Untamed Quotes

“I surrendered myself to the cages of others' expectations, cultural mandates and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“I am not a good friend. I have never been capable of or willing to commit to the maintenance that the rules of friendship dictate. I cannot rmember bithdays. I do not want to meet for coffee. I will not host the baby shower. I won't text back because it's an eternal game of Ping-Pong, the texting. It never ends. I inevitably disappoint friends, so after enough of that, I decided I would stop trying. I don't want to live in constant debt. This is okay with me.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“The norms were created by somebody, and each of us is somebody. We can make our own normal.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Discontent is the nagging of the imagination. Discontent is evidence that your imagination has not given up on you. It is still pressing, swelling, trying to get your attention by whispering: "Not this.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation , and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old burn. [...]

The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“People have different ideas about what's brave. You did the brave thing, because the brave thing is doing what your Knowing tells you to do. You don't ask others what's brave, you feel and know what's brave. What you know to do might be the opposite of what others are telling you to do. It takes special bravery to honor yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to. [...]

Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you're a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else's way instead of forging your own.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Feelings all your feelings is hard, but that's what they're for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Which of my beliefs are of my own creation and which were programmed into me?”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“The porn kids come across on the internet, is misogynistic poison. We have to explain that to them so they don't think sex is about violence.

Sex is a wonderful and exciting thing about being human. It is natural to be curious about sex and when we are curious about things, we turn to the internet for information. But here's the problem with using the internet to learn about sex: you cannot know who is doing the teaching. There are people who have taken sex and sucked all the life out of it to package it and sell it on the internet.

What they’re selling is not real sex. It lacks connection, respect, and vulnerability, which is what makes sex sexy. This kind of porn is sold by people who are like drug dealers. They sell a product that fills people with a rush that feels like joy for a short while but then becomes a killer of real joy. Over time people prefer the rush of drugs to the real joy of life. Many who start watching porn very young will get hooked on the rush. Eventually, they will find it hard to enjoy real sex with real human beings.

Trying to learn about sex from porn is like trying to learn about the mountains by sniffing one of those air fresheners they sell at the gas station. When you finally get to the real mountains and breathe in that pure, wild air—you might be confused. You might wish it smelled like that fake, manufactured air freshener version.

We don’t want you to stay away from porn while you’re young because sex is bad. We want you to stay away from porn because real sex—with humanity and vulnerability and love—is indescribably good. We don’t want fake sex ruining real sex for you.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Control leaves no room for trust.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“In order to move our culture forward, revolutionaries have had to speak and plan from the unseen order inside them. For those of us who were not consulted in the building of the visible order, igniting our imagination is the only wya to see beyond what was created [before us]. If those who were not part of the building of reality only consult reality for possibiliies, reality will never change. [...]

Each of us was born to bring forth something that has never existed: a way of being, a family, an idea, art, a community - something brand-new. We are here to fully introduce outselves, to impose ouselves and ideas and thoughts and dreams onto the world, leaving it changed forever by who we are and what we bring forth from our depths, So we cannot contort ourselves to fit into the visible order. We must unleash ourselves and watch the world reorder itself in front of our eyes.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“[When I meditate,] there in the deep, I could sense something circulating inside me. It was a Knowing. I can know things down at this level that I can't on the chaotic surface. Down here, when I pose a question about my life I sense a nudge. The nudge guides me towards [...] the next right thing, one thing at a time. That was how I began to know what to do next. That was how I began to walk through my life more clearly, solid and steady.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“You need [...] to evolve, to become. [...]
You are here to become.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“A surface desire is one that conflicts with our Knowing. We must ask our surface desires: What is the desire beneath this desire? Is it rest? Is it peace?

Our deep desires are wise, true, beautiful, and things we can grant ourselves without abandoning our Knowing. Following our deep desire always returns us to integrity.

If your desire feels wrong to you: Go deeper.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Our beliefs determine how we experience the world.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“My way of life is to dare to imagine the truest, most beautiful life, family and world - and to then conjure up the courage to make real what I have imagined.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“[Whenever we wonder] 'What should I do', instead of asking ourselves what's right or wrong, we must ask ourselves: [...]

What is the truest, most beautiful story about [this situation in] your life you can imagine?”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Imagination is how personal and worldwide revolutions begin. 'I have a dream,' said Martin Luther King, Jr.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“In every family, culture, or religion, ideas of right and wrong are the hot cattle prods, the barking sheepdogs that keep the masses in the herd. They are the bars that keep us caged.

I decided that if I kept doing the "right" thing, I would spend my life following someone else's directions instead of my own. I didn't want to live my life without living my life. I wanted to make my own decision as a free woman, from my soul.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“My emotions
My intuition
My imagination
My courage
Those are the keys to freedom.
Those are who we are.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“What we believe, we become.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“New friendship memo: For us there would be no arbitrary rules, obligations, or expectations. We would not owe each other anything other than admiration, respect, love.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“Put pen to paper.
The people who build their truest, most beautiful lives usually do. It's hard to jump from dreaming to doing. As every architect or designer knows, here is a critical step between vision and reality. Before imagination becomes three-dimensional, it usually needs to become two-dimensional.
[...]
Let's look at what we've written and decide that these are not pipe dreams; these are our marching orders. These are the blueprints for our lives.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“I am as ancient as the earth I'm planted in and as new as my tiniest bloom.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life