“You will never find peace standing in the ruins of what you used to be. You can only move on if you start building something new.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 139)
“Mental strength is not just hoping that nothing ever goes wrong. It is believing that we have the capacity to handle it if it does.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 127)
“We often think of big achievements as a ‘get out of life easier’ card. They rarely are that. In fact, the opposite tends to happen. They level us up, force us into greater responsibilities, to think more deeply about big issues, to question ourselves and what we previously knew to be true. Big achievements actually pressure us to become increasingly better versions of ourselves. This is a net positive for our lives but can be just as uncomfortable as struggling was, if not more so.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 119)
“We often resist most deeply the things that we want most.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 118)
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, via The Daily Laws (Page 410)
“Good books are a good influence. Good art is a good influence. Prayer is an influence as well. But the strongest influence is the example of a good life. A good life becomes a blessing for people, not only for those who live good lives but those who can see, know, and understand such lives.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 343)
“The truth about your psyche is this: Anything that is new, even if it is good, will feel uncomfortable until it is also familiar. Our brain works the opposite way, too, in that whatever is familiar is what we perceive to be good and comfortable, even if those behaviors, habits, or relationships are actually toxic or destructive.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 116)
“Making big, sweeping changes is not difficult because we are flawed, incompetent beings. It’s difficult because we are not meant to live outside of our comfort zones. If you want to change your life, you need to make tiny, nearly undetectable decisions every hour of every day until those choices are habituated. Then you’ll just continue to do them.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 112)
“We are all narcissists, some deeper on the spectrum than others. Our mission in life is to come to terms with this self-love and learn how to turn our sensitivity outward, towards others, instead of inward.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 409)
“If you’re stuck in life, it’s probably because you’re waiting for the big bang, the breakthrough moment in which all your fears dissolve and you’re overcome with clarity. The work that needs to happen happens effortlessly. Your personal transformation rips you from complacency, and you wake up to an entirely new existence. That moment will never come. Breakthroughs do not happen spontaneously. They are tipping points.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 110)
“If you want to master your life, you have to learn to organize your feelings. By becoming aware of them, you can trace them back to the thought process that prompted them, and from there you can decide whether or not the idea is an actual threat or concern, or a fabrication of your reptilian mind just trying to keep you alive.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 95)
“We like to focus on the psychological health of individuals, and how perhaps a therapist could fix any problems they might have. What we don’t consider, however, is that being in a dysfunctional group can actually make individuals unstable and neurotic. The opposite is true as well: by participating in a high-functioning reality group, we can make ourselves healthy and whole.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 408)
“Feelings do not inform you of the right decisions to make. Right decisions create the right feelings. Your feelings are not intended to guide you throughout life; that is what your mind is for. If you were to honestly follow your every impulse, you would be completely stuck, complacent, and possibly dead or at the very least in severe trouble. You aren’t, because your brain is able to intervene and instruct you on how to make choices that reflect what you want to be experiencing long-term.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 94)
“Being mean to yourself first will not make it hurt less if other people judge or reject you, though that is why you are using this defense mechanism. Thinking the worst of yourself is a way of trying to numb yourself to what you really fear, which is that someone else could say those things about you. What you don’t realize is that you’re acting as your own bully and enemy by doing it to yourself. What could someone else’s judgment realistically do to your life? Honestly, it could stop you from pursuing your dreams, ambitions, and personal happiness. And that’s exactly what you’re doing when you stay fixated on those damaging ideas. It’s time to get out of your own way.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 88)
“The truth is that most people regret what they did not do more than they ever regret what they did. This isn’t a coincidence. Regret isn’t actually trying to just make us feel bad that we didn’t live up to our own expectations. It is trying to motivate us to live up to them going forward. It is trying to show us what it is absolutely imperative to change in the future and what we really care about experiencing before we die.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 78)
“When we are faced with resentment, what we instead must do is reinvent our image of those around us or those we have perceived as having wronged us. Other people are not here to love us perfectly; they are here to teach us lessons to show us how to love them—and ourselves—better.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 77)
“Never build, but always plant: in the case of the first, nature will interfere and destroy the creation of your work, but in the case of the second, nature will help you, causing growth in everything you planted. The same thing happens in your spiritual life: those things which are in harmony with the eternal laws of human nature will grow, but those things which correspond to the temporal wishes of people will not.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 339)
“The more busy you are with the improvement of your inner life, the more active you become in social life, helping other people.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 339)