More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
January 20, 2018
novelist Junot Díaz says, “We all have a blind spot around our privilege, shaped exactly like us.”
Your professional struggles are “champagne problems” even if you can’t afford a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
To snub someone is deliberately mean, whereas most rejection isn’t personal.
Behind the cliché that you create your own reality there is a shadow: if you don’t create your own reality, it will be created for you. —DEEPAK CHOPRA
You need to be every bit as loving and accepting of yourself as you would be of a child in your care.
Respond to yourself as if you were your child, who’s just come home from kindergarten tearfully wishing it were her birthday tomorrow instead of her classmate’s.
Conceit is an iron gate that admits no new knowledge, no expansive possibilities, nor constructive ideas … Nothing novel or festive ever happens. —EPICTETUS (TRANSLATED BY SHARON LEBELL)
What is it you’re not quite ready to see?
The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your soul. —MEISTER ECKHART (FOURTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN MYSTIC, ATTRIBUTED)
wise men, discerning immortality, Seek not the stable here among unstable things. —FROM THE KATHA UPANISHAD
Find a big sheet of paper, jot down a pressing question at the center of the page, then write down absolutely every thought that presents itself. Once you’ve opened this dialogue with your subliminal mind, you’ll start touching on the reasons beneath your feelings.
Our reality has changed because we finally understand that fulfillment is something we allow ourselves, not something we continually have to seek elsewhere.
A skeleton lies on a stone bier beneath an inscription that reads: IO FUI GIA QUEL CHE VOI SIETE E QUEL CH’ IO SONO VOI ANCOR SARETE. In other words:
I was once what you are, and what I am, you will also become.
the miracle of any given person’s existence. “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones,” he writes in Unweaving the Rainbow. “Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.”
Aristotle spoke of eudaimonia, the notion that one’s personal well-being and sense of purpose are in society’s best interest too, that virtue is a gift multiplying each time it’s given,
million different ways to find fulfillment besides your work, and how many have you tried so far?
1. Acknowledge someone else’s usefulness.
2. Listen. (Actually listen.)
3. Smile at strangers.
If you see everyone you meet as either an ally or an adversary, you are going to create a whole lot of unnecessary trouble for yourself.
I don’t want rivals. Rivalry is exhausting, and I need all my energy for my work.
whatever you do, do it mindfully, because you have much more sway than you probably give yourself credit for.
You have to be kind to yourself so that you can keep on making your art; because even if you can’t write or paint or compose or dance or act or shoot for your own joy, you’ll never know the joy you might deprive others of if you don’t do it.
