Archives · MoveMe Quotes

“Do you need to give yourself permission to do something big for your special year? Just imagine, as an alternative, spending the rest of your life being dragged behind the Great Dane of your overcommitments to others. For five minutes it’s cute. Over a lifetime, it destroys what’s best in you and what’s unique about you. If you don’t care about that, it’s too bad. Maybe they got you, all those voices working away from the time you were a little [child], trying to convince you that your only needs were to meet other people’s needs. But I think you do care. A lot.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 151)

“All kinds of strange things happened to shape you as you were growing up. Your parents pushed you. Or they ignored you. Your mother was overinvolved. Or your father was underinvolved. Your older sister was bossy. Or your younger brother was bratty. Your family had too much money. Or not enough money. But none of these things that happened to you are you. Otherwise you and I would be nothing more than the pretzels fate twisted us into when the dough of the self was still soft.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 149)

“Every couple of years a farmer lets his fields go fallow so the soil can replenish itself. Why should we be any different?”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 127)

“We can’t play out the stories of our lives according to the script other people have for us. That script may say we can’t get anything we need unless we’re sick. But you and I know that a life can be sick even when the mind and body are healthy. And sometimes the only way to heal a life is to give yourself the gift of a year in which you have an adventure where you make a dream come true. So what if you have to fight to win the freedom to give yourself that? Suppose you don’t do it. You’ll regret it forever.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 117)

“If you let fear be a reason not to explore what life has to offer, you will never explore what life has to offer. A little shiver of fear is a necessary price you must pay to give yourself the gift of a year that involves trying something new. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you’re not trembling just a little bit, you’re not really venturing anything either. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to remember to not be afraid of fear.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 117)

“You cannot explore the world and the possibilities life has to offer without moving outside the safe neighborhood of your life as it is, without wandering into some new and dangerous neighborhoods where anything can happen. Let’s tell it like it is. If it’s a real adventure, if it’s something really new, there’s got to be an element of danger somewhere. Otherwise you’re not really trying anything new at all. You’re just playing around with the edges of your old life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 116)

“We never lose the good parts of ourselves we really care about. All the parts of yourself you’re wanting to put back in your life are there waiting for you. The pain you feel comes from the way these missing parts of yourself slowly choke from lack of oxygen when they’re buried. All you have to do is identify what’s really missing. Then make sure you find room for it in your life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 111)

“We all need a time and place for ourselves where the walls of our usual lives disappear. Sometimes taking yourself out of the hypnotic context of your everyday life is the only way to begin to be able to listen to the still voice within. When you do, listen carefully. Listen for the ways you whisper to yourself, ‘This is who I really am. This is what I need. This is what I want to do.’ When you hear new whisperings about these things, your gift of a year has rescued some lost piece of yourself and made it possible for you to put more of the you back in your life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 110)

“We all need balance in our lives. That’s a given. Work and play, friends and family, romance and finance all must be given their due. So far, so good. The problem comes when we put too much on our plate and then insist that everything still has to balance out. It’s simple arithmetic. When you’re overcommitted and insist on balance, everything gets short shrift. When one thing needs special attention, you can’t pay attention to it if you’re insisting on balance.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 96)

Sadio Mané Quote on Luxury and How He Choses To Give Back From What He’s Been Given

“Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? I starved, I worked in the fields, I played barefoot, and I didn’t go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing. I have built schools [and] a stadium; we provide clothes, shoes, and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips, and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me.”
Sadio Mané

Beyond the Quote (273/365)

What an incredibly refreshing perspective coming from one of the worlds premier soccer players whose net worth is upwards of $15 million. Mané is someone who made it out from intense poverty-stricken conditions and could easily choose to live a life of luxury and riches that I’m sure he dreamed of when he was starving, working the fields, or playing barefoot as a young boy. But, he hasn’t forgotten his roots and he chooses instead to live his life giving back “a little of what life has given him.” But, “a little” doesn’t feel, to me, to be the right choice of words.

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”
Naval Ravikant, Medium

Beyond the Quote (272/365)

How many contracts of unhappiness have you signed? And how lengthy are the terms for each? Is the contract of your desire going to take you a week to obtain? A month? 12 months? 48 months? 72 months? Or is the contract you signed more like a 30 year mortgage? Are you really okay with being unhappy for that amount of time? …For any amount of time? And for what? A fancy car? A luxury watch? A playboy mansion? How much of your life are you willing to sacrifice for these things?

“We are born on our own /
And we die on our own /
And we’re here to make meaning /
Of what happens in between /
We could hate, we could love /
We could doubt, we could trust /
But we’re here to make meaning /
For as long as we’re breathing and it’s alright /
Wherever you are, it’s alright /
Whoever you are, it’s alright”
Alicia Keys, Authors of Forever, ALICIA

Beyond the Quote (271/365)

Word choice matters. And with the opening concept of meaning in this above quote, I think Alicia nails it: We’re here to make meaning. We’re not here to find meaning. And I don’t think we’re here to mean nothing. Why be given life if we’re not meant to live? Why be given brains if we’re not meant to think? Why be given eyes if we’re not meant to see? Why be given hands if we’re not meant to touch? Why be given feet if we’re not meant to move? We’re certainly not born just to die—what’s the point in believing that? We’re born on our own, yes, but we’re not alone and we’re not born without what we need to make meaning—of that I’m sure.

Excerpt: Are you healed or just distracted? An important question to ask that might surface some un-dealt-with pain, but necessary pain for growth.

“Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you… You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children.”
Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows

“Success is largely the failures you avoid. Health is the injuries you don’t sustain. Wealth is the purchases you don’t make. Happiness is the objects you don’t desire. Peace of mind is the arguments you don’t engage. Avoid the bad to protect the good.”
James Clear, Blog

Ryan Holiday Quote on Questions and How The Best Questions Lead To The Best Answers

“Tim Ferriss always seems to ask the best questions: What would this look like if it were easy? How will you know if you don’t experiment? What would less be like? The one that hit me the hardest, when I was maybe 25, was, ‘What do you do with your money?’ My answer at the time was ‘Nothing, really.’ Okay, so why try so hard to earn lots more of it?”
Ryan Holiday, Medium

Beyond the Quote (269/365)

The first and last questions listed above were the ones that hit me the hardest: “What would this look like if it were easy?” and “What do you do with your money?” The thing about asking better questions is that they lead to better answers. When you can become the person who asks “the best questions” then you’ll inevitably start getting the best answers—answers that never occur to most people because their minds aren’t even looking in the right places. And the people with the best answers are the ones who almost always get the best results.