Top 66 Martha Beck Quotes

Whatever causes you to drop your plan forward and open to your vision, your own, deeply personal vision of what your life could be at its very best, that’s what I call meeting your rhinoceros.

Self-improvement books, friends, and polite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing, and solving our real problems.

As much horror as we have always created, we are a species that keeps moving forward, seeing new sights in new ways, and enjoying the journey.

Once we’re willing to confront our emotional suffering, we begin making choices based on attraction instead of aversion, love instead of fear. Where we used to think about what was ‘safe,’ we now become interested in doing what seems right or fun or meaningful or ripe with possibilities.

I don’t believe that there are no spiritual beings around us. I don’t know what to call them, I don’t know how they work. But I know they’re there.

The thing I love most about my job is watching people age backward, becoming more lively and energetic as they free themselves from situations that are toxic to their essential selves.

I feel about aging the way William Saroyan said he felt about death: Everybody has to do it, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.

I really do think that any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way.

Do whatever it takes to convey your essential self.

Friends, there are many areas in which I need encouragement, but worrying is not one of them. I worry the way Renee Fleming sings high Cs: Effortlessly. Loudly. At length.

A designated patient ‘carries’ the group’s dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed.

Only since the Industrial Revolution have most people worked in places away from their homes or been left to raise small children without the help of multiple adults, making for an unsupported life.

Every day brings new choices.

Most of my clients don’t realize that the way they look and the way they think about their looks are two separate issues.

Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you’ll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That’s why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury. If everyday experience hasn’t convinced you of this, there’s research that will.

Basic human contact – the meeting of eyes, the exchanging of words – is to the psyche what oxygen is to the brain. If you’re feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

My dog has the intellectual capacity of a lime wedge, yet even he possesses an elaborate set of assumptions, based on his ability to control my behavior through a combination of slavish devotion and incessant howling.

Indecision may come from an instinctive hunch that there’s more you need to know – which means it’s time to learn everything you can about the pros and cons of each option. You can continue on this track, however, only as long as you’re unearthing genuinely new information.

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld.

Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven’t had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.

All mental hygiene is based on the core practice of doing nothing. Most of us are good at wasting time, staring at the wall while telling ourselves we should be working. We call this doing nothing, but our brains are furiously active. We think constantly, and our thinking is often rife with distress.

Realizing that we’ve surrendered our self-esteem to others and choosing to be accountable for our own self-worth would mean absorbing the terrifying fact that we’re always vulnerable to pain and loss.

Ten years ago, I still feared loss enough to abandon myself in order to keep things stable. I’d smile when I was sad, pretend to like people who appalled me. What I now know is that losses aren’t cataclysmic if they teach the heart and soul their natural cycle of breaking and healing.

In the developed world, hundreds of millions of us now face the bizarre problem of surfeit. Yet our brains, instincts, and socialized behavior are still geared to an environment of lack. The result? Overwhelm – on an unprecedented scale.

Children who assume adult responsibilities feel old when they’re young.

Getting bogged down in old stories stops the flow of learning by censoring our perceptions, making us functionally deaf and blind to new information. Once the replay button gets pushed, we no longer form new ideas or conclusions – the old ones are so cozy.

I suggest Substituting Inedible Nurturance, or SIN. Don’t replace overeating with virtuous work or exercise; instead, make a list of things you love, from watching TV to hanging out with favorite people.

The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past.

Tiny steps will get you to your goal months and months sooner. A little is better than a lot.

Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to.

I fell in love with Africa and began helping people fix things there.

For the vast majority of world history, human life – both culture and biology – was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy.

To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.

Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.

Polite strangers often tell soothing lies about our physical appearance that prevent many of us from facing, discussing and solving our real problems.

Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that’s basically genetic.

Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.

You get social pressure from your parents, who teach you to pay attention to certain things and not to others. You get it in school.

The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times.

Rest until you feel like playing, then play until you feel like resting, period. Never do anything else.

Sometimes a psychic tells you something and it feels wrong and others may be right on the money. It’s your choice about whom to trust, and giving that trust is something we do ourselves.

If you’re feeling intransigently ambivalent, it might pay to formally accept what’s already happening – that is, decide not to decide.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

Not everyone is equally good-looking.

I’m not saying we have power over everything in our lives – if that were true, my hair would look so, so different – but I am saying that there’s no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.

Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don’t. Emotional pain or numbness are symptoms of living the wrong life, not a long life.

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.

When you meet people, show real appreciation, then genuine curiosity.

If I tell a man he needs to quit his soul-sucking job, he has to go home and fight with his wife or fight with his parents and fight with his in-laws and fight with everybody, because men aren’t supposed to be happy; they’re supposed to do well.

Something in the human psyche confuses beauty with the right to be loved. The briefest glance at human folly reveals that good looks and worthiness operate independently. Yet countless socializing forces, from Aunt Clara to the latest perfume ad, reinforce beliefs like ‘If I were pretty enough, I would be loved.’