Quotes from Martha Beck

Focusing on one mildly disturbing, semi-controllable issue allows the mind to stuff much greater terrors in relatively tidy packages.

Don't worry that you've wasted time. Each moment -- no matter how frozen or confused -- was a useful and necessary lesson.

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

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.

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

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

Play until it's time to rest, then rest until it's time to play.

You do not owe anyone your time. When you realize that, others will respect your time much more.

And thus I learned that at Harvard, while knowing a great deal is the norm and knowing everything is the goal, appearing to know everything is an acceptable substitute. I pondered this great truth during the two-hour seminar. I was so buoyed up by it that I didn't pay enough attention to snorkeling up little bits of food in order to keep my nausea under control. I sailed right on into my next class, another seminar, confident that I could get through it without losing my lunch.

Adam has angels like a dog has fleas. He came here with them, and the more time you spend around him, the more likely you are to get them yourself.

I once read that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past…but forgiving is not the same as obliterating memory.

Finally, Karen Gerdes is the gentle force that put me back together after the events of my life tore me apart, and the one that has kept me whole. Whenever I slip back into the world of shadows, she is the one who leads me back into the light.

he is constantly reminding me that real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life, but within it.

This is it, I thought. This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.

The secret of mastering creativity in any field is knowing how to work with metaphor without getting caught in language...

We all have our little sorrows...and the littler you are, the larger the sorrow.

Change your thoughts, change your world.

What is it that people do? What do we live to do, the way a horse lives to run?

Your life follows your attention. Wherever you look, you end up going.

We are supported by a universe that has no interest in hurting us, only in teaching us to dance

You'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been remaining closed.

It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is so loving and intimate it is almost worship.

My real feeling, the one I couldn't articulate yet, was that my entire life hinged on knowing that there were people who would continue to love me unconditionally, even if I were damaged, even if I were sick. Such love was the only thing that had sustained me during the turmoil of the past months. If I eliminated my child because of his disability, if I put him out of my life, I would be violating the only thing that was keeping me alive.

It reminds me that we are born innocent but ignorant, and that to remedy the second of these conditions we inevitably surrender the first.