“When you’re doing what you love to do, you don’t get exhausted. You get exhausted from trying to fulfill everyone else’s ideas and ideals about who you should be. When you do that, you’re not being true to yourself.”
Oprah Winfrey, via More Myself (Page 185)
“It’s hard not to begin doubting ourself just a little when, with the stroke of an airbrush, someone slims down your thighs or shaves off half your booty. And if I’m doubting myself, imagine what that does for the young people forced to digest these images of so-called beauty.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 174)
“For me, motherhood came with a litmus test: Is what I’m doing important enough for me to spend time away from my baby? If the answer was no, the task went the way of the Walkman cassette recorder—phased out. I was intent on doing what was best for my child, which, by default, was best for me.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 158)
“It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal. Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without bestirring himself; he is drawn and lets himself fall.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, via Sunbeams (Page 11)
Ram Dass Quote on Moving Forward and How Your Next Message Is Always Right Where You Are
“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 7)
Beyond the Quote (Day 379)
Did you read that right? The next message you need—not the next message you want. Most of us are pretty good at ignoring the messages we don’t want to hear. So much so that many of us, I suspect, become blind and deaf to their presence entirely. The problem, of course, is that those messages tends to be the very messages that we most need to hear. And how do we hear something that we’ve become deaf to? How can we see again the messages that we’ve become blind to? It’s actually quite simple really.
Read More »Ram Dass Quote on Moving Forward and How Your Next Message Is Always Right Where You Are“We vowed that full freedom would forever live at the center of our union. That we’d never seek to own each other, but rather to love and liberate, like birds always free to fly. In place of a mandate to be together, there stood a choice, one we’d continue making every single day on our journey.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 154)
“I can show weakness. I can be real. And when I reveal my true heart, not everyone is going to approve. What I know now is that I don’t need them to.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 144)
“When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You’re broken open. You’re hyperaware of what you’re feeling.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 144)
“Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.”
Octavio Paz, Sunbeams (Page 9)
Meaning of the Quote: “Where There’s Hardship, There’s Ease”
“Where there’s hardship, there’s ease.”
Quran
Beyond the Quote (Day 378)
At first glance, this statement seems like a contradiction. Where there’s hardship—tension, angst, and unease, seem to be the more appropriate pairings, wouldn’t you think? And while, yes, those tend to be the default feelings in response to hardship, they certainly aren’t the mandatory responses. In fact, there are no mandatory responses to any situation in life. It’s one of the few things that is actually 100% within our control—how we choose to respond to given situations. This becomes increasingly evident when you see someone masterfully navigate hard situations with ease and grace.
Read More »Meaning of the Quote: “Where There’s Hardship, There’s Ease”“Bliss is a beautiful destination, but you can often only reach its shores after a turning point. It’s as if the universe is testing you to be sure you are strong enough to make it through the murky waters, not just the serene ones, so that you can move to a new and unknown place in yourself.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 140)
“A soul mate connection isn’t just an awareness. It’s a deep sense of knowing, a wave of intuition that permeates your every pore. All the cells in your body rise up on their tiptoes. You don’t see this feeling coming. You can’t prepare for it. You might even try to push it away, as I did. And yet it always surges back, each time with greater force, sweeping you up in its mighty current, thrusting you toward a beautiful shore unknown.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 135)
“We don’t draw loved ones into our lives coincidentally. They’re there to shine a light on our unfinished emotional business, to reveal to us our deepest tendencies. And as my life is proving to me even now, those patterns appear time and time again, often cleverly disguised. And they’ll keep right on showing up until we’re willing to truly look at them.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 126)
“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”
Annie Dillard, Sunbeams (Page 9)
“Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.”
Matsuo Basho, Sunbeams (Page 9)
“A wise person knows what’s inside their circle of control and what is outside of it. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to remember what is inside our control. According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing: YOUR MIND. That’s right, even your physical body isn’t completely within the circle. After all, you could be struck with a physical illness or impairment at any moment. You could be traveling in a foreign country and be thrown in jail. But this is all good news because it drastically reduces the amount of things that you need to think about. There is clarity in simplicity.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 21)
“When you don’t speak the truth for years at a time, the words left unspoken slowly leak the air out of your connection. Even if, years later, you are ready to say what you couldn’t earlier, the moment has passed. The details and circumstances have faded from memory, and yet the emotions linger. And then the day finally comes when you no longer recognize the person you first loved.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 124)
“I wasted so much energy nursing my bitterness, trying to get back at him and hoping he’d experience as much heartache as I had. But the whole time, I was the one hurting. I was the one who, by living in that negative energy, drew even more of it to myself. It was so backward.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 121)
“Death is a gift meant to wake up the living, to nudge us toward a life of purpose and intention.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 106)
“If the Egyptians had so capably built their temples and pyramids without the benefit of modern architectural tools, then I, the daughter of this great civilization, must be capable of more than I knew. We all are. Anything we can conceive of can be built. Perhaps not through our efforts alone, but also by the generations of dreamers whose feet will rest on our shoulders.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 105)