Biography
"Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone."
"Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding."
"Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well. Success is built on failure."
"Change your thoughts, change your world."
"We virtually never feel our age, but thinking that we should can lead to disaster."
"Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind."
"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."
"Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation."
"Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be."
"Seek art from every time and place, in any form, to connect with those who really move you."
"Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury."
"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."
"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."
"Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be."
"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."
"My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day."
"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."
"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."
"People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures."
"Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury."