Quote of the Day

We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line.  Not only is this wrong, it's dangerous.  Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying.  Researchers don't find shame correlated with positive outcomes at all -- there are no data to support that shame is a helpful compass for good behavior.  In fact, shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 72-73

Quote of the Day

No one outside ourselves can rule us inwardly.  When we know this, we become free.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 90

Quote of the Day

Marriage has the uniquely powerful capacity to transform you both into more loving and generous and courageous and compassionate people.

-- Rob and Kristen Bell, The Zimzum of Love, p. 16

Quote of the Day

"Revolution" is a term that people use only when you're successful.  Before that, you're just a quirky person who does things differently.  People think revolution needs to involve loud provocations, fists in the air, and bloodshed.  But if you think true love looks like Romeo and Juliet, you'll overlook a great relationship that grows slowly.  If you think your life's purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you'll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.

-- Derek Sivers, Anything You Want, p. 9

Quote of the Day

Every piece of criticism is an opportunity for new work.  You can't control what sort of criticism you receive, but you can control how you react to it.  Sometimes when people hate something about your work, it's fun to push that element even further.  To make something they'd hate even more.  Having your work hated by certain people is a badge of honor.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 151

Quote of the Day

Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior.  Insight won't do it.  Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them.  Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it.  We have to act.  We have to take the first step down a new road.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. xvi

Quote of the Day

We need stories of hope and possibility, stories that reflect the reality of our lived experiences.  When such stories exist, as writer and publisher Barbara Smith writes, "then each of us will not only know better how to live, but how to dream."  

-- Janet Mock, Redefining Realness, p. xvii

Quote of the Day

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.  That's why it loves perfectionists -- it's so easy to keep us quiet.  If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we've basically cut it off at the knees.  Shame hates having words wrapped around it.  If we speak shame, it begins to wither.   

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 67

Quote of the Day

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 89

Quote of the Day

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it.  Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you.

-- Cesare Pavese

Quote of the Day

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what's not working.

-- Derek Sivers, Anything You Want, p. 3

Quote of the Day

You and I will be around a lot longer than Twitter, and nothing substitutes face to face.

-- Rob Delaney

Quote of the Day

Every time we capitulate to emotional blackmail, we lose contact with our integrity, the inner compass that helps us determine what our values and behavior should be.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. xv

Quote of the Day

I know intimately what it feels like to crave representation and validation, to see your life reflected in someone who speaks deeply to whom you know yourself to be, echoes your reality, and instills you with possibility.  That mirror wasn't accessible to me growing up.  It was an utterly lonely place to be.  So when a girl with tears in her eyes embraces me and tells me "I want to be like you when I grow up" or "Reading your story has given me hope" or "You're my hero," I understand the gravity of her statements.

-- Janet Mock, Redefining Realness, p. xvi

Quote of the Day

Shame resilience is the ability to say, "This hurts.  This is disappointing, maybe even devastating.  But success and recognition and approval are not the values that drive me.  My value is courage and I was just courageous.  You can move on, shame."

-- Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 67

Quote of the Day

The only way to bring peace to the earth is to learn to make our own life peaceful.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 87

Meeting Janet Mock

I was pleased to have the opportunity to hear author/activist Janet Mock speak tonight at Vanderbilt University, having just finished reading her New York Times best-selling memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More.  I am not ashamed to admit that I was first in line at her book-signing table. 

Quote of the Day

The act of becoming is one of the two fundamental human acts, the other being loving.  And we can't love without becoming, or become without loving.

-- Richard Blanco, The Prince of Los Cocuyos, p. xiii

Quote of the Day

Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.

-- Derek Sivers, Anything You Want, p. 2

Quote of the Day

The way to be able to take a punch is to practice getting hit a lot.  Put out a lot of work.  Let people take their best shot at it.  Then make even more work and keep putting it out there.  The more criticism you take, the more you realize it can't hurt you.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 151

Quote of the Day

It's tough to acknowledge that through capitulating, we actually teach the blackmailer how to blackmail us.  But the hard truth is this: Our compliance rewards the blackmailer, and every time we reward someone for a particular action, whether we realize it or not, we're letting them know in the strongest possible terms that they can do it again.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. xiv

Quote of the Day

Life does not need a divine source in order to be meaningful. Anyone who has seen a breathtaking sunset or fallen in love with another human being knows that we make meaning from the experiences of our lives; we construct it the way we construct any social narrative. Free from false expectations we are free to create purpose, share love, and enjoy the endless beauty of our world. We are the fortunate ones. 

-- Ryan Bell, "Why you don't need God"

Quote of the Day

Shame started as a two-person experience, but as I got older I learned how to do shame all by myself.

-- Robert Hilliker

Quote of the Day

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind.  To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 86

Quote of the Day

The messages from my country speak clearly to me of the great potential and hope for poetry in America.  In a visionary moment, I know the greater good that must come from my honor as inaugural poet.  I make a conscious commitment to keep connecting America with poetry and reshape how we think about it, to try to dispel the myths and misconceptions about the art by introducing us to more contemporary work that speaks to our lives in real time.  And, moreover, to explore how I can empower educators to teach contemporary poetry and foster a new generation of poetry readers.

-- Richard Blanco, For All of Us, One Today, p. 102

Quote of the Day

Most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing.  They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own.  They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won't make them happy...You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what's worth doing.

-- Derek Sivers, Anything You Want, p. 2

Quote of the Day

I ain't going to give up.  Every time you think I'm one place, I'm going to show up someplace else.  I come pre-hated.  Take your best shot.

-- Cyndi Lauper

Quote of the Day

It's easy to focus on other people's behavior and to think that if they change, things will be fine.  But what we really need to find is the commitment and courage to understand ourselves and to change the way we interact with would-be blackmailers.

-- Susan Forward with Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail, p. xiv

Quote of the Day

Without dependency on a cosmic savior who is coming to rescue us, we are free to recognize that we are the ones we're waiting for. If we don't make the world a fair and habitable place, no one else is going to do it for us. Our lives matter because our choices affect others and our children's future. 

-- Ryan Bell, "Why you don't need God"