Identity Quotes

Your journey is yours.

“…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” ~ Bill Watterson, Speech

How To Find Your Path — 4 Questions You Should Obsess Over

Excerpt: Questions that matter shouldn’t be asked once—they should be obsessed over. Obsess over these four questions and learn how to find your path.

Excerpt: How to deal with kids after a confrontation—a strategy on separating actions from identity from Things No One Else Can Teach Us [Book].

Explore yourself before you explore another.

S. C. Lourie Quote on Being Worthy and Accepting of Where You Are—No More Hiding

“Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you start to make more authentic decisions. Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it. Be whatever you are right now. No more hiding. You are worthy, always.”
S. C. Lourie

Beyond the Quote (80/365)

Life doesn’t always have to be sunshine and rainbows. And it certainly runs deeper than smiles and ease. But you already know this. You’ve felt it: the confusion, the sadness, the frustration, the brokenness, the misery, the pain—it’s all a part of the experience of life. What you need to know is that it’s okay to feel these emotions. It doesn’t make you any less human to feel the breadth and depth of the emotional spectrum—if anything, it makes you more human.

“You can’t be yourself if you don’t know who you are. So how do you know who you are? Everyone is a gooey batter of both nature and nurture, and every time shit hits the fan in our lives, we have an opportunity to get to know ourselves a bit better. It’s an exhausting experience, but it’s enriching. We learn about ourselves through all of our interactions with the world, both good and bad. So with everything you do, think about how it shapes who you are, and think about how who you are shapes your experience of everything you do.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 57)

“The more deeply we dive into our own stories, the more we feel like we’re going through it alone. But I’m here to remind you that you’re not alone, even though we each have to do the work ourselves. The deeper we dive, the more beauty we can discover as well. No on else shares our unique experiences, and therefore no one else can show us the light at the end of the tunnels we dig; we can only share our stories and remind ourselves that we already have everything we need to find that light. These are the things no one else can teach us.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 6)

Just keep shining.

The process is the point.

Richard Carlson Quote on Judging and Criticizing Other People

“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
Richard Carlson

Beyond the Quote (25/365)

Not only does criticizing and judging other people say something about our own need to be critical, but it acts as a mirror that reveals far more about our own character than it ever does about the person being targeted. In other words, what we’re ACTUALLY doing when we’re talking about someone else is, ironically, talking solely about ourselves. Think about it.

“You cannot fix me because I am not broken. And even though everything has changed, I am still more me than I’ve ever been.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 225)

Martin Luther King Jr. Quote on The Ultimate Measure Of A Man

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond the Quote (18/365)

It’s easy to be a good person when everything in life is good. When everything in the house is working beautifully and you can sit on the couch and watch your favorite TV show without interruption? When you go out to dinner and your table is beautifully set, the service is impeccable, and the food is amazing? When you go to work and you get along with everyone, you feel like you’re producing your best work, and your boss is thrilled?

“In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life – a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it’s like breathing in and breathing out. And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation. One without the other leads to a kind of madness.”
Pico Iyer

Beyond the Quote (17/365)

I think at some point in our lives we all fantasize about traveling the world and living the life of a nomad. We could wander from one place to the next and fill our days with spontaneous adventures while meeting new and interesting people. We could explore new cities, take beautiful hikes, have campfires in the woods, listen to new music, and read stories from people who have come before. We can hitchhike in cars, catch cross country trains, sleep in the back of busses, and take red-eye flights. Every day would be different and every day would be filled with a wealth of experience that we could easily get lost in. Sounds pretty great right?

“It’s only the idea that everyone else KNOWS who they are that’s causing you pain. But no one knows who they really are. You are an overflowing river that shifts its banks when the rains come. That’s why you cannot hold on to who you are.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 120)

Jordan Peterson Quote on Judging Ourselves Based On Our Actions—Not Our Beliefs

“It is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 103)

Beyond the Quote (10/365)

I read an expression the other day that really took me aback: We judge ourselves based on our thoughts but we judge others based on their actions. I knew it was true the second I read it, but I never would have realized it if I hadn’t read it. This was, in fact, the way in which I judged myself versus how I judged others (for the most part) and it was a clear double-standard that I felt guilty about.

“We forget that how a person acts in each moment is not who they are, that each person is a series of moments and we cannot judge any moment in isolation, and use that moment to define them. It is not up to others, it is up to us, which moments we want to hang on to, for good or for bad. We forget our successes and enshrine our failures. We forget there is still a child in all of us, begging for love. We forget that this is true of every person we meet. We only hear the loudest voices when really, we should be listening to the quietest.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word you Cannot Say (Page 43)

David Bowie on Aging Being An Extraordinary Process

“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”
David Bowie via Happiness is a Choice You Make

Beyond the Quote (Day 7)

It must have been around my mom’s 50th birthday when I asked her, like any good kid would on their parent’s birthday, how it felt to be so old. Expecting an uproar of mixed emotions and frustration, I was surprised when she rebutted calmly that for her, each decade has gotten better than the last—and that she was… Excited! Not quite your everyday answer. She explained that while youth has its perks, age brings with it insight and wisdom that allows you to connect more deeply with who you are and what your purpose might be—which, for her, has been the most valued experience of life overall.