Give to others what you most desire for yourself.
Enlist this secret to success: If you want to be appreciated, appreciate others. If you want your work to be valued, value others’ work. If you want love, give love. If you want a successful career, help another’s career to flourish. What goes around comes around when you surrender comparisons.
— Judith Orloff, The Ecstasy of Surrender, p. 15
Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the “dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.
— Amir Levine, M. D., and Rachel S. F. Heller, M. A., Attached, p. 21
Feeling as though a relationship is required is never a peaceful place to be. Wanting one is a reasonable enough desire, but needing one keeps you from breathing deeply and peacefully during the individual moments as they pass by. And life is made up of individual moments. Nothing more, in fact.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 201
How do you know that you don’t need a romantic partner? You don’t have one. How do you know that you need one? Here he is! You don’t call the shots on this. It’s better that you don’t. That way you can give yourself everything. What do you need a partner for? To fill your hunger? Is that true? All your adult life you’ve thought that you needed a partner, and you’re still hungry. So how many partners does it take to fill you? I’m not saying that you don’t need a partner. This is about your own truth. Just go in and experience it. Need yourself, whether or not you find a partner. In the meantime, you are waiting just for you.
— Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World, p. 33
God is waiting to be called on. Our Higher Power is always just a prayer, an idea, or a question away.
Why is this so hard to remember? Even after we glimpse the power of this truth, we have to be willing to pray, asking God for the help we need that has already been promised to us. God knows our needs. But it’s helpful for us to think them or voice them so that we know them too. That way we can recognize when the help has arrived.
The same is true for our companions. Their problems are for God to solve. We are not participants in their solutions. We can listen, we can share what has worked for us, we can pray with them. But we are not here to convey God’s will.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 130
It may seem patently unfair that the injured party in an intimate betrayal has to take responsibility for her personal healing. That’s because healing has nothing to do with fairness; it has to do with power. Where blame renders us powerless, responsibility empowers us.
— Steven Stosny, Living and Loving After Betrayal, p. 41
We are being motivated by fear or love in every encounter we experience. This may seem like an oversimplification, but I have found that it’s the best way for me to judge my actions or reactions to others on my path. If I am able to observe people living however they choose, without it unduly upsetting me, then I am practicing acceptance, which is an act of love. If I am agitated by their actions, I am experiencing fear, and I want them to change.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 227
Remaining detached actually allows for greater love, I think, because our own emotions don’t begin to dictate what the other person should be doing, thus clouding the impact of our silent though very powerful expression. Sitting in quiet prayer on behalf of someone else when he or she is struggling may seem like a cold act, but it is fulfilling God’s will for our lives in that moment. Every person needs to establish his or her own relationship with God. It’s not our job to introduce them.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 213
Detachment may look like disinterest to some because of the act of walking away or looking beyond a situation in which a friend is trapped. But it’s closely allied with trust. Trusting that God will do for others what God always does for us when we wait patiently. Having hope for our friend is the best we can offer him.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 212
Attachment to others and what they might be thinking, coupled with analyzing how our behavior might change that thinking, is a great definition for codependence. Many suffer from it. But there is a solution, and if we opt to follow it, we will get a daily reprieve from our obsession with any other person. The solution is this: acknowledge that your appropriate role in someone else’s life is kindness and prayer, perhaps sharing an experience when asked, and then wishing them well with no strings attached. Then turn to the only life you can control: your own.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 208