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The Happiness Of Pursuit [Book]

    The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau
    By: Chris Guillebeau

    Book Overview: In The Happiness of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation. Equally fascinating is Chris’s examination of questing’s other side. What happens after the summit is climbed, the painting hung, the endurance record broken, the at-risk community saved? A book that challenges each of us to take control—to make our lives be about something while at the same time remaining clear-eyed about the commitment—The Happiness of Pursuit will inspire readers of every age and aspiration. It’s a playbook for making your life count.

    Post(s) Inspired By This Book:

    26 Quotes ➜
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      “Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the Light?”

      Maurice Freehill, via Sunbeams (Page 55)

        “As you grow older you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfillment there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become—to become a great man, a great saint, a great this or that—has no end and therefore no fulfillment; its demand is ever for the ‘more,’ and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars. But when one is free of all desire to become, there is a state of being whose action is totally different. It is. That which is has no time. It does not think in terms of fulfillment. Its very being is in its fulfillment.”

        J. Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, via Sunbeams (Page 46)

          “Every moment and every event of every man’s life plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that comes to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them. For such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere, except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.”

          Thomas Merton, Sunbeams (Page 40)

            “It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”

            Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 57)

              “‘Sought’ is from the verb to seek; I have always been looking for something. I see that now, for as long as I can recall I harboured fantasies of how some object or experience would heal me, would make me whole. Sometimes before Christmas I would be so euphoric at the prospect of the following day’s gifts that I’d vibrate until it felt like I might shape-shift. What was I imagining the millennium Falcon or whatever it was would bring? What was the inherent drive that was so fiercely engaged? I always felt these artefacts would bring completion. It was like I was born with the yearning to be whole and continually felt that each new object or encounter, particularly if enthusiastically heralded, would bring redemption.”

              Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 194)

                “I feared that if I shared my experience in its entirety, if I took the lid off my joy, it would push others away or make them feel small. As my career progressed, that tendency took another form in my interactions around the industry. I don’t need much. Nothing has to be too grand. I’m cool with my little piano, my bench, and a cup of water. In a sense, that was true. I’ve never been an over-the-top kind of girl. But what’s also true is this: Some part of my spirit was always signing up for less because that is what I believed I deserved. For many years, I thought I was being modest. I never wanted to come across as self-absorbed, or as someone with a big head. It’s how we women are brought up: Don’t ask for more. Don’t take credit. Don’t outshine others. But there on the couch, it hit me that my alleged modesty was just a disguise—a mask for a lack of self-worth.”

                Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 248)

                  “If the Egyptians had so capably built their temples and pyramids without the benefit of modern architectural tools, then I, the daughter of this great civilization, must be capable of more than I knew. We all are. Anything we can conceive of can be built. Perhaps not through our efforts alone, but also by the generations of dreamers whose feet will rest on our shoulders.”

                  Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 105)

                  Osho Quote on Living With Courage and Exploring Both the Inner and Outer World

                    “Those who are courageous, they go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks.”

                    Osho, Courage (Page 119)

                    Beyond the Quote (330/365)

                    What’s most interesting to me is how deeply connected both types of adventuring are. It is very similar to the connection between breathing in and breathing out. Adventuring on the outside is the expansion of the lungs—it is the breathing in of all that the world has to offer. Adventuring on the inside is the contraction of the lungs—it is the breathing out of all that you have inhaled and synthesized from your experiences. One leads to the other and the other leads to more of the one.

                    Read More »Osho Quote on Living With Courage and Exploring Both the Inner and Outer World

                      “Only at the moment of death do [people] recognize the fact that they have not lived. Life has simply passed as if a dream, and death has come. Now there is no more time to live—death is knocking on the door. And when there was time to live, you were doing a thousand and one foolish things, wasting your time rather than living it.”

                      Osho, Courage (Page 142)