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    “You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trial along the way, as seeds that are being planted for further cultivation, if you know how to grow them.  No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.  By constantly applying yourself to the subject that suits your inclinations and attacking it from many different angles, you are simply enriching the ground for these seeds to take root.  You may not see this process in the present, but it is happening.  Never losing your connection to your Life’s Task, you will unconsciously hit upon the right choices in your life.  Over time, mastery will come to you.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

      “The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself!  What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling?  Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations!  Everything on this earth has its difficult sides!  Only some inner drive—pleasure, love—can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift us out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, via Mastery

        “Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments.  It’s only when we feel intense pain that we’re willing to look at our values and question why they seem to be failing us.  We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we’ve been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

          “I have found that battling despair does not mean closing my eyes to the enormity of the tasks of effecting change, nor ignoring the strength and the barbarity of the forces aligned against us. It means teaching, surviving and fighting with the most important resource I have, myself, and taking joy in that battle. It means, for me, recognizing the enemy outside and the enemy within, and knowing that my work is part of our power, and knowing that this work did not begin with my birth nor will it end with my death. And it means knowing that within this continuum, my life and my love and my work has particular power and meaning relative to others. It means trout fishing on the Missisquoi River at dawn and tasting the green silence, and knowing that this beauty too is mine forever.” ~ Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

            “Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.  Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.  The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering.  The avoidance of struggle is a struggle.  The denial of failure is a failure.  Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

              “I know the world is crazy.  I know love is not always the way it’s meant to be.  I know sometimes, things hurt.  But I also know that we’ll get through this.  That our hearts will arrive on the other side, in one piece.  That everything is beautiful, if we give it the chance to be.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You

              Maybe ‘darkness’ isn’t the enemy…

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                “Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness.  But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.”

                  “All great men and women went through difficulties to get to where they are, all of them made mistakes.  They found within those experiences some benefit – even if it was simply the realization that they were not infallible and that things would not always go their way.  They found that self-awareness was the way out and through – if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gotten better and they wouldn’t have been able to rise again.” ~ Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

                    “It seems that often when problems arise, our outlook becomes narrow.  All of our attention may be focused on worrying about the problem, and we may have a sense that we’re the only one that is going through such difficulties.  This can lead to a kind of self-absorption that can make the problem seem very intense.  When this happens, I think that seeing things from a wider perspective can definitely help – realizing, for instance, that there are many other people who have gone through similar experiences, and even worse experiences.  If you focus too closely, too intensely, on a problem when it occurs, it appears uncontrollable.  But if you compare that event with some other greater event, look at the same problem from a distance, then it appears smaller and less overwhelming.” ~ Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

                      “In our daily life, problems invariably arise.  But problems themselves do not automatically cause suffering.  If we can directly address our problem and focus our energies on finding a solution, for instance, the problem can be transformed into a challenge.  If we throw into the mix, however, a feeling that our problem is ‘unfair,’ we add an additional ingredient that can become a powerful fuel in creating mental unrest and emotional suffering.  And now we not only have two problems instead of one, but that feeling of ‘unfairness’ distracts us, consumes us, and robs us of the energy needed to solve the original problem.” ~ Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness