Quotes from Martha Beck

Use anything you can think of to understand and be understood, and you'll discover the creativity that connects you with others.

I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amazing athlete.

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.

To live a life that is wrong for you is a form of dying. There are people who have lives that look perfect. They try to be happy, they believe they should be happy, they are trying to like it, but if it's off course from their north star, they aren't satisfied.

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.

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.

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

Sacred play is anything that takes you into that right hemisphere of your brain. It turns out that this move away from left to the right hemisphere, that sense of expansiveness and everything, can be accomplished through unusual rhythmic action, or any action that requires so much attention away from words that you cannot think in words.

Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation.

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.

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.

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.

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

Whatever terrible things may have happened to you, only one thing allows them to damage your core self, and that is continued belief in them.

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, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

We virtually never feel our age, but thinking that we should can lead to disaster.

If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.

To really boost your sense of self-efficacy, think of ways you could modify your usual tasks to suit your personal style.

Comparing and contrasting is a valuable human skill - and not just during high school English exams. Our ability to rank-order things is invaluable in making choices and setting priorities.

Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it's not a safe bet, even if it's like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you're wrong or bad or crazy.

I have come to believe that there are infinite passageways out of the shadows, infinite vehicles to transport us into the light.

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

To be really productive, it's as important to rest when we're tired as it is to work when we're inspired.