Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

by Bob Goff

It’s given me a lot of comfort knowing we’re all rough drafts of the people we’re still becoming.

Am I really so insecure that I surround myself only with people who agree with me?

Burning down others’ opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists.

It’s one of the few rules in our marriage—we agreed if Sweet Maria ever decides to leave me, she has to take me with her.

Some of us have been told what we want our whole lives. We’ve been told we should want to go out for sports or not. We should want a college education or a graduate degree or a particular career. We should want to date this person and not the other one. None of it is mean-spirited, of course, and no one means any harm. It just doesn’t sit well with us.

The problem with mere compliance is it turns us into actors. Rather than making decisions ourselves, we read the lines off the script someone we were told to respect handed to us, and we sacrifice our ability to decide for ourselves.

Instead of telling people what they want, we need to tell them who they are. This works every time. We’ll become in our lives whoever the people we love the most say we are.

He’ll try anything once, but he’ll do it several times if it’s life-threatening.

If they wanted to be a good leader, they would need to be an even better follower.

People don’t grow where they’re planted; they grow where they’re loved.

I meet people at Disneyland because where we meet shapes the discussions we’ll have.

Someone once asked me what I would write if I only had six words for my autobiography. Here’s what I came up with: What if we weren’t afraid anymore?

Send them a text message and say you’re sorry. I know they don’t deserve it. You didn’t either.