Matt’s Top 21 Quotes from 2021

---

Excerpt: This post marks another year of posting deep and insightful quotes. Click to read my top 21 quotes from 2021 and move into 2022 ready!

---

---

Introduction: Better With Each Chapter

As I reflect on this last year, as is to be expected, there are things that went well and things that definitely did not. And that’s okay because this will always be the case.

What’s important is not how close to perfect our year was, but rather the direction we’re heading as a result of the experiences we had throughout.

• Are we reinforcing what went well?
• Are we learning from what didn’t go so well?
• Are we more in alignment with our priorities or more misaligned?

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to reflect on your year and pay close attention to the direction that you’re heading as you move into 2022.

After all, the first step to moving forward is to make sure you’re facing the right direction.

If you’re interested in reading some of my personal reflections from 2021, here is the biggest lesson I learned and here are two additional (and powerful) lessons. Also, if you’re interested in making 2022 your best year ever, here are a few thoughts that might help you.

I’d love to hear some of your reflections and goals. You can comment them at the end of this post if you’re up to it. As always, sending you light and strength as you step into this next chapter of your life. My best. ~ Matt

---

My Top 21 Quotes from 2021

---

“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”

Walter Isaacson

---

“Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”

Brené Brown, Braving The Wildnerness

---

“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”

Anaïs Nin, via Sunbeams (Page 125)

---

“You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You’d rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don’t.”

Ram Dass, Grist For the Mill, via Sunbeams (Page 130)

---

“It’s better to be alone than to spend time with toxic people. It’s better to do nothing than to work on something that doesn’t matter. It’s better to rest than to climb the wrong mountain.”

James Clear, Blog

---

“The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.”

Eudora Welty, via Sunbeams (Page 153)

---

“The best shortcut is the long way forward.”

Seth Godin

---

“Being an artist is not for the faint of heart. It involves a lot of risk-taking, a lot of bravery, and a lot of not subscribing nor giving a fuck about what others think. We dance around uncertainties, the unknown, and the extraordinary every single day. But we live our lives based on a feeling, a vision, some voice telling us to paint it, write it, draw it, tell it, dance it, act it. We make worlds so others can see, tell stories so others can learn how to speak, dance and make music so people can learn how to hear, capture moments so people can see the unseen, paint colors and share emotions so people can learn how to express, create alternate universes so people can wake up to all the possibilities they haven’t afforded for themselves. Don’t go into the arts, they’ll say. But without creativity and art – the living are just walking half dead.”

Stephanie Dandan, Blog

---

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

Jeanette Winterson, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)

---

“Today, we could hope that goodness comes our way—good news, good weather, good luck. Or we could find it ourselves, in ourselves. Goodness isn’t something that’s going to be delivered by mail. You have to dig it up inside your own soul. You find it within your own thoughts, and you make it with your own actions.”

Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 317)

---

“You can’t guarantee that people won’t hurt or betray you—they will, be it a breakup or something as big and blinding as death. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose. I make a pact with myself and send it off into the desert: May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.“

Suleika Jaoaud, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 318)

---

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Carl Jung, via Sunbeams (Page 123)

---

“In the evening of our lives we shall be examined in love.”

St. John of the Cross, via Sunbeams (Page 154)

---

“Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability.”

J. Krishnamurti, via Sunbeams (Page 142)

---

“Often, we try to pretend that growth comes with no goodbyes, but it does. Perhaps we can go in with our eyes open, understanding that what we begin will likely end. And when we plan for it, we’ll do it better.”

Seth Godin, Blog

---

“I used to think healing meant ridding the body and the heart of anything that hurt. It meant putting your pain behind you, leaving it in the past. But, I’m learning that’s not how it works. Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss.”

Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 312)

---

“The people you admire, the ones who seem to be able to successfully handle and deal with adversity and difficulty, what do they have in common? Their sense of equilibrium, their orderly discipline. On the one-yard line, in the midst of criticism, after a heartbreaking tragedy, during a stressful period, they keep going. Not because they’re better than you. Not because they’re smarter than you. But because they have learned a little secret. You can take the bite out of any tough situation by bringing a calm mind to it.”

Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 386)

---

“There is almost no situation in which hatred helps. Yet almost every situation is made better by love—or empathy, understanding, appreciation—even situations in which you are in opposition to someone. And who knows, you might just get some of that love back.”

Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 305)

---

“Meaning is not found in the material realm—dinner, jazz, cocktails, conversation or whatever. Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.”

Howard, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 126)

---

“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

Theodore Isaac Rubin, via Sunbeams (Page 127)

---

“It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it’s poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it’s employed to no good end, we’re finally driven to see that it has passed before we even recognized it passing. And so it is—we don’t receive a short life, we make it so.”

Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, The Daily Stoic (Page 382)

---

And a BONUS quote for the over achievers:

“People always wonder if they’re too old to do XYZ.It has been said that every 7 years, each cell in your body has been entirely replaced. Biology is my worst subject, so that could be wrong. But 7 is a magic number. It takes approximately 7 years to get 10,000 hours in to something. In any period of 7 years, I guarantee anyone you know will look back and say “Boy did I change.” It is never too late to 100% reinvent yourself. 21 to 28 still leaves most of your life. 42 to 49 still leaves nearly half of your life. Between 21 and 49 you will have lived 4 lives. That’s mastery in 4 different fields in the prime of your life. That’s important.”

Jordan Allen, Quora

---

Are You Serious About Moving Forward in Your Life...? Our Guides Are For You. 👇🏼