxious, they tend to pull their reactions deep inside.... When Maximizers are anxious, they tend to express themselves loudly.

Your partner's needs are a blueprint for your own healing and growth -- and your needs are a blueprint for your partner's. 

This is the crux and calling of a truly committed and conscious partnership:  we need to answer the call to become each other's healers.

When your partner doesn't feel safe, they put up their defenses.

The best way to heal a relationship is not to repair the two people, but the Space Between them.

Negativity is any words, tone of voice, facial expression (such as rolling your eyes), or behavior your partner says feels negative to them.

When you feel superior to your partner (whether it is because you believe you're better or because you feel they didn't have it as bad as you did) this is a sure sign you're in competition. 

Negativity is invisible abuse.

Your job is to be a source of safety for your partner. 

Connection and joy are two sides of the same coin.

Requesting what you want shifts you out of the position of being a victim.

100 Things Successful People Do by Nigel Cumberland

All quotes from Nigel's book

Successful people never rely upon chance or fate. 

Being liked takes sacrifice.

Real success is about helping other people succeed.

To love yourself involves understanding, acceptance, forgiveness and being at peace with who you are.  To be comfortable and at peace with yourself you need to understand that none of us is perfect and you are not the only one who has faults, weaknesses and issues; accept yourself as you are, no matter how imperfect you think yourself to be; forgive yourself and stop blaming yourself for errors and mistakes in your life. 

Treat your health as your main wealth.

You must forgive others for the sake of your own wellbeing. 

True confidence is about being completely at peace with yourself. 

Understand what is really making you uncomfortable. 

Success will not come to you, you have to go and find it. 

When you are in harmony with yourself, four things are aligned: what you do, what you think, what you say and what you feel. 

Being in harmony with others is all about being honest, walking your talk, being open, trusting and kind.  The opposite is breaking promises, confrontation, misunderstanding and a lack of authenticity. 

Be the person today you want to be in retirement. 

The expert is the one who has made the most mistakes. 

Question Your Thinking, Change the World by Byron Katie

All quotes from Byron's book

If you think that you have a problem, you’re confused.  Go inside and know what’s true for you.

Give yourself your own wisdom.  You create your own suffering, and you can end it. It’s as simple as that.

It’s not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. 

A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing…. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.

You see who you are by seeing who you think other people are.

Once you realize the difference between what is real and what is not, you naturally begin to act with clarity and efficiency and to live the life you always wanted to live. 

When you question your stressful thoughts, you come to see that everything that has been troubling you is just a misunderstanding. 

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you’re looking for.

People go to India to find a guru; but you don’t have to: you’re living with one.  Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom. 

Personalities don’t love; they want something.

When I hear people say that they love someone and want to be loved in return, I know they’re not talking about love.

Love doesn’t seek anything. It’s already complete. It doesn’t want, doesn’t need, has no shoulds (not even for the person’s own good). 

What could you say about me that I haven’t already thought? There are no new thoughts. 

The external is the internal projected.

Just feel humility, without the slightest urge to defend yourself.

My love is my business; it has nothing to do with you.  You love me, and that isn’t personal. You tell the story that I am this, or I am that, and you fall in love with your story. 

It’s not your job to love me – it’s mine. 

We don’t hear what you tell us; we hear what we think you’re telling us.

When you know that whatever you need is what you get, life becomes paradise.

When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet. 

The only possibility of being understood by someone else is to understand yourself.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

If you act from fear, there’s no way you can receive love, because you’re trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love. 

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

All the advice you ever gave your partner is for you to hear.

You’re living with God disguised as your husband, and he will show you all your unclear places; he will give you everything you need in order to get free.

There is nothing you wouldn’t give to anyone if you weren’t afraid. 

To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. 

Any time you find yourself wanting sympathy, you’re trying to get someone to join you in your mythology.

God spare me from the desire for love, approval or appreciation.

Defense is the first act of war. 

If you say one single thing that I have the urge to defend, that thing is the very pearl waiting inside me to be discovered. 

How do you know that you don’t need a romantic partner? You don’t have one.  How do you know that you need one? Here he is!

You can’t control someone else’s thinking. You can even control your own.  There’s no one thinking anyway. It’s a house of mirrors.

You can’t make yourself spiritual or loving. Just be honest and question your thinking.

Pleasure is an attempt to fill yourself. Joy is what you are. 

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you.  It does anyway.  You’re just telling the story about how it doesn’t. 

All the thoughts we attach to are about survival, then health, then comfort, then pleasure. 

We’re just waiting for one teacher, just one, to give us permission to be who we are now so that we can all come to know that that’s what is normal for us. 

Investigate the stressful thoughts you have about your condition until you see that it’s the perfect condition for you. 

Who would you be without the story of “I should feel better”?  You’d be free. 

Meet your concepts with understanding. 

The truth is that until we love cancer, we can’t love god.  It doesn’t matter what symbols we use – poverty, loneliness, loss – it’s the concepts of “good and bad” that we attach to them that make us suffer. 

My body can never be a problem if my thinking is healthy. 

Your medicine is whatever appears now. 

When the mind leaves a body, we throw it in the ground and walk away. 

There’s no sadness without a story. 

Reality – the way that it is, exactly as it is, in every moment – is always kind.  It’s the story about reality that blurs our vision, obscures what’s true, and leads us to believe that there is injustice in the world. 

A lover of what is looks forward to everything. 

Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven’t undone yet. 

Before a thought, there’s no one, nothing—only peace that doesn’t even recognize itself as peace. 

To come to that person in fear is to teach fear. 

Here’s what I’ve told my children: “You have the perfect mother. I’m responsible for all your problems, and you’re responsible for the solutions”. 

You should love you. It’s your job to love you.  “I don’t love myself, so you do it” – what’s wrong with this picture? 

If you think you’re supposed to love your children, you’re in big trouble. It just sets you up for shame and guilt. You’re not supposed to love your children until you do.

It’s the dream “I’m stuck” that makes you stuck. 

Who had the solution? Again, me. I realized that I could be right or I could be free. 

You are the mother you’ve been waiting for. 

Your family is a projected image of your thinking. They’re your story. 

Until you love your family without conditions, self-love is not a possibility. 

You don’t have any control over anything.  When you think you should and you see that you don’t, the effect is depression. 

The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. 

Love is a listener. 

Your parents are your projection--- nothing more. 

An open mind is the only way to peace. As long as you think that you know what should and shouldn’t happen, you’re trying to manipulate. 

If you think we should be there for you, you be there for you! It’s not our job. 

What you want money for is happiness. 

The job you do out there in the apparent world is secondary.  It’s only a place for you to judge, inquire, and know yourself. Your true job is to appreciate what is; your primary profession is to be clear. 

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories about them. 

You realize that the worst that can happen is a concept. 

Wealth and poverty are in your own mind.  … it’s your story about money that strikes terror in your heart. 

Can you really know that your highest good is to be an artist? How do you react when you believe that thought? You refuse to be content in a job less lofty than that, and when you get a job, you hate it because you think you’re just marking time until you can devote yourself to your art.  So you’re always living in the future, and are never present. 

Whenever you think that your needs are not being met, you’re telling the story of a future. 

The story “I need more money” is what keeps you from realizing your wealth. … Right now, you’re supposed to have exactly as much money as you have. This is not a theory; this is reality. 

A messy mind is a messy life. 

Confusion is the only suffering. Confusion is when you argue with what is. When you’re perfectly clear, what is is what you want. So when you want something that’s different from what is, you can know that you’re very confused. 

If you have a problem, you must already have the solution. The question is, Do you really want the solution, or do you want to perpetuate the problem? 

Fear only has two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.  In either case, the worst thing that can ever happen is a story. 

Need is a story you tell yourself. 

The world is your perception of it.  Inside and outside always match – they’re reflections of each other. 

The world is the mirror image of your mind. 

To think that you know what’s best for another person is to be out of your business. The result is worry, anxiety, and fear. 

You can’t make a wrong decision; you can only experience the story arising about how you made it. 

To meet people where they are, without any conditions, is to meet my own self without conditions. 

Every fear is the fear of love. 

Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t. 

I am always held.  Even in the walking, the earth holds me.