“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. People with cancer are automatically told to just stay positive. Women, to stop being so angry. And the list goes on. It’s a tyranny. It’s a tyranny of positivity. And it’s cruel. Unkind. And ineffective. And we do it to ourselves, and we do it to others.” ~ Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful
“Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility: We are young until we are not. We walk down the streets sexy until one day we realize that we are unseen. We nag our children and one day realize that there is silence where that child once was, now making his or her way in the world. We are healthy until a diagnosis brings us to our knees. The only certainty is uncertainty, and yet we are not navigating this frailty successfully or sustainably.” ~ Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful
“How we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.” ~ Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful
“I am often accused of being childish. I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work.” ~ Leo F. Buscaglia, Bus 9 to Paradise
“Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.” ~ Robert Fulghum
“What we do or don’t do right now, me and my generation can’t undo in the future. So when school started in August of this year, I decided that this was enough. I set myself down on the ground outside the Swedish parliament. I school striked for the climate. Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis.’ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change. And why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society.” ~ Greta Thunberg, TED
“Why are we not reducing our emissions? Why are they in fact still increasing? Are we knowingly causing a mass extinction? Are we evil? No, of course not. People keep doing what they do because the vast majority doesn’t have a clue about the actual consequences of our everyday life, and they don’t know that rapid change is required. We all think we know, and we all think everybody knows, but we don’t. Because how could we? If there really was a crisis, and if this crisis was caused by our emissions, you would at least see some signs. Not just flooded cities, tens of thousands of dead people, and whole nations leveled to piles of torn down buildings. You would see some restrictions. But no. And no one talks about it. There are no emergency meetings, no headlines, no breaking news. No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. Even most climate scientists or green politicians keep on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy.” ~ Greta Thunberg, TED
“For those of us who are on the spectrum, almost everything is black or white. We aren’t very good at lying, and we usually don’t enjoy participating in this social game that the rest of you seem so fond of. I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones, and the rest of the people are pretty strange, especially when it comes to the sustainability crisis, where everyone keeps saying climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all, and yet they just carry on like before. I don’t understand that, because if the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change.” ~ Greta Thunberg, TED
“That’s the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (Page 252)
“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”
Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (Page 154)
“All of us have to recognize that being a man is first and foremost being a good human. That means being responsible, working hard, being kind, respectful, compassionate. If you’re confident about your strength, you don’t need to show me by putting somebody else down. Show me by lifting somebody else up.” ~ Barack Obama, The Independent
“I think you’re always policing yourself by trying to do what you think would be “cool” and accepted by other people, until you start to figure out who you really want to be. [Growing up] is an ongoing push-and-pull of you being yourself and you performing to what society expects you to be. I think the end product ends up being some kind of composite of these two factors.” ~ John Legend, Cosmopolitan
“Beyond a certain point in a man’s life, if he is to remain truly vital, he needs to be actively engaged in devotion to something other than his own success and happiness. The word discipline derives from the same root as the word disciple. Discipline means ‘to place oneself in the service of.’ Discipline is a form of devotion. A grown man with nothing to devote himself to is a man who is sick at heart. What a great many men in this culture choose to serve is their own reflected value, which they often believe serves the needs of their family, even while their families may be crying out for something different from them.” ~ Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It
“Recovery, at its deepest level, evokes the art of valuing, caring for, and sustaining. The relationship one sustains may be toward oneself, toward others, or even toward the world itself.” ~ Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It
“I believe that one first changes the behaviors, then, if one is lucky, the feelings follow.” ~ Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It
“Those who do not turn to face their pain are prone to impose it.” ~ Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It
“Men who do not turn to face their own pain are too often prone to inflict it on others.” ~ Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It