Excerpt: Illuminate the hidden power of your true self! These quotes from The Shadow Effect will shine a light on your dark side—in a powerful way.
“Like the lotus flower that is born out of mud, we must honor the darkest parts of ourselves and the most painful of our life’s experiences, because they are what allow us to birth our most beautiful self. We need the messy, muddy past, the muck of our human life—the combination of every hurt, wound, loss, and unfulfilled desire blended with every joy, success, and blessing to give us the wisdom, the perspective, and the drive to step into the most magnificent expression of ourselves. This is the gift of the shadow.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 142)
“When we hold on to our resentments toward ourselves or anyone else, we bind ourselves to the very thing that has caused us pain by a cord stronger than steel. As my dear friend Brent BecVar shares, refusing to forgive those who have hurt us ‘is like being a drowning person whose head is being held under water by someone else. At some point you realize that you have to be the one who fights your way back to the surface.’“
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 141)
“To be a whole human being, we have to acknowledge the existence of all our feelings, human qualities, and experiences and value not just the parts of ourselves that our ego has deemed acceptable, but everything that we have deemed wrong or bad. If we are willing to allow our dark side to be a part of the whole of who we are, we will find it comes equipped with all the power, skill, intelligence, and force needed to do great things in the world.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 133)
“Whatever we judge or condemn in another is ultimately a disowned or rejected part of ourselves. When we are in the midst of projection, it appears as though we are seeing the other person, but in reality we are seeing a hidden aspect of ourselves.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 117)
“Only when we stop pretending to be something we are not—when we no longer feel the need to hide or overcompensate for either our weaknesses or our gifts—will we know the freedom of expressing our authentic self and have the ability to make choices that are based on the life we truly desire to live.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 106)
“Heroes are only as strong as their villains.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 103)
“Every one of us has constructed an ego-based identity in which we have assigned ourselves an acceptable role that eventually smothers our full self-expression. Rather than being who we really are, we become a characterization of the person we think we ‘should’ be.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 100)
“We possess every human characteristic and emotion, whether active or dormant, whether conscious or unconscious. There is nothing we can conceive of that we are not. We are everything—that which we consider good and that which we consider bad. How could we know courage if we have never known fear? How could we know happiness if we never experienced sadness? How could we know light if we never knew dark?”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 95)
“Only in the presence of an unwavering commitment to facing our demons does the doorway to self-discovery open.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 93)
“When we expose our dark side, we understand how our personal history dictates the way we treat those around us—and how we treat ourselves. This is why it’s imperative that we unmask it and understand it. To do this, we must uncover what we’ve hidden and befriend the very impulses and characteristics that we abhor.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 93)
“It’s ironic that to find the courage to lead an authentic life, you will have to go into the dark rooms of your most inauthentic self. You have to confront the very parts of yourself that you fear most to find what you have been looking for, because the mechanism that drives you to conceal your darkness is the same mechanism that has you hide your light. What you’ve been hiding from can actually give you what you’ve been trying hard to achieve.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 92)
“Poet and author Robert Bly describes the shadow as an invisible bag that each of us carries around on our back. As we’re growing up, we put in the bag every aspect of ourselves that is not acceptable to our families and friends. Bly believes we spend the first few decades of our life filling up our bag, and then the rest of our life trying to retrieve everything we’ve hidden away.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 86)
“Big, blown-out fantasies about our lives stem from the pain of our unrealized potential, but true dreams are a reality we are willing to work for, fight for, stay up late for—this is a future that is within our reach.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 85)
“Sometimes, we forget that we ever wanted anything different from what we have. The repetitiveness of our toxic memory can lure us into years of accepting more of the same and wasting away in a mediocre existence that fails to meet even our own expectations.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 84)
“I believe that the shadow is one of the greatest gifts available to us. Carl Jung called it a ‘sparring partner’; it is the opponent within us that exposes our flaws and sharpens our skills. It is the teacher, the trainer, and the guide that supports us in uncovering our true magnificence. The shadow is not a problem to be solved or an enemy to be conquered but a fertile field to be cultivated. When we dig our hands into its rich soil, we will discover the potent seeds of the people we most desire to be.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 5)
“Although ignoring or repressing our dark side is the norm, the sobering truth is that running from the shadow only intensifies its power. Denying it only leads to more pain, suffering, regret, and resignation. If we fail to take responsibility and extract the wisdom that has been hidden beneath the surface of our conscious minds, the shadow will take charge.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 2)
“Why do we have access to so much wisdom yet fail to have the strength and courage to act upon our good intentions by making powerful choices? Why do we continue to act out in ways that go against our value system and all that we stand for? […] It is because of our unexamined life, our darker self, our shadow self where our unclaimed power lies hidden. It is here, in this least likely place, that we will find the key to unlock our strength, our happiness, and our ability to live out our dreams.”
Debbie Ford, The Shadow Effect (Page 1)
Book Overview: New York Times bestselling authors and internationally acclaimed leaders in the field of new thought, Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson have joined together to share thier knowledge on one of the most crucial obstacles to happiness we face—the shadow. These three luminaries, each with a signature approach, bring to light the parts of ourselves we deny but that still direct our life. The result is a practical and profound journey to wholeness.
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