Category Archives: Quotes

Monday Mantra

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imageI know so many people who are struggling with health problems, myself included. I was recently diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, on top of all my original chronic pain issues. It’s so easy to focus on all of my troubling symptoms, and lose sight of the fact that my body continues to do so many amazing things for me. I can walk! I can talk! And I can breathe! I’m going to try to shift my focus from all that’s wrong with me, to all that’s right with me. Thank you dear, sweet body for continuing to work so hard. May I be kind to you.

Dear readers, may you be kind to yourselves today, and focus on all that is gloriously right with you.

Give Soul Searching a Rest

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Much as I love to soul search, there are moments when you realize that perhaps today you are further complicating life by relentlessly seeking elusive answers to profound questions. Perhaps today is a day where you take what you already know to be true and apply it. Simple things we’ve had figured out for decades like the value of exercise, of dipping your feet in the nearest body of water, or having a good laugh with a few close friends. Fruits and vegetables are obvious in that way. Not too complicated, nothing really to fuss over, but simple, delicious, and just as good for you as they’ve ever been.      -Dallas Clayton

Sometimes I wish I could be the kind of person who didn’t think about the big questions. Today I’ve already questioned whether or not I’m living up to my full potential, what is the meaning of life, and why does my dog look like she’s wearing eyeliner ever since she came back from the groomer. Seriously, what did they do to her?

My friend, Jill, has a Sunday feature on her blog called Day of Rest. Today I am daring myself to give soul searching a rest. It’s not that the profound questions are “bad,” but sometimes all I do is spin in circles and make myself miserable. When I’m in the middle of such an existential angst tailspin, I need to remember to take a breath, pause, and ask myself, “Is this useful?” Today, the answer is no. Instead, I’m going to watch Parks and Rec on Netflix, dip my toe back into blogging, and remember that life and all it’s questions will be here tomorrow.

Forgive Yourself

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I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.

— Maya Angelou

 

 

 

Miracles #tinyhearts

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After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood. –Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles. –George Bernard Shaw

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing. –Wayne Dyer

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. –C.S. Lewis

A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. –William Hazlitt

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature. –Saint Augustine

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. –Walt Whitman

Prosperity #tinyhearts

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Friends, February is almost over, and I am running out of hearts. I think sometime I’ll try to make some of my own clay hearts so I can add whatever words I want. When I started this series I was sleeping really poorly and waking up at 4:30 in the morning and posting then. I found out I woke someone up  because their computer beeped when my post came through (she swears she was awake anyway). I’ve gradually posted later and later, and right now it is evening. We’ve just come back from the gym and are going to watch a Seinfeld episode. (And in case you read yesterday’s post, Lily is going to the vet tomorrow.)

I really don’t think about the word prosperity very much, but I do like this quote I found.

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community… Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. –Cesar Chavez

This was my first post in the #tinyheart series: Hearthstones.

Power #tiny hearts

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The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. -Mahatma Gandhi

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. -Tao Te Ching

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. -Alice Walker

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. –Victor Hugo

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power. –Benjamin Disraeli

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. ― Abraham Lincoln

Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is “timing.” It waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way. –Fulton J. Sheen

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. –Jimi Hendrix

compassion #tinyhearts

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unnamed-28From Sharon Salzberg…

Compassion is the movement of the heart in recognizing our own or someone else’s vulnerability. We move towards that person, to see if we can be if help.

In day to day life that might look like simply recognizing our own humanity, or the humanity of someone else.

I was teaching recently and a woman told me, after a sitting, ” All week long my boss has been a tyrant — unfair, judgmental, in a very uncharacteristic way. It’s only been here, meditating, that it occurred to me to think, ‘ She might have something going on in her life that is provoking this.'”

Here’s the first post of this series, Hearthstones.