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Best Life Quotes

Bronnie Ware Quote on How Regret Is Always More Painful Than Courage

    “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.

    Read More »Bronnie Ware Quote on How Regret Is Always More Painful Than Courage

      “There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation.  You can improve your life situation, but you cannot improve your life.  Life is primary.  Life is your deepest inner Being.  It is already whole, complete, perfect.  Your life situation consists of your circumstances and your experiences.  There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things.  The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, for Being.  The only point of access for that is the Now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 86)

        “The elders were all proof that you could live a full and fulfilling life even when the weather turned stormy.  So why worry about the clouds in the forecast?  Live your life, put on a show, take a chance, give thanks for your failures along with your successes—they’re two sides of the same coin.  If we’re living longer, maybe we have an obligation to live better: wiser, kinder, more grateful and forgiving, less vengeful and covetous.  All those things make life better for everyone, but especially the person trying to live by them.  Even, I would add, when we fail in our attempts to get there.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 231)

          “A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie.  One forty-something client told me his vision, formulated by his younger self: ‘I see myself retired, sitting on a tropical beach, drinking margaritas in the sunshine.’ That’s not a plan.  That’s a travel poster.  After eight margaritas, you’re fit only to await the hangover.  After three weeks of margarita-filled days, if you have any sense, you’re bored stiff and self-disgusted.  In a year, or less, you’re pathetic.  It’s just not a sustainable approach to later life.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 210)

          12 Rules for Life [Book]

            12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

            By: Jordan B. Peterson

            From this Book: 72 Quotes

            Book Overview:  What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson’s answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.  Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street. Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure and responsibility, distilling the world’s wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith and human nature, while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its readers.

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            Not enough time to read/listen to the whole book? Check out the 21 minute Blinkist version of 12 Rules of Life and get the key insights here for free.

            Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

              “From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die.  You also become eligible to find your greatness and become the One Warrior.  But it is up to you to equip yourself for the battle ahead.  Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.” ~ David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me

              We refuse life whenever we refuse to fulfill our potential.

                We refuse life whenever we refuse to fulfill our potential.

                “When we are living only a portion of what a human being is capable of, our lives are incomplete.  I don’t mean that we each have to do everything possible in life, but that the more possibilities we can imagine, the richer our lives will be.  Defending ourselves against the stranger is a way of keeping out our own potentiality.  The diminishment of our acquaintances is a diminishment of ourselves.  The most challenging stranger is life itself, or the soul, the face and source of vitality.  Life is always presenting new possibilities, and we may fear that bountifulness.  It may seem safer to be content with what we have and what we are, and so we cling to the status quo.  But in these matters there is no convenient plateau.  When we refuse a new offering of life, we develop emotional calluses.  The habit of acting from fear sets in quickly and becomes steadily more rigid.  Refusing life, we become attendants of death.”

                Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

                  “People who are sick, nurses, and doctors—everybody in the medical care and health care communities—get so stuck in this notion that a hospital room is this cold, sterile, white place where we go to be sick and that’s all that it can be.  And we get so stuck in that that we cannot see the possibility; we can’t see what we can make out of it; we don’t see what we can do with it.  And I started to realize that our lives, in a way, are like this.  Our lives are like empty hospital rooms.  We get stuck in this idea that it’s supposed to be good or bad and we don’t let ourselves realize—we don’t let ourselves see—that we can make that hospital room beautiful.  We can make our lives into a piece of art.  We all have that ability, we all have that capability, as human beings, to turn these empty hospital rooms—to turn these lives—into something really beautiful.” ~ Claire Wineland, Klick MUSE New York

                    “Some of the happiest moments in my life have been when I am sick in the hospital—honestly.  And think about the implications of that because I have lived the kind of life that all of you spend your entire lives running from.  I’ve been sick and dying my entire life.  And yet, I am so proud of my life.  What does that say?  We’re waiting to be healthy; we’re waiting to be wealthy; we’re waiting to find our passion; we’re waiting to find our true love before we actually start living!  Instead of looking at everything that we have—looking at all of the pain, looking at all of the sadness, looking at all of the beauty, and making something with that.  That’s how innovation happens.” ~ Claire Wineland, Klick MUSE New York