Alexander Butler > Quotes

“Change is the only sure and constant companion we can expect in our lives. As the saying goes, this too shall pass, no matter what ‘this’ is. A good feeling or a bad one. A friendship or relationship. Our health. Our very lives. Everything that has a beginning has an end.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“With the knowledge I have now, what young Alex was going through was this: he had a bit of neurodiversity going on, but not enough to be diagnosed, even with today’s diagnostic criteria. Just enough to make his thought processes different to those of his teachers, and his teachers didn’t know what ADHD was.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“Other people do sensible things. They climb career ladders. They save and invest and create personal wealth. They buy property. They vote tactically. They tell little lies in order to negotiate relationships. They stay in challenging or even dead relationships because it seems like a better idea than being alone. None of these things mattered to me, and I fully accept that in a certain way that does make me stupid. For a whole chapter of my life I was in quite a lot of debt.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“The happiness we’ll be building together is a calm, sustainable, positive, warm feeling that forms a backdrop to a successful life. This might also be called contentment or satisfaction.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“This job may not nourish my soul, but it’s good enough, and I can’t afford to make changes right now.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“Where does this show up in my life? How does this affect the choices I make every day? Can I see this playing out at work, or in my family, or in my relationships? Which of my friends come to mind when I’m reading this? Which people in my life are good examples here, who I can try to learn from, and who do I know who embodies the very worst of these traits?”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“So while there will, absolutely, be moments of elation, moments when you’re laughing until there are tears flowing down your cheeks, the happiness we’re seeking here is a stable state. It’s a warm, open-minded, strong, positive approach to anything life might bring.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“There’s a lot of reference to a samurai mindset, which goes something like this: at my side is a sword, and if I draw my sword then I am utterly lethal. I train every day to be more and more lethal. I am quite capable of breaking someone down, of crushing them, of using my skill and strength to hurt them or even kill them. I can take a life, in violence and savagery. This is not theory or an idea from a book, this is a reality I live every day. But I don’t, and I absolutely will not unless I have exhausted every other option. I am absolutely beholden to keep my sword sheathed and my violence in check. I must always try to avoid drawing my sword: I must walk away from situations, run if I have to, or try to defuse violence with words. Only when all other options have been explored will I resort to violence. There are very strict moral guidelines around when it’s ok to use violence (for example, defending a vulnerable person from violence). If I ever do reach this point I will deploy every shred of my skill to end the situation as quickly as possible.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“However, it is not the end of the story. It is never the end of the story. For everyone, there is always a route to strength.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“for precious things that can (and will) be taken away, so it’s very important to embrace them here and now. Being present, noticing what’s going on, looking for good in things, became important to me.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“For a good 10 years of my life, I was suicidal. As in, actively wishing I could die whenever I wasn’t busy or distracted. More people feel like this than you’d realise. You probably know somebody who is actively suicidal but smiles and seems completely fine.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“That’s not going to get in the way of your personal growth. Unconscious masks, however, are where the first major barrier to personal development comes in. For many people this will be the main problem that stops them creating lasting happiness in their lives.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“Masks’ are the artificial selves we construct in order to fit in. We learn the first ones early in life. Perhaps you were too noisy or energised and your parents shouted at you to be quiet all the time…so you learned the mask of being a quiet and docile person. Perhaps your father didn’t know how to handle stress and would explode when things happened at home, and perhaps you adopted his mask.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“The two key attitudes in this journey of Arete are Determination and Curiosity,”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self

“My relationship hasn’t felt exciting or passionate for years, but it’s nice to have someone to come home to and besides, we have a home together and disentangling things could be messy, painful and expensive.”
― Alexander Butler, The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self