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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The first problem presents itself when people think setting boundaries means controlling someone else’s behavior, but the rules are your own to designate and yours to honor. When I set personal boundaries, I do it to control my own well-being by limiting my exposure to what I consider harmful.
It’s important to never assume any two people have the same threshold of what’s off-limits, out of bounds, or unacceptable. We decide and convey what’s acceptable when we choose to accept it.
Since we are the ones responsible for the imbalances in our lives, we are the ones who are also responsible for adjusting the scales.
“Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate. Tell me what you stand for, not what you’re against.”
We have so much power when we let go of fear (which is what normally holds us back from making a decision that seems “permanent” when, in fact, nothing is permanent).
The problem with being goal-oriented and future-focused is that at no given point are we ever where we want to be.
We decide for how long we are going to let what hurt us haunt us.
My friend compares the pain of grief to a large hole in the ground that she kept falling into. The hole is still there, but she has learned to walk around it. This practice doesn’t deny, ignore, or even minimize the past; it still acknowledges everything that happened, but it doesn’t sensationalize it, which makes a huge difference.
Grief can feel really heavy at first, and I still don’t know if it actually gets lighter with time, or if we grow strong enough to handle the extra weight.
I’ve heard that we spend the first half of our lives blaming our parents for our situation, and the second half of our lives saying having kids is the reason we don’t change our situation.
It seems we cling to our mistakes just because we’ve spent so much time, money, or energy, making them.
Most of us stay in miserable jobs, continue living in neighborhoods we dislike, and maintain dysfunctional relationships for decades, all because we think a change would require more energy than staying put.
“Everything I ever let go of had claw marks in it,”
When somebody else’s story resonates with us, we realize we are not alone. That realization is an important step in breaking down our delusions of grandeur, bringing us closer together. After all, nothing makes us feel more alone than our secrets.
People often complain about things they actually can change. It’s important to acknowledge the difference between “difficult” and “impossible.”
And when you start looking at someone you despise as a human being who is full of anguish, pain, fear, and insecurities, your hatred transforms into compassion.
“When you have more than you need, build a longer dining table, not a taller fence.”
Privilege is an advantage available to a particular person or group, and it is often unearned.
In the United States, despite the supposed separation of Church and State, school holidays and paid time off work was (and still is), scheduled around Christian holidays. That is Christian privilege.
Ask yourself when you started believing that you must prove your worth to someone other than yourself in order to have value.
When you spend money you don’t have, you are stealing from yourself.
