No Room for Blame

Compassion, Life 0

There’s no room for blame in your life as long as you live with kindness. And excuses, regardless of their form, are all about blame. Blaming your past. Blaming the economy. Blaming your perceived personal flaws. Blaming God. Blaming your parents. Blaming your children or your spouse. Blaming your DNA. There’s no shortage of circumstances, people, and events to blame — and there’s no shortage of blame itself.

When you shift to compassion, all blame disappears.

— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Excuses Begone! p. 134

Happiness and Guilt

Core Value, Joy 0

You enjoy as much happiness as you believe you’re worthy of.

Happiness is natural, easy, and effortless when your Self-acceptance is high, but happiness is blasphemous when your Self-acceptance is low. When you feel low, you dream of being happy, but you also secretly fear that maybe you’re not worthy of happiness, so you question, doubt, resist, test, defend against, overlook, and push away invitations to be happy….

You suffer as much pain as you believe you’re worthy of.

Self-acceptance (that is, Self-worth) is the key to both happiness and unhappiness. If you can accept yourself as whole, worthy, and well, then happiness is natural and acceptable to you. If, however, you judge yourself as “not good enough,” then you’re not good enough for happiness. Indeed, for as long as you judge that you’re “not good enough,” you must always throw happiness off for fear of guilt.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 92-93

You Are Enough.

Core Value, Marriage 0

Know now and hear me, loud and clear: You are not responsible for your partner’s choices and actions. You are fabulous, loving and enough. You definitely have things to learn about how you got to this point in your life and where you’re meant to go from here. And you will learn them! But you’re not to blame for this crisis in your world. You’re more than good enough! And there is nothing wrong with you!

— Eve A. Wood, MD, The Gift of Betrayal, p. 9

Time to Be Happy

Joy 0

It takes as much time to be happy as it does to be depressed or resentful.

Happiness requires no extra time. In fact, it requires no time at all. As I’ve already stated, happiness waits on welcome, not on time.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 91

Fantasy

Books, Inspiration, Life 0

Fantasy instead teaches us that there is something worthwhile you can do on the way to the grave: you can dream. And that maybe that dreaming is not only intrinsically valuable, for its own sake, but that sometimes the dream can take on a life of its own, a life that persists, and that shapes and sometimes even ennobles the lives of others that it touches, sometimes long after the original dreamer is gone from this earth.

— Gardner Dozois, Preface, Modern Classics of Fantasy

Our Own Wholeness

Growth, Relationships 0

The right two people can be better together than alone, helping to keep each other sane, well-loved, and secure. Nevertheless, here’s where we’ve got it backward. A loving relationship can never make us whole. Rather, it allows us to better experience our own wholeness. Only from this perspective can we realize ourselves emotionally.

— Judith Orloff, MD, Emotional Freedom, p. 207

So Many Books. . .

Books, Reading 0

It is easy to buy a book; what is more difficult is to purchase the time in which to read them. Too often the mere fact of possession tempts us to think we own the contents.

— Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), quoted in The Book Lover: Quotable Quotes, Magpie Books, London, p. 26

Soften with Play

Growth, Joy, Marriage, Relationships 0

Growing older involves accumulating life experience in a way that allows us to know ourselves, and the world around us, generously, hopefully, and with a minimum of denial. If reality is to bring us meaning rather than despair, however, we need to learn to soften life’s hard edges with hope rather than illusion. Which means that we need to learn how to play….

When we engage each other in real and playful ways, we touch those places that have been most injured, and are therefore most closed to growth, with love, kindness, and compassion. We bring our deepest fears into creative contact with each other. In ways that are at once real and not real, that simultaneously embody both past and present, play, once again, invites seemingly immutable aspects of our histories into the present, and so enlivens parts of ourselves that have become deadened, lightens parts that have become too heavy to carry, and teaches us to live with pains that have all too often become too great to bear.

— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 171, 185

The Deciding Vote

Joy, Peace 0

The perception that happiness is a decision affirms that attitude is first, circumstance is second. It teaches you that whatever is happening, you always carry the deciding vote when it comes to happiness, success, love, and peace of mind. Sometimes this is easy to remember; other times it’s not so easy. Once again, it’s when you forget that you must ask for help.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 54