Quotes from Vicki Robin

Once we're above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.

It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances.

The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.

We have devalued the price of the things we need most to survive on a daily basis yet overvalued many of the things we can live without.

four rules for getting off the diet-go-round: Eat when you're hungry. Eat exactly what your body wants. Eat each bite consciously. Stop when your body has had enough.1 Very simple. All you have to do is be conscious

Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors' bedside manner with the ill and dying?

As you take your eyes off the false prize (of more, better, and different stuff), you put them on the real prizes: friends, family, sharing, caring, learning, meeting challenges, intimacy, rest, and being present, connected, and respected. In other words, those best things in life that are free. Like all things natural, building this wealth takes time, attention, patience, and reciprocity (that volleying of giving and receiving that builds relationships).

Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian

What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry?

training away the money-wasting habits

Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse.

You'll flatten your debt and develop a natural resistance to spending more than you have for things you don't want to impress people you don't like (to paraphrase Robert Quillen).

Instead of leisure being simply "relaxed activity," it was transformed into an opportunity for increased consumption—even consumption of leisure itself (as in travel and vacations).

happiness increases heart health, strengthens the immune system, combats stress, reduces aches and pains, reduces chronic illness, and lengthens our lives.

Did you ever think about that?" Joe would ask. "That you have a relationship with money?" He'd get on his knees, begging money to love him. He'd exhibit mock terror, shrinking from the evil hundred-dollar bill. He'd hold it out like a carrot and run around after it, reaching but never grasping it. "This is what your relationship with money looks like! Think about it. If you were money, would you hang out with you?

Passion, pain, what's at hand—these are doorways to finding a purpose beyond material acquisition.

The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition.

But hey, what's another $20,000 when I have a full-time job?