Beyond the Quote

Susan David Quote on False Positivity and Why We Shouldn’t Push Aside Difficult Emotions

“When we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful

Beyond the Quote (27/365)

This is the problem with positive thinking from a superficial standpoint. If something sad happens and you try to cover it up with happy thoughts, like a kind of mask, you get an un-dealt-with-sadness that lies suppressed inside. When something really upsets you and you try to distract your mind from confronting that “upset-ness,” those feelings will get pushed down and will continue to broil from deep within.

“Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.”
W. B. Yeats

Beyond the Quote (26/365)

The mind does not have confines like the walls of a bucket nor does it have a maximum limit like that of a bucket—it is unbounded and is of unlimited potential. The mind needs to be thought of like a fire. Not only is a fire wall-less, topless, and without a maximum limit, but it has an insatiable appetite that will continue consuming for as long as you continue to feed it—like that of the mind. This is an important distinction because when we change the way we view our minds, we change the way we treat our minds (and the minds of those we’re treating).

“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
Richard Carlson

Beyond the Quote (25/365)

Not only does criticizing and judging other people say something about our own need to be critical, but it acts as a mirror that reveals far more about our own character than it ever does about the person being targeted. In other words, what we’re ACTUALLY doing when we’re talking about someone else is, ironically, talking solely about ourselves. Think about it.

“Practice this. Every action you take today, no matter how little… give it weight. Put some space around it. Start it intentionally, with the intention to be mindful, to inhabit that action fully, to notice with all of your senses the entire moment. When the action is done, don’t just rush to the next one, but take half a second to appreciate what you just experienced. Then move to the next with equal weight and space. If you don’t start treating this next action like it’s just as important as what’s coming later, you might never.”
Leo Babauta

Beyond the Quote (24/365)

So many things in life lose their weight when you learn to redistribute that weight to the present moment. What gives different thoughts, feelings, and situations in your life weight? Your mind. When you feel really drawn down and heavy from tough emotional situations, it’s because your mind is giving those tough emotional thoughts all of its weight.

“Why do we hurt ourselves more, when other people hurt us? Why do we beat ourselves up, for feeling beat up? Maybe the lesser pain you cause yourself distracts you from the bigger pain inside. And it’s easy to get stuck in a kind of loop of pain. You’re hurt, so you hurt yourself some more. But the correct response to pain, is self-love. When we’re hurt, we need to take better care of ourselves. Not worse. It can be hard to be conscious in the moment and remember to be kind to ourselves when someone hurts us. But you need to try.”
Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 116)

Beyond the Quote (23/365)

What does beating ourselves up look like? It can manifest in destructive self-talk: “Why am I such an idiot?!” “I don’t deserve to be happy.” “Why do I even bother trying? It’s not like anything is going to change.” It can manifest in negative talk and conversation which might include tearing down the people around you, purposefully excluding yourself from social situations because you don’t feel worthy, or even inserting yourself into the role of being a victim, a loser, a trouble-maker, or a target. It might also manifest in physical harm. This is where you might see people punching walls (or other assorted objects), purposefully not taking care of themselves, or even abusing drugs, alcohol, or other substances. Why do any of this at all? Maybe because the pain it causes distracts us from a bigger pain inside.

“How long does it take to build a habit? 21 days? 30 days? 66 days? The honest answer is: forever. Because once you stop doing it, it is no longer a habit. A habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish line to be crossed. Make small, sustainable changes you can stick with.”
James Clear, Blog

Beyond the Quote (22/365)

It’s time to end the debate. It’s time to change your mindset about how habits work and how they are formed. The problem with 21, 30, 66, or even 90 days, is that those numbers create finish lines—and very short distanced ones at that. And once one of those finish lines are crossed, then what?

“Regardless of how much courage it can take to live true to your own path, it will never be as painful as lying on your deathbed with the regret of not having tried.”
Bronnie Ware

Beyond the Quote (21/365)

Bronnie Ware is a palliative nurse who writes about her experiences in sharing people’s last moments alive with them. You can imagine the power and potency of such moments. In many cases, this experience of being with a person who is passing is outsourced to palliative nurses, like Ware, and isn’t something that many people experience first-hand in their lifetimes. Being with somebody who is about to die, however, might teach us more about living than anything we might ever read in a book or hear in a conversation. Until then, hearing what Ware has learned might be one of our next best (and most important) options.

“I choose art and beauty, vague as those terms are, against ugliness and horrors in which we live today. For somebody to look at a flower or listen to music does something to one, has a positive effect, and being surrounded by ugliness and horror does something negative. So I feel my duty not to betray those poets, scientists, saints, singers, troubadours of the past centuries who did everything that humanity would become more beautiful.”
Jonas Mekas, via Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 45)

Beyond the Quote (20/365)

If it bleeds it leads. If you haven’t heard this expression before, it’s sort of the unannounced, unofficial but predominantly popular strategy for many media outlets that represents the idea of using fear and despondency to keep viewers tuned in, listening, and coming back to them for more. It’s popular because it works and because it works it helps media companies sell more advertisements and improve their bottom-line.

“[Success] is not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less.”
Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

Beyond the Quote (19/365)

Be what you are—and be as good as possible at it. Identifying your unique strengths, aptitudes, and abilities as a person is the most important first step in discovering your success. Once those characteristics are discovered (or at least a relatively firm idea has been developed), then step two is tripling down on those strengths with as much of your energy and effort as you can afford so that you can accomplish all that you’re capable of accomplishing.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond the Quote (18/365)

It’s easy to be a good person when everything in life is good. When everything in the house is working beautifully and you can sit on the couch and watch your favorite TV show without interruption? When you go out to dinner and your table is beautifully set, the service is impeccable, and the food is amazing? When you go to work and you get along with everyone, you feel like you’re producing your best work, and your boss is thrilled?

“In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life – a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it’s like breathing in and breathing out. And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation. One without the other leads to a kind of madness.”
Pico Iyer

Beyond the Quote (17/365)

I think at some point in our lives we all fantasize about traveling the world and living the life of a nomad. We could wander from one place to the next and fill our days with spontaneous adventures while meeting new and interesting people. We could explore new cities, take beautiful hikes, have campfires in the woods, listen to new music, and read stories from people who have come before. We can hitchhike in cars, catch cross country trains, sleep in the back of busses, and take red-eye flights. Every day would be different and every day would be filled with a wealth of experience that we could easily get lost in. Sounds pretty great right?

“There’s no one way [to write] — there’s too much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place — you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time — not steal it — and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.”
Bernard Malamud, via Daily Rituals

Beyond the Quote (16/365)

If Dwayne Johnson AND Jocko Willink both wake up at 4am to get their workouts done, given how wildly busy and in shape they both are, then that must be the best time to wake up and workout, right? To answer that from personal experience, no. I have tried to build that idea into my routine several times and have failed awfully each and every time. I experienced so much misery and resistance that I felt like even if I mustered together ALL of my willpower from a day, it wouldn’t be enough to get me through one 4am workout—let alone a lifetime of them. So, what gave?

“You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits. You might consider judging your success across all the games you play. Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others, and terrible at the remainder. Perhaps that’s how it should be. You might object: I should be winning at everything! But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 88)

Beyond the Quote (15/365)

If you’re winning all of the time, every time, at everything, then one of two things has gone wrong: either you’re playing the wrong game(s) or you’re playing the wrong people. Who cares if you win against a two-year-old in chess all of the time, every time? There’s no challenge, which means there’s no growth, which means there’s no value. Either you need a new game to play or you need to find a new person to play the game against. Even if you were playing chess against one of your peers, and you were crushing them every time, it’s the same issue—no challenge, no growth, no value.

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls…are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
James Patterson

Beyond the Quote (14/365)

When you’re young, you only have one ball to play with (no juggling required): the family ball. Your family is your lifeline and they do all of the juggling for you (those were the days, eh?). As you grow older, you slowly start to gain more and more responsibility and you begin to accumulate more and more balls that you eventually need to start juggling. Next might be the friends ball, then the school ball, then the integrity ball, then the health ball, then the work ball, then a family ball of your own, etc., and this continues until you reach your juggling limits and can no longer properly keep all of the balls suspended in the air. Either something has got to give and one (or more) of them drops, or you stop adding more balls and you get better at juggling the ones you already have.

“Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?… True effectiveness requires balance.”
Stephen Covey

Beyond the Quote (13/365)

The example that comes up immediately is the widely popular cultural pursuit of work success at the expense of just about any other area of life. But can workplace success compensate for failed friendships? Failed marriages? Failed family life? Failed integrity? Failed health? …I would say confidently, that it cannot. Real success in life requires balance. And if we are to become effective at living a life of balance we have to be mindful of, take action on, and make constant adjustments to our priorities.

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
Leonardo da Vinci

Beyond the Quote (12/365)

At the end of every day, when you lay your head down on your pillow, there are usually a few moments of reflection. Sometimes the movie of your mind plays memories from the day, or replays situations that you might have acted on differently, or even anticipates the things that are to come. Sometimes these thoughts and reflections leave you feeling dissatisfied and sometimes they leave you feeling accomplished. When you pay attention to, and are mindful of, the average feeling of how you spent the time of your days, then you can start to navigate, and get in tune with, the direction and path of your life.

“Self-acceptance comes from meeting life’s challenges vigorously. Don’t numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
Swami Sivananda

Beyond the Quote (11/365)

In fact, the more you hide from your life challenges and fears, the more they will grow and the more you will shrink. It’s not a single negative, it’s a double negative. If you’ve ever felt your mind take something fearful or challenging from a level 1 intensity to a level 1000 intensity, just from letting it linger in your mind, then you know what I’m talking about. And if you’ve ever let the muscles of your body go without the challenge and difficulty of exercise, then you know what it feels like to shrink. The muscles of the mind—the mental capacity to show courage and face fear—are muscles that none-the-less need to be exercised to grow.

“It is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 103)

Beyond the Quote (10/365)

I read an expression the other day that really took me aback: We judge ourselves based on our thoughts but we judge others based on their actions. I knew it was true the second I read it, but I never would have realized it if I hadn’t read it. This was, in fact, the way in which I judged myself versus how I judged others (for the most part) and it was a clear double-standard that I felt guilty about.

“Anger is like gasoline. If you spray it around and somebody lights a match you’ve got an inferno. [But] if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.”
Scilla Elworthy

Beyond the Quote (Day 9)

I got really angry tonight. In an effort to save your time (and save myself from getting worked up again) I’ll spare you the details. Long story short I’m experiencing really frustrating car issues and really frustrating customer service.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits

Beyond the Quote (Day 8)

Before the start of every competition, it’s safe to assume that every competitor has the same goal—to win. And yet, not all of them do—only one person wins. Is it the case that the person who wins has a bigger desire to win than the rest? Possibly, but not indefinitely. It is certainly the case that people with greater desires to win have lost. Size of desire, in and of itself, is not the difference maker in winning and losing. So, what is?