Quotes About Connection

What attracts us doesn't always connect us. I can't tell you how many friends I have who have been taken in by somebody sexy or powerful or charming but soon after find themselves feeling alone in the relationship. It's one thing to impress people, but it's another to love them.

Because the more we hide, the harder it is to be known. And we have to be known to connect.

It's a phone call in the morning to pray about our day, a text-message to say I'm thinking of her, a handwritten note, a postcard when I'm out of town on business, remembering what drink she likes when we're at a bar, asking follow-up questions about her friends, and not hiding behind humor when it's time for a serious conversation.

Ultimately, I believe that God loves and wants a relationship with every human being, but with Laura I could feel God's urgency.

I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

This means that when we ramble on and on about how we have the biggest manufacturing plant on the West Coast, our customers don't care. Why? Because that information isn't helping them eat, drink, find a mate, fall in love, build a tribe, experience a deeper sense of meaning, or stockpile weapons in case barbarians start coming over the hill behind our cul-de-sac. So what do customers do when we blast a bunch of noise

It's true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person's heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con.

Customers are not interested in your story. They are, rather, interested in being invited into a story that has them surviving and winning in the end.

WHENEVER SOMEBODY STARTS KEEPING SCORE IN a relationship the relationship begins to die.

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people.

Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don," she said. "Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that's a powerful thing.

You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.

If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect. And I wonder if we're not all a lot better for each other than we previously thought. I know we're not perfect, but I wonder how many people are withholding the love they could provide because they secretly believe they have fatal flaws.

if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can't connect.

Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into.

but the reality is people want to work for more than just money. They want to work to build and sustain a community they love. As we shared our personal dreams with each other, my work was no longer about me reaching my goals, it was about me contributing to a team in which we'd all tied our dreams together.

I only say this because a positive evolution happened in my life when I realized healthy relationships happen best between healthy people.

1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers' challenge (that people didn't recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones). Each of these realizations are pillars in ancient storytelling and critical for connecting with customers.

And they should be able to answer these questions within five seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:

She said I didn't have to perform for her. She didn't have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage?

I knew then, this relationship would have to be different. I knew I'd have to know myself and be known. These weren't only terrifying prospects, they were foreign. I didn't know how to do either. And the stakes were high. I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I'd spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.

When a person has no other persons he invents them because he was not designed to be alone, because it isn't good for a person to be alone.

It's one thing to impress people, but it's another to love them.

Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate.