Healing
“Love is not about opening old wounds, it’s about healing them.”
— Leo Buscaglia, Born for Love, p. 157
A More Compelling Right
You have an absolute right to be resentful and angry, but exercising that right will only keep the thorns in your heart. You have a more compelling right to heal the wounds you’ve suffered. You can heal with compassion for yourself, with sympathy for your own hurt, and with the motivation to heal and improve. Emotional healing is replacing your core hurts to your core value, so that you can realize your fullest potential as the loving, compassionate, competent, creative person you are meant to be.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 121
Conviction, not Anger
Conviction is for something, like justice and fair treatment, while anger and resentment are against something, like injustice or unfair treatment. Those who hate injustice want retribution and triumph, not fairness; they fantasize about punishment of their unjust opponents, who must submit to humiliation. The fantasies of those who love justice are of equality, harmony, and triumphant good.
Being for something generates energy and creates positive feelings and relationships, while being against something depletes energy, creates negative feelings, and usually has deleterious effects on relationships — if you’re resentful about something at work, you won’t be as sweet to your kids when you get home.
— Steven Stosny You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 117
Core Value
What you cannot get from others is your core value, your internal sense of importance, value, worthiness, equality, and personal power — your ability to act according to your own deepest values. These are too personal and too important to rely on the advice or behavior of others. They must be self-regulated.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 116
How to Feel Lovable
If you want to feel lovable, the easiest way is to be compassionate to someone — a child, friend, stranger — anyone will do.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 110
Choosing to Heal
If you choose to heal — and it is certainly your choice — you make the choice out of compassion for yourself, with awareness that your emotional health and well-being are more important than anyone else’s resentment, anger, or abuse.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 106
No Longer a Victim or even Survivor
The goal of healing is to have whatever harm you’ve suffered become the least important thing about you. Other people’s behavior is not about you at all. Only your core value is about you.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 105
Saying No
Next time something or someone comes along seeking your time, ask yourself, If I agree and answer yes to this request, what am I saying no to?
— Debbie Macomber, Knit Together, p. 75
Celebrate Small Successes
Stop and celebrate each of those small successes, each of those little steps we take on our journey to success. Don’t skip over them, don’t rush through them, but take time to enjoy each as it comes. It will encourage you and, most important, it will motivate you to keep going.
— Debbie Macomber, Knit Together: Discover God’s Pattern for Your Life, p. 67
Truthfulness
“Truthfulness is a more helpful concept than honesty. In conversations with the ones you love, be true to your heart instead of honest to your moods.”
— Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go, p. 157