I recently finished reading ‘101 Essay That Will Change The Way You Think‘ by Brianna Weist. I got it as an audiobook and listened to it as I went on walks or went to grocery store with my baby. I rarely get time to read nowadays and I miss it. I enjoyed the experience of being able to read/listen while also doing other things. Every day I listened to a little bit here and there. It left me with interesting quotes, ideas, suggestions and questions to think about it. Some of the key takeaways for me are:
- To be more mindful of my daily habits and how the small, every day things will shape my life.
- Spend less time on social media/watching tv and more time creating.
- The liberating thought that I am always one choice away from changing my entire life.
- Mindful of the items I chose to buy and bring into my new home ensuring I don’t fall into the trap of getting too much stuff that I don’t actually want. I.e. Figuring out the balance between minimalism and purchasing things that genuinely bring me joy and/or serve a purpose.
- It’s reminded of how ultimately we are all just looking for love, acceptance and validation.
- It’s made me care less about how I’m perceived and more about how I want to establish a genuine sense of connection with others.
- It’s helped me realise that I can be loved without being extraordinary. I am acceptable and deserving exactly as I am.
- It’s taught me that I need to find a way to enjoy the daily things that I normally don’t like doing, i.e. washing the dishes, cleaning my baby’s highchair, taking the rubbish out. Instead of doing these things as a means to an end, giving it my full attention and finding new ways to make it enjoyable.
- Taking time to figure out what enough is to me, as the first quote below asks. Knowing this has relaxed a deep part of me.
Here are some specific quotes that I hope to always keep somewhere in the back of my mind. Some of them have been changed slightly for the sake of this post:
“What is “enough” to you? What’s enough money, enough love, enough productivity? Fulfillment is a product of knowing what “enough” is—otherwise you will be constantly seeking more.”
“If at any point you’re doing anything in which you cannot feel your breath, you’re moving too fast. Make physical relaxation a priority—no matter what you’re doing. Keep track of your breath at all times. Be mindful, present and intentional with everything you do. It is not the quantity of what we accomplish, but the quality of it.”
“If the whole world were blind, how many people would I impress?”
“The core of every emotional issue is the belief that it’s not okay. Feelings will not kill you. All things, even the worst, are transitory. In the meantime, they just need to be felt.”
“Everything I perceive is a projection of who I am. If I want to change my life, I change myself.”
“There’s no such thing as true security. We seek comfort believing that it makes us safe, but we live in a world in which there is no such thing as true security. Our bodies were made to evolve, our physical items are temporary and can be lost and broken, etc. To combat this, we seek comfort rather than accepting the transitory nature of life.”
“If we could see souls instead of bodies – what would be beautiful? What is the first thing people would know about you? What would you be most afraid of them seeing? Who would you impress? Who would you love? What would you adjust as you walked past the mirror? What kind of work would you be in? What would your goals be, how would you strive to be better if what you collected in the bank or put on your body or attached next to your name on a business card no longer affected what people saw? Would you spend your time in gyms and stores or in libraries and temples? Who would you let yourself fall in love with? What would our “type” be?”
“If you want to know who you really are, imagine speaking to yourself as a child. What would say and do to make them feel happy? That expression is what you need to the yourself.”
“Ask yourself the following questions when a thought upsets you: “Is this true? Can I absolutely know this is true?” Most of the time, the answer will be “no” to one or both.”
“Everyone wants to change their life but they don’t want to change themselves. Which is the only thing they can change.”
“The qualities you admire most in other people, are the qualities you like most like about yourself. Same with the qualities you most dislike in other people.”
“Whatever you feel you are not receiving is a direct reflection of what you are not giving.”
“We convince ourselves that any given moment is representative of your life as a whole. This is because we’re wired to believe that success is somewhere we get to—when goals are accomplished and things are completed—we’re constantly measuring our present moments by how “finished” they are, how good the story sounds, how someone else would judge the elevator speech. But the truth is everything is transitory, and no one single instance can summarize the whole.“
“You are psychologically incapable of being able to predict what will make you happy. Your brain can only perceive what it’s known, so when you choose what you want for the future, you’re actually just recreating a solution or an ideal of the past. When things don’t work out the way you want them to, you think you’ve failed only because you didn’t re-create something you
perceived as desirable. In reality, you likely created something better, but foreign, and your brain misinterpreted it as “bad” because of that.”
“Your problems are not roadblocks to achieving what you want, they are pathways.”
“More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways.“
“If you knew nobody would judge you, what would you stand for?”
“You can either let yourself feel everything or numb yourself into feeling nothing. You cannot select emotions. You are either in accord with their flow or in resistance to their nature. In the end, the choice is yours.”
“Happiness is not a rush of positive emotion elicited by random events that affirm the way you think something should go. Not sustainable happiness, anyway. The real stuff is the product of an intentional, mindful, daily practice, and it begins with choosing to commit to it.”
“Most things people are in an effort to “earn” love. Many desires, dreams, and ambitions are built out of a space of severe lack. It’s for this reason that some of the most emotionally dense people are also the most successful: They use their desire for acceptance, love, wholeness, as fuel—for better and for worse.”
“Be mindful of who you hang around with. We begin to subconsciously adopt the collective mindset of the group of people we spend the most amount of time with.”
“Learn to love things that don’t cost much. Learn to love simple food and cooking it, being outside, the company of a friend, going for walks, watching the sunrise, a full night’s sleep, a good day’s work.”
“If I had the life I wanted, what would today look like?”
Art Therapy with Kimberly 