Purpose Quotes
The Great Work of Your Life [Book]
Book Overview: If you’re feeling lost in your own life’s journey, The Great Work of Your Life may provide you with answers to the questions you most urgently need addressed—and may help you to find and to embrace your true calling.
Buy from Amazon! Listen on Audible!
Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- Stephen Cope Quote on Engaging With Life Rather Than Retreating—On Doing What’s Meaningful Rather Than Fun (Beyond the Quote 64/365)
- Stephen Cope Quote on Being Yourself and How You Can’t Be Anyone You Want To Be (Beyond the Quote 4/365)
- The Power of Mantra – As Described by Mohandas Gandhi’s Family Servant.
“[Ludwig van] Beethoven came to see that complete surrender to his situation in life – to his deafness, to his various neuroses – was absolutely essential for his own spiritual development and for the development of his art. He accepted the apparent mystery that his art and his suffering were inextricably linked.”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
“Blessed is the man who, having subdued all his passions, performeth with his active faculties all the functions of life, unconcerned about the event… Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. Perform thy duty, abandon all thought of the consequence, and make the event equal, whether it terminate in good or evil; for such an equality is called yoga.” ~ Bhagavad Gita
“The whole world is inside each person, each being, each object. To know any part of the world deeply, intimately, is to know the whole world. Each of us, then, must find our own particular domain – that little corner of the world in which we can drill for gold. For the acupuncturist it is knowing the body through the language of Chinese medicine. For the painter, it is knowing the world through through paint and the canvas. For the writer, it is knowing the world through words.”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
“To organize life’s energies around anything less sublime than our true nature is to still be split – separated from Self. No matter how much focus we may bring to any task, if the task is not our real vocation we will still be haunted by the suffering of doubt, and the internal agony of division.”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
“When we reach sixty-two, we are likely to interpret feelings of exhaustion and boredom as the signal to retire. But couldn’t they just as easily be the call to reinvent ourselves? As we age it seems harder and harder to let our authentic dharma reinvent us. We imagine somehow that the risks are greater. We tend to think that leaping off cliffs is for the young. But no. Actually – when better to leap off cliffs?”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
“It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of someone else.” ~ Krisna, Bhagavad Gita
“People actually feel happiest and most fulfilled when meeting the challenge of their dharma in the world, when bringing highly concentrated effort to some compelling activity for which they have a true calling. For most of us this means our work in the world. And by work, of course, I do not mean only ‘job.'”
Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life
“Squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it’s not merely benign or ‘too bad’ if we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighted down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.” ~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing – it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.” ~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.” ~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“Most of the time we pretend we aren’t clear on what our calling is when what’s really going on is that we’re horrified to face it because it seems too big or too impossible to make a living at or completely out of the question for us. But what if you had the audacity to leave your excuses and your shame about wanting to be huge and fabulous behind and really went for it full-on anyway? What if you decided to do the most outrageous, most exciting thing you ever dared fantasize about, regardless of what anyone, including your terrified self, thought? THAT would be living.” ~ Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass
“I remember reading about the astounding number of people in this country who die within three years of retiring, which proves to me that if you lose the sense that you are producing or contributing in some way, you literally lose the will to live, and that if you do have a reason to hang on, you will.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“There is always a place in the world for those who are willing to give of their time, energy, capital, creativity, and commitment.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“The direction we’re heading is more important than individual results.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“To paraphrase the philosopher Nietzsche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how. I’ve found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we’ve failed to change for years.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within