The Book of Moods Quotes

“In the same way it takes ten thousand hours to master a skill, it takes ten thousand uncomfortable moments to acquire strength. And if you can look at every delay as a chance to practice patience and every breakup as a chance to strengthen your solitude, you start to see the terrible, uncomfortable, unforeseen events of life as moments to be collected and added to your arsenal of wisdom, knowledge, and personal development.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats. —Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“The past was too heavy & the future too forceful to truly escape.
Instead, I'd have to learn to travel through the recesses of my mind, back and forth between the three plateaus- past, present , future- with the confidence of a sailor, riding the waves as they come.”
― Lauren Martin , The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“We’ve got to start reminding ourselves that our embarrassing experiences, our uncomfortable memories, aren’t bad, but are nonthreatening parts of us that make up our colorful history. We have to remind ourselves that things can be awful, but that we survive and can come through them stronger, smarter, or at the very least, funnier.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“When you accept the inevitability of the pain and discomfort that the future holds, you can let go of the fear of uncertainty.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Those who can tell a good story about who they are and what they want leap over those who can’t.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“I would not mess up again. I would take it seriously, this business of being a woman.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor wrote, “Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within 90 seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those 90 seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Research shows that women worry twice as much as men, making us twice as likely to suffer from anxiety. Women are also more likely to make connections between bad events in the past and possible negative events in the future, a cognitive bias known as anchoring.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“In every moment of loss there’s a moment of appreciation. When we mourn the dead, we appreciate life. When we lament the state of the world, we take a moment to appreciate our neighbors. When the worst happens, we cling to the good still around. The good becomes that much more important. You need this moment of crisis to slow you down and make you appreciate all you do have in this moment of loss.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“We don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. Not really. We can think we know, and they may share one or two details, but we don’t actually know. And we can’t ever know what someone is dealing with silently. What flaws and stresses and preoccupations are overtaking them, causing them to act the way they do.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“event is really just our thoughts about the event. If we can learn to think differently, to change our automatic thoughts, we can change not just the way we see the world around us but the way we move through it.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“You’re not pretty like her. You’re pretty like you.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“So many times our moods are dictated by our inability to accept the moment for what it is.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“And for the really bad memories, the ones that can’t be turned into an anecdote or funny story, the ones we carry around like poison, well, those are the ones that connect us most deeply with others. Those, when we have the courage to share them, are what make us human. In the words of Grace Paley, “Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Worry,” Rebecca Solnit believes, “is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t.” The degree to which this uncertainty bothers us is the degree of our anxiety. And the degree to which we try to control the uncertainty of our lives is the way so many of us waste our lives.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“The answer was so clear, so obvious. Stop thinking about the future and fretting over the past. Anxiety was nothing more than thinking. Rapid, untrained thinking.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“When we’re anxious, we’re not really living. We’re surviving. We’re holding on, waiting for the anxiety to pass, losing out on minutes, hours, and days of our lives.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“The only things I could control were my perceptions and reactions to the random, unpleasant circumstances. Because I can’t always stop what happens to me. The events of life are too unpredictable, indeterminable, and unchangeable. My triggers were lessons. Reminders. A buzzer that went off when I hit something in myself that needed attention. A sharp corner that would keep cutting me until I learned my way around it.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Even though whatever triggered the emotion is gone, the mood is still there. Moods weren’t just about understanding my emotions, but the triggers that prompted them.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“There’s light in the words I feel the same way.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever. —Isak Dinesen”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“If it feels like everything is broken, like your life isn’t going anywhere, like the threads and shards of the dream are no longer visible, remember that it’s supposed to be this way. Sometime, very soon, your moment will come. Just keep up the energy to look out for it.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“It occurred to me that life was like this. Waves. Peaks and troughs. Highs and lows. The rhythm of life wasn’t a steady line of upward momentum—we’d blaze out if it were.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“I was excited for the unexpected that occurred because of the unpleasant.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“You need this moment of crisis to slow you down and make you appreciate all you do have in this moment of loss.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“if life has taught me anything it’s that there’s always some silver lining if you stay around long enough to find it.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“Anytime something happens—a delay, a stolen AmEx, a lack of response, a forgotten reservation—it’s not the event that triggers us, but our judgment about it. How unfair it is. How disrespectful it is. How terrible the consequences will be.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life

“We don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. Not really. We can think we know, and they may share one or two details, but we don’t actually know. And we can’t ever know what someone is dealing with silently. What flaws and stresses and preoccupations are overtaking them, causing them to act the way they do. Deborah Tannen, an expert on communication and relationships, says all of our conversations are products of our own personal histories. What we say and how we say it is all a personal style that we’ve developed after years of interacting with people. The way our family talks to us or shows love becomes the way we speak and show love. And this is what creates conflict. We think we understand what someone is saying, but we are only really hearing them through our own filters.”
― Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life