whattheysaid - Tumblr blog

[whattheysaid]

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

[whattheysaid]

The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things--leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator--they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

Modern man thinks he loses something--time--when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it.

Erich Fromm

[whattheysaid]

"Resistance is a therapist's friend. Don't fight it--know it." In other words, try to figure out why it's there in the first place.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

Therapists tell their patients: Follow your envy--it shows you what you want.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

Rather than steering people straight to the heart of the problem, we nudge them to arrive there on their own, because the most powerful truths--the ones people take the most seriously--are those they come to, little by little, on their own.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

We all have a deep yearning to understand ourselves and be understood. When I see couples in therapy, often one or the other will complain, not "You don't love me" but "You don't understand me." (One woman said to her husband, 'You know what three words are even more romantic to me than 'I love you'?" "You look beautiful?" he tried. "No," his wife said. "I understand you.")

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty... Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible steps we take along the way.

Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

[whattheysaid]

There's a saying, 'What got you here won't get you there.'

Rebecca Serle, One Italian Summer

[whattheysaid]

I did not begin to live alone till I was forty-five, and had “lived” in the sense of passionate friendships and love affairs very richly for twenty-five years. I had a huge amount of life to think about and to digest, and, above all, I was a person by then and knew what I wanted of my life. The people we love are built into us. Every day I am suddenly aware of something someone taught me long ago — or just yesterday — of some certainty and self-awareness that grew out of conflict with someone I loved enough to try to encompass, however painful that effort may have been.

May Sarton

[whattheysaid]

It needs great insight and courage to release our ideas of happiness. But, once we can do that, freedom and happiness can come very easily.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the World

[whattheysaid]

We can imagine there are many doors leading to happiness. Opening any of those doors, happiness will come to you in many different ways. But, if you are attached to one particular idea of happiness, it's as though you have closed all the doors except one. And, because that particular door does not open, happiness cannot come to you. So, don't close any door. Open all the doors. Don't just commit yourself to one idea of happiness. Remove the idea of happiness you have, and happiness may come right away.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the World

[whattheysaid]

True happiness is grounded in freedom--not the freedom to destroy our own body and mind, nor the freedom to dominate and destroy nature, but the freedom to have time to enjoy life: freedom to have time to love; freedom from hatred, despair, jealousy, and infatuation; freedom from getting so carried away by our work and busy-ness that we no longer have time to enjoy life or take care of each other. Our quality of being depends on this kind of freedom.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the World

[whattheysaid]

As a meditator our task is to become fascinated with what the present moment feels like. I remember at first thinking that I need to access the present moment with my mind. But I've slowly understood that I can access it most directly with the senses.

Sister True Dedication, Zen and the Art of Saving the World

[whattheysaid]

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

Epicurus

[whattheysaid]

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Mary Oliver