Participating

Core Value, God, Growth 0

All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given — which is ourselves! If I am to believe the saints and mystics, this finished product is more valuable to God than it seemingly is to us. Whatever this Mystery is, we are definitely in on the deal! True religion is always a deep intuition that we are already participating in something very good, in spite of our best efforts to deny it or avoid it.

— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, p. x

God Dependency

Core Value, God, Love, Relationships 0

God dependency corrects all other faulty dependencies. God keeps us right-size and allows us to go through the ebb and flow of our work day without overreacting. We are able to see our co-workers as separate and equal. We treat them with dignity, and we behave with dignity ourselves. God is our source. We remember that, and it draws everything to scale. We are able to see our true employer as God and our boss as a stand-in. We perform our work well because that is doing God’s will for us. We do the best we can and let the chips fall where they may.

God allows us, too, detachment in our love relationships so that every shift of our partner’s mood is not an indictment of our lovability. As our relationship comes to include God, the ebb and flow of personalities becomes far less personal. We lead our life each day in relationship first to God and then to our partner. We treat our partner with loving courtesy, but those attributes are grounded in our relationship to God. Secure in God, we turn less to our human companions to supply something they are not able to supply. God is the source of our emotional security. That established, we are able to love others with a less-demanding neediness. This is attractive to people. We have an inner compass, a personal gravitational field that circles us back, always, to God. Our partners may love us, but they cannot supplant God for us. We may love our partners, but we cannot supplant God for them. When this is clearly understood, when God is the primary relationship and all others, however cherished, are secondary, then we begin to have right dependency. “Thy will be done” we pray, and we include our relationships within the range of the prayer.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 129-130

Uniquely Suited for a Rich Life

Core Value, Growth, Healing, Joy 1

One of the things that you will be asked to do in the pages that follow is to abandon a mind-set in which you live the remainder of your life as if you are still experiencing your trauma. You may argue that given what you went through you are permanently damaged or scarred, that your baggage will be with you forever. I’m not here to tell you to get over it. I’m here to help you get past it. I will make the argument that you’re richer now — stronger, more empathic, and more in touch with your core values — than you were before you were challenged by what you went through. I don’t just believe that trauma survivors can go on to live rich, happy lives; I believe that they’re uniquely suited to do so.

— Alicia Salzer, MD, Back to Life, p. xxiv-xxv

Love and Belonging

Acceptance, Core Value, Love 1

As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It’s as simple and complicated as this: If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.

— Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 23

Endearing Idiosyncracies

Acceptance, Core Value, Growth, Letting Go, Life 0

Our innate idiosyncracies are actually more endearing to others than our most glorious personal achievements….

History is full of incompetent people who were beloved, blunderers with winsome personality traits, and inept folks who delighted their entourages with their unassuming presences. Their secret? To accept their flaws with the same grace and humility as their best qualities.

— Veronique Vienne, The Art of Imperfection, p. 9

Dazzling Light

Acceptance, Core Value, Joy, Life, Love 0

What would it take for us to remember our worth? How good we are, and how complete and loving and lovable. men shouldn’t have to bear the burden of our remembrance. It’s not their function to remind us we are goddesses. It’s our function to remember it and then reveal it to the world. When we remember, they will too. The light will be dazzling.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 136

Shining Like a Star

Core Value, Relationships 0

Who is to hold the space for a woman’s greatness? In many heterosexual relationships, a man is threatened by a woman’s greatness, finding a variety of ways to make her question her own beauty and strength. A secure man is not threatened by a woman’s intellectual or emotional power but celebrates the opportunity for joyful partnership that it offers him. The conscious question is whether a relationship can handle two stars.

We must relinquish the paradigm of men as power with women as support and instead embrace the image of both men and women as powers, with each supporting the other. Any man who holds a woman back is not a man a woman can afford to be with. A woman has a mighty and sacred task to perform on earth. She will not be able to fulfill her function if she remains with a man who derides her glory.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 73

Wholehearted Living

Compassion, Connection, Core Value, Life, Love 0

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

— Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Permission to Be Fabulous

Acceptance, Core Value, Growth, Healing 0

Until a woman has given herself permission to be fabulous, she will not find herself with partners who promote her ability to be so. As long as she tears herself down, she will attract people who tear her down, she will find others who agree that she is undeserving and lacking as long as that is how she thinks of herself.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 59