Overworked and Overwhelmed Quotes

“She tries to take the first 60 to 90 minutes of the workday to organize herself, answer e-mails, make follow-up calls, review her calendar, and set her priorities for the day.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“The thing about the office stress,” he said, “is that it kind of just eats away at you day after day. It's just kind of chinking away at the armor to the point where it will crack.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“Evolent Health CEO Frank Williams who says, “Whatever time I invest in exercise, I get four times back in terms of energy and productivity and all of those types of things.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of The Progress Principle, summed things up nicely: Work is now part of everything we do. We're never away from it. We really have to go to extremes to get away from it. There used to be much clearer demarcations between work and nonwork time. I think because of technology we've come to have higher expectations of each other and of ourselves and of our organizations.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“A farmer had a beautiful, powerful horse that was the envy of his neighbors in the community. One day the horse jumped the fence and ran away. The farmer's neighbors were quick to come over and offer their regrets over the farmer's loss of such a horse. He simply shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Then one day the horse came back to the farm along with five magnificent wild horses. The farmer and his son corralled the horses to train them for work on the farm. When they saw the horses, the neighbors rushed over to admire the horses and marvel at the farmer's good fortune. In response to their comments, he just shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” A few days later, the farmer's son was training one of the new horses and fell off and severely broke his leg. After several months, it became clear that the son would never walk normally again. The neighbors came by to offer their condolences over the son's infirmity. The farmer shrugged and said, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Then war came to the kingdom and all of the young, able-bodied males were conscripted for the king's army, likely to never return home again. Because of his broken leg, the farmer's son was left at home. The neighbors, with much grief at their own losses, came by to comment on the farmer's good fortune in keeping his son. The farmer simply replied, “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” Of course, the point of the story is you never know how things are going to play out over the long run, so why spend a lot of energy on mulling over whether any particular outcome is good or bad? Things can and will change. I think the reason Diane and I use “Good thing, bad thing, who knows?” as a catch phrase is that our experience with my multiple sclerosis has taught us to suspend judgment on what could happen or is likely to happen in life. It's taught us both to be more mindful—aware and intentional—about how we live our lives. In this final chapter of the book, I want to share some of those mindfulness lessons I've learned from MS in the hope that they'll be useful to you on your journey.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“The largest factor in our well-being is the place where our mind dwells.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“You have to be careful about what rents space in your head.”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative

“Frankl wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”3”
― Scott Eblin, Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative