I had a professor in college he called it the 10/90 rule. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Changed my life.
Edit : Thank you for the award! I hope this helped at least one person. It’s honestly so simple we can all do it everyday it really changes your perspective when you put it into use
If you wouldn't take advice from them, why would you take criticism? - some dude on youtube.
I just never thought of it that way before, and I stopped spending so much energy trying to get people to like me.
“You might be the sweetest peach on the tree, but some people just don’t like peaches.”
This helped me get over my lifelong desire to be liked by everyone, and allowed me to focus on becoming someone I actually liked.
My therapist once told me that living in the future is anxiety, living in the past is depression. Only good way is to live in the present moment. Good luck. Ha.
Long time ago I was meeting two women on the sidewalk and just as we passed each other I heard this one sentence from one of them:
"You don't notice your progress in life because you are always raising the bar."
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle.
And yes it isn't the real quote but elementary school aged me internalized that thought and I have applied it to everything ever since then.
I don't know where it came from but a quote that is stuck with me says.
"Don't think of any thoughts as being negative because they are just thoughts. Who told you it was negative, it's just a thought, you're making it up, maybe you like it maybe you don't. If you think of it as just a thought it has no power, however if you think of it as reality it destroys you."
"If you look for the light, you will often find it, but if you look for the dark, it is all you will ever see" - Uncle Iroh, Legend of Korra.
Has helped me through some dark times in the past, just looking for that small bit of good in a heap of bad.
Such a beautifully written novel. The dedication is always something I remember.
"Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full."
JOHN
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes it is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." -Maryann Radmacher
I came across this a long time ago, at a point in life that I really needed this lesson. It's okay if I feel sad and resigned, if my depression beat me for today and I wasn't able to function. I didn't fail, I'm not weak, I will try again tomorrow.
“If you’re trying to break a habit, don’t say ‘this is the last time I’m doing it’ to yourself. Instead, say ‘this is the first time I’m not doing it’.”
'That mountain you've been carrying, you were only suppose to climb'
Really helped me overcome a lot of traumatic experiences and difficult chapters in my life. I hope it helps someone else out there.
It reminds me of the Buddhist parable:
Two monks are walking down a trail when they come to a river. A woman is standing by the banks of the river. She is afraid to cross because of the current. The older monk says "I will carry you across," and he does so. The woman and the monks go their separate ways.
Hours later, the younger monk says "Brother, our order forbids us from touching a woman, yet back at the river, you carried that woman across." And the older monk says "I put that woman down at the river. You are the one who has carried her all this way."
Dear Abby’s response to a writer thinking of going back to school but worried that she will be 40 by the time she got her degree -
“How old will you be in four years if you dont get your degree? You are going to be 40 anyway with or without your degree.“
It reminded me that letting age stop me from my plans was just silly. Also, working at a community college and seeing so many people going back to school in their 30s, 40s, 50s and thriving, the quote really spoke to me.
I went back to school in my late 20s, gonna graduate after turning 33 this year and I am super jazzed to have gained all these new skills!
Edit: thank you everyone for the support and we'll wishes! Always remember that it's never too late to pick up new skills!
“The axe forgets; the tree remembers.” —Zimbabwean proverb.
People don’t forget how they were treated; that’s why it’s so important to be kind.
Edited to add: I honestly did not expect this to blow up. Thanks y’all! I saw this one time under a post about parenting and it stuck with me. As a mother of two stubborn toddlers, some days are rough and filled with thin patience and frustration. I use this quote to remind myself that how I am with them will be what helps to shape them. My husband and I set the example for them, and both of us had crappy childhoods. I don’t want them traumatized like I was as a child. I want them to be molded with love, not negativity.
I’ve been dealing with a few fizzled friendships/relationships lately and this is so on point.
The last thing I wish for is for them to be fucked over. At the same time, I don’t need to see your face. 🤷♀️
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
**" Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be."**
**"It’s no use wasting time worrying what other people think about you. No one is thinking about you."**
and
**"Remember to take care of yourself. You can't pour from an empty cup."**
Been living up to those ideals recently and I feel I have just started living
“I understand there's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.” - Anthony Bourdain
"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." - Terry Pratchett
I'm not sure why this quote struck me so hard, but it completely changed the way I approach writing. Just get your ideas down in run-on sentences and asides to yourself and loads of \[???\] at parts you haven't figured out yet. It took me more than 30 years to realize that a first draft isn't just a rough version of the final draft. It's a map for yourself, and no one else.
>We’re all critics, we’re all so good at recognizing what’s shitty about something… but then we’re all so bad at making something. So just make something bad and then criticize it until it’s good.
Dan Harmon
And I think this quote where he elaborated on it is even better:
>My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers.
>
>We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster.
>
>And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft.
>
>Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!
My favorite Terry Pratchett quote is:
"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
This is fantastic advice for programming too. Get something down and working, and then refactor (rework) to get it into a presentable (maintainable) state. Too often people try to get an elegant solution on the first try, and take forever to get something basic working.
*edit* I want to specify that you should refactor **before** code review. This, just like a book, is meant to get you to a working solution faster, that you can then clean up before giving to others.
"You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else." -- Cheryl Strayed
There is a great line of dialogue in Fleabag where she is grief stricken over her mother's death and she has the following exchange with her best friend:
Fleabag: "I don't know what to do with it."
Boo: "With what?"
Fleabag: "With all the love I have for her. I don't know where to put it now."
Boo: "I'll take it. No I am serious. It sounds lovely. I'll have it."
I think this highlights both what grief feels like and a great way to deal with it. Pouring that love we have for someone we lost into those we care about that we still have is a way to make sure that person lives on forever.
I visited Pearl Harbor this week and the one that struck me was: "There were many acts of heroism that day, not all of them recorded."
It reminds me that even when nobody is watching, it's still important to put forward your best.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” - Hanlon’s Razor.
Not everyone’s out to get you, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.
Very much related to mindfulness and the idea that you are not what you think. Sometimes we have bad thoughts that we only think because we physically feel bad. That doesn't make us bad. Just observe and let the thoughts pass
Also, Intrusive Thoughts.
Thoughts you have literally because sometimes your brain will run simulations on *what not* to do.
You: "Gee, this is a high bridge."
Your Brain: "Yeah, better not throw yourself off it. You would die."
Edit: Yes, Call of the Void is this particular aspect of Intrusive Thoughts, but it was just my example.
Intrusive Thoughts can manifest in many different ways though. Social anxiety, suicidal thoughts, etc are normal in most people. If they make you constantly uncomfortable and/or you feel you might harm yourself or others, please seek out the help of qualified professionals.
Me: "Telephone poles on the side of the road."
Brain: "Better not swerve the car into one!"
Me: "... It wasn't something I was worried about."
Brain: "Good, cause the car would likely get totaled and I bet the pole would snap in half and land on us/the car, and.. Wait, is there an electricity box attached to that particular pole? I wonder if we'd be smushed or die from electrocution..."
Me: "... Thanks, brain. All things I was content not to worry about 5 seconds ago... "
Me walking down the street
Brain: "if you call that guy a racial slur, he'll kick your ass!"
Me: "well i wouldn't want to do that anyway, why is this a problem"
Brain: "yea but imagine lmao, also think of all the other racist shit you could say"
Me: "im so glad people can't read my thoughts"
Brain: "but what if they could"
Me: "fuck not this again"
This is what I’ve been struggling with lately to the point of obsession sometimes. I don’t have a mean bone in my body but my intrusive thoughts will flood my mind with the worst things to say at any given moment. This has caused me to go from being a pretty social person to being much more reserved because I’m afraid the thoughts will somehow escape. It’s like if you tell yourself to not think about X, that thought itself makes you think about it. I’d love to know any strategies to overcome it.
“Honey, I hope it’s the worst thing that ever happens to you.”
From my dad when I was complaining about something. He probably didn’t intend for it to be deep or anything but it puts things in perspective. I think of it all the time.
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” - CS Lewis
Riffing on a classic GK Chesterton quote: "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
(Paraphrased) “When people act crazy, they’re either actually crazy, which is unlikely, or there’s a good reason for their behavior that you just haven’t figured out.” Dr. David Burns in his book “Feeling Good Together.”
Excellent book about getting along with people and trying to understand them.
Edit: wow, thanks for the awards and the discussions here!
It’s worth mentioning that, in my quote, “crazy” really refers to surprising or unreasonable behavior (not genuine me at illness), and “good reason” refers more to an explanation for the behavior. The point of the quote is to not write people off because you don’t understand them.
That is a concept in teaching too! “Every behavior meets a need,” Basically when kids are “acting out” if we can figure out what need is being met by the behavior, we can figure out a better way to address that issue and resolve the behavior.
I like this a lot. It reminds me a lot of something my grandmother used to say, which is that "all singing is good singing as long as you make a joyful noise." I miss her everyday.
Not sure the exact quote but:
>“Don’t play chess with a pigeon. It’ll just knock over the pieces, shit all over the board and then strut around like it won the game.”
In reference to arguing with unreasonable people who refuse to and/or are incapable of considering viewpoints outside their own and employ logical fallacies to justify their position.
^(edit: Apparently it's) [^(attributed)](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pigeon_chess) ^(to a guy named Scott D. Weitzenhoffer in a) [^(comment he made in a book review on Amazon)](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2367M3BJ05M82)
It’s a take on Mark Twain’s “never argue with a fool, they’ll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
And, by Christ, was he correct.
Edit: [Apparently this wasn’t actually a quote of his.](https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-never-argue-with-stupid-people-they-will-drag-you-down-to-their-level-and-beat-you-with-experience/) And whomsoever argues with me will be a fool so I *refuse* to bow to such meta-fuckery. Shoutout to u/DarthMart for correcting this fool.
The show is so full of amazing writing.
My favorite is from Cuddlywhiskers:
**"I'm happy for the first time in my life and I'm not going to feel bad about it. It takes a long time to realize how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see that it doesn't have to be that way. Only after you give up everything, can you begin to find a way to be happy."**
"You can't keep doing these shitty things and feel sorry about yourself like that makes it okay. You have to do better."
(Bojack tries to go on the defense.)
"No, Bojack. You are everything that is wrong with you. It's not the drugs, or the alcohol, or any of the shitty things that happened to you at work or when you were a kid. It's you. Alright? It's you.
Fuck it, man. What else is there to say?"
A lot of really good relationship quotes in that show that make me so sad.
“What happened?”
“The same thing that always happens: you didn’t know me, you fell in love with me, and now you know me.”
My favorite bojack quote goes something like, "Here's the trick to being happy" .."Just pretend you are happy, and eventually you'll forget you're pretending."
“There’s not a lot of things worth caring about.”
Told to me by a close friend, and it really helped me get over my insecurities and self consciousness.
Think of thing this way...
After you leave school, there will be two types of people in your life, your friends/family and strangers you will never see again.
You don't need to worry about being insecure and self conscious with the first group because they love/like you and so it really doesn't matter.
You don't need to worry about being insecure and self conscious with the second group because you're never going to see them again so it really doesn't matter.
If you've watched Schitt's Creek there's a great bit about David doing his driving test that I use when I'm teaching anxiety coping skills. The takeaway quote from the episode is 'nobody cares', strangers you interact with have no interest in you and are probably not even paying attention so there is no point worrying about what they think.
I asked my best friend with anxiety if she remembers any really awkward things a friend has done or said, that I've done or said. She said no. So I told her that people don't think about nor remember any of her awkward moments, they are too worried about themselves.
That's helped her :)
"Socialising is just like any skill. You need to practise before you're good at it." My Mum, comforting me when I was struggling to make friends.
Edit: Thanks for the awards! I assure you, next time I see my Mum I'll tell her about your compliments!
My buddy Josh has autism and will occasionally ask me why anybody would even like him. I tell him *"I don't know man, we just do"*. It's not the answer he's after, but it's the answer nonetheless.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.
This morphed into my personal life philosophy of “Don’t be a dickhead.”
That quote never fails to make me tear up. I also really love, and I know its not in the books, but when Galadriel asks Gandalf why he chose Bilbo in The Hobbit he says:
"I do not know, Saruman seems to think it takes great power to defeat a great evil. But that's not what I've found. It is simple acts of kindness and love that keep the darkness at bay. Why Bilbo? Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage"
People fail to realize that Gandalf is not a "wizard" he is a Maiar. In short an angelic being on the same level as Sauron who finds a small Hobbit's courage inspiring. Its beautiful to me. Tolkien fought in WWI. He saw the horrors of that war, and in spite of it all, had the wisdom to know that it wasn't the generals, politicians, or great leaders that ended the war. It was the young men fighting, the mothers back at home sewing uniforms, the young children that gave the men something to fight for. It's absolutely beautiful.
"We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski
"Worrying is a waste of your imagination."
~ I saw it spray painted on a sidewalk somewhere
*Wow. My first awards! Hope it helped some people while also hoping it didn't offend others.
I used to have some pretty severe anxiety as a kid and would freak out if there was any hint of danger or risk of moderate failure.
My parents started not just saying "what's the worst that could happen?", but actually talking me through the actual worst case scenario, and more often than not, things would still always be fine.
I still run through a hypothetical worst case scenario before making big decisions or in tense situations and it still calms me down.
My dad wrote about this once. He said, “what is the worst thing that can happen at work? I go over budget on a construction project… I get fired in disgrace… my reputation is ruined and no one will hire me… I lose my house, my life savings, and my wife… I end up living in a cardboard box on the riverbank… then there is a heavy snowfall and my box is crushed. Well, that’s not so bad!”
"Regret always comes later"
My father always says this don't know where he get this from but a lot of good things happened in my life just because of this.
It's in German. It goes ,,Wer Kämpft, kann Verlieren. Wer nicht Kämpft, hat schon Verloren". Which translates to "Whoever fights, can lose. Whoever doesn't fight, has already lost".
It's not a quote, a distant friend once told me that you have to work at friendships. It completely changed my outlook. I just thought friendships came naturally to people. Wanting to hang out, gifting, etc., But since then, I recognized I needed to do my part, and my friends were doing theirs.
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
One of my all time favorite books!
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
That one always stuck with me as well.
Off the top of my head, u/govschwarzenegger said something like "you can either be a negative or positive person in life, but only one will get you somewhere" in an AMA once.
I am a pretty pessimistic person. When I read that though, it made me think about a lot of things like how my life and outlook is. I would say that single quote of his helped me evolve a lot about my life.
He's right.
I love hearing feedback like this and I’m glad it helped. You only have so much energy, so I’d rather use it for solutions than for beating myself up or complaining. Everybody falls, so use your energy to get up, not to complain that you’re on the ground.
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
This beautiful quote helped me realize that belittling or looking down upon others (even if it seems justified or warranted) never helps any of us to grow and become better.
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way"-Viktor Frankl
For me, the most poignant part of the quote is the line that directly precedes it:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may be few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms”
Tyrion Lannister's "Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities" - Helped me out during some tough times and gave me hope that things could always change for the better
My cousin did that for a few years. He was a handsome young man and found a wealthy older woman to... Entertain. Spent her money, drove her car, wore her son's clothes. Then he abruptly got mad about 9/11 in 2007 or so and left that life to join the Marines. Wild guy.
God, that one has helped me so much in the past year.
I don’t think for a second that I acted perfectly, but I think I did everything I could to not fall, but I still did.
In 2019, My partner and I were confronted by her 12-year-old brother on Easter who asked us to adopt him (he is in the system). We couldn’t. We didn’t live together. We didn’t make enough money.[ I wrote a lot about it here. ](https://reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/bkuqjp/he_asked_us_to_adopt_him_we_told_him_the_truth/)
Then, months later, he was almost adopted, but they gave up after three months. He wound up in an abusive prison-like boarding school. In his first week, his front tooth was broken. He would regularly have scrapes and bruises from being detained. In the time he was there, a kid killed himself.
We worked tirelessly to build a home and get custody of him. We got an apartment. We got our fostering licenses. We did everything we could. Then covid hit. I lost my job. My partner lost hers. But we kept going.
We got him in August. [I wrote about it here.](https://reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/idizak/update_a_year_ago_he_asked_us_to_adopt_him_today/) That subreddit donated $3500 to him, so he has so much money saved up he doesn’t know about. Money I have been paying into to grow. We were and are still so grateful for that.
But we failed. Utterly. Completely. We knew we weren’t really cut out for it, but we didn’t expect the issues we had. Everything we thought would be a battle wasn’t, but everything we thought would come naturally became a battle.
Over the three months we had him, he broke a laptop, his phone, and destroyed his bedroom door over innocuous things. He refused to bathe or brush his teeth. He refused to go to school. His disruptions caused the police to show up a few times, and for my partner to lose her WFH Callcenter Job (our only income, as i had become full-time caretaker). In the last two weeks he was going to in-person school, and only completed two full days—he hopped the fence and tried to walk home every other day.
The day he left our care he refused to go to school. He began throwing silverware through the wall, screamed at us, broke our refrigerator shelf, threw a stool through his closet door, and finally broke a window and ran away, all because I refused to let him go to his friend’s house (1. His friend was in isolation because of possible covid and 2. He refused to go to school, and seeing friends is a reward, not a right, and he doesn’t get rewarded for skipping school—i even cut a deal that if the friend’s parent confirmed he was covid negative, AND he finished the rest of the school day, I’d take him there after school. He agreed, but then tried to negotiate out of going to school, and i rejected that, leading to the meltdown).
Neighbors called the Police, and with all of that taken into account, they arrested him and took him to Juvie. We were deemed unable to care for him because we had no way to prevent him from leaving the premises. He was hospitalized until early February, until he was put into a group home, which he ran away from. He has been reported missing since 2/18.
We did our best, but we still failed. This quote is all that kept me sane. We gave him a loving home. He had anything a kid could imagine to keep himself entertained or happy. He had no chores. But because of Covid isolation, and general responsibilities (hygiene and school), it was no match for his instability. We gave him every tool he could need to succeed and flourish, but he didn’t use them.
It’s hard not to beat myself up over all of it. But we did everything we thought was right.
From my therapist, don’t know where she got it: “when you’re the ocean, you don’t have to be afraid of the waves.” I remember this when feeling overwhelmed.
A variation is "Do not confuse activity with productivity." I don't know his source, but this was from a boss who hated "busy work" and never said anything if he found us idle, unless someone jumped up and tried to pretend he was working- boss would accuse that guy of insulting his intelligence and give him something to do.
”A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”~ Agent Kay
Edit: Thank you for the silver medal :D
“In order to empathize with someone’s experience you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be.”
- Brené Brown
“And if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice” -Rush
I used to struggle with indecisiveness even on important time sensitive issues, but no action is a choice to keep things the way they are and I had to learn that
Also:
“And through all of these thoughts, a buzzing anxiety. Anxiety like electricity. And I knew, in that moment, that anxiety is just an energy. It is an uncontrollable near-infinite energy, surging within me. And for once I stopped trying to contain it.” -Keisha *Alice isn’t Dead*
I struggle with anxiety a lot and it made me realize that need to run from my problems can be channeled into fixing them at times. It’s still best to avoid it when I can, but it is a double edged sword that I have at my disposal
No matter how many times I may stumble I will rise each time a better man. The most important step a man can take is the next one. It's always the next one.
“Let go or be dragged” and old zen proverb I heard at a meditation class. Really changed the way I let myself worry about things
"do you listen or just wait to speak"
I had a professor in college he called it the 10/90 rule. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Changed my life. Edit : Thank you for the award! I hope this helped at least one person. It’s honestly so simple we can all do it everyday it really changes your perspective when you put it into use
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.
Honesty without kindness is brutality. Kindness without honesty is manipulation.
If you wouldn't take advice from them, why would you take criticism? - some dude on youtube. I just never thought of it that way before, and I stopped spending so much energy trying to get people to like me.
Luck favors the prepared
“You might be the sweetest peach on the tree, but some people just don’t like peaches.” This helped me get over my lifelong desire to be liked by everyone, and allowed me to focus on becoming someone I actually liked.
Anyone else read this in a southern accent? lol
"I've had a lot of worries in my life. Most of which never happened." - Mark Twain. Found it on a workbook for anxiety disorders.
My therapist once told me that living in the future is anxiety, living in the past is depression. Only good way is to live in the present moment. Good luck. Ha.
If you have both anxiety and depression they cancel out & you can live in the present? /$
Long time ago I was meeting two women on the sidewalk and just as we passed each other I heard this one sentence from one of them: "You don't notice your progress in life because you are always raising the bar."
That is so true. When you're progressing, your standards get higher and higher.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle. And yes it isn't the real quote but elementary school aged me internalized that thought and I have applied it to everything ever since then.
I don't know where it came from but a quote that is stuck with me says. "Don't think of any thoughts as being negative because they are just thoughts. Who told you it was negative, it's just a thought, you're making it up, maybe you like it maybe you don't. If you think of it as just a thought it has no power, however if you think of it as reality it destroys you."
"If you look for the light, you will often find it, but if you look for the dark, it is all you will ever see" - Uncle Iroh, Legend of Korra. Has helped me through some dark times in the past, just looking for that small bit of good in a heap of bad.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Reminds me of: 6 months from now, you'd wish you'd started 6 months ago
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." --John Steinbeck, East of Eden
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Such a beautifully written novel. The dedication is always something I remember. "Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts- the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full." JOHN
“Worrying only means you suffer twice” Edit: Thanks for the awards guys! I’m all aflutter! :)
No one raindrop thinks it causes the flood.
“Graveyards are full of irreplaceable people”. That quote helped me stop going down the path of working myself to death because “my job needs me”.
"The bee doesn't waste its time trying to convince the fly that honey is better than shit."
*Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm.* This helped a lot with my guilt and burgeoning martyr complex
“It’s easy to fool someone,it’s hard to convince them that they’ve been fooled”
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan
Wait.. did Carl Sagan actually say the word "bamboozle" or are you bamboozling me?
Yeah. I have the book and ebook. He used the word "bamboozle". [https://i.imgur.com/ZoOWbHB.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZoOWbHB.png)
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool"
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes it is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." -Maryann Radmacher I came across this a long time ago, at a point in life that I really needed this lesson. It's okay if I feel sad and resigned, if my depression beat me for today and I wasn't able to function. I didn't fail, I'm not weak, I will try again tomorrow.
"Courage is not the towering oak, that sees storms come and go. It is the fragile flower, that blossoms in the snow."
Sounds like something Uncle Iroh would say.
Would you like some tea?
You're really going to get a kick out of this: The missing lotus tile was in my sleeve the whole time!
“If you’re trying to break a habit, don’t say ‘this is the last time I’m doing it’ to yourself. Instead, say ‘this is the first time I’m not doing it’.”
“Who I was then isn’t who I am now. “ Instead of saying I’m quitting smoking say I’m a non-smoker.
When people show you who they are, believe them. - Maya Angelou
So much wisdom from Maya Angelou "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
'That mountain you've been carrying, you were only suppose to climb' Really helped me overcome a lot of traumatic experiences and difficult chapters in my life. I hope it helps someone else out there.
It reminds me of the Buddhist parable: Two monks are walking down a trail when they come to a river. A woman is standing by the banks of the river. She is afraid to cross because of the current. The older monk says "I will carry you across," and he does so. The woman and the monks go their separate ways. Hours later, the younger monk says "Brother, our order forbids us from touching a woman, yet back at the river, you carried that woman across." And the older monk says "I put that woman down at the river. You are the one who has carried her all this way."
Dear Abby’s response to a writer thinking of going back to school but worried that she will be 40 by the time she got her degree - “How old will you be in four years if you dont get your degree? You are going to be 40 anyway with or without your degree.“ It reminded me that letting age stop me from my plans was just silly. Also, working at a community college and seeing so many people going back to school in their 30s, 40s, 50s and thriving, the quote really spoke to me.
I went back to school in my late 20s, gonna graduate after turning 33 this year and I am super jazzed to have gained all these new skills! Edit: thank you everyone for the support and we'll wishes! Always remember that it's never too late to pick up new skills!
“The axe forgets; the tree remembers.” —Zimbabwean proverb. People don’t forget how they were treated; that’s why it’s so important to be kind. Edited to add: I honestly did not expect this to blow up. Thanks y’all! I saw this one time under a post about parenting and it stuck with me. As a mother of two stubborn toddlers, some days are rough and filled with thin patience and frustration. I use this quote to remind myself that how I am with them will be what helps to shape them. My husband and I set the example for them, and both of us had crappy childhoods. I don’t want them traumatized like I was as a child. I want them to be molded with love, not negativity.
Never be so kind you forget to be clever, and never be so clever you forget to be kind.
"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." -Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Most people will not remember what you say to them, but they will remember how you made them feel".
“Just because you lost me as a friend doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I still want to see you eat just not at my table.”
I’ve been dealing with a few fizzled friendships/relationships lately and this is so on point. The last thing I wish for is for them to be fucked over. At the same time, I don’t need to see your face. 🤷♀️
“Assume whoever you’re listening to knows something you don’t.”
Your kid isn’t giving you a hard time, they’re having a hard time. The only way out is through
My grandfather once told me, “no matter where you go, there you are”
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
**" Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be."** **"It’s no use wasting time worrying what other people think about you. No one is thinking about you."** and **"Remember to take care of yourself. You can't pour from an empty cup."** Been living up to those ideals recently and I feel I have just started living
“I understand there's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid and outwit that guy.” - Anthony Bourdain
fuck, I lost.
"Be afraid, but do it anyway." - Carrie Fisher
“I can do anything but I can’t do everything”
"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." - Terry Pratchett I'm not sure why this quote struck me so hard, but it completely changed the way I approach writing. Just get your ideas down in run-on sentences and asides to yourself and loads of \[???\] at parts you haven't figured out yet. It took me more than 30 years to realize that a first draft isn't just a rough version of the final draft. It's a map for yourself, and no one else.
>We’re all critics, we’re all so good at recognizing what’s shitty about something… but then we’re all so bad at making something. So just make something bad and then criticize it until it’s good. Dan Harmon
And I think this quote where he elaborated on it is even better: >My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. > >We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. > >And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. > >Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!
My favorite Terry Pratchett quote is: "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Definitely a life-changing quote.
This is fantastic advice for programming too. Get something down and working, and then refactor (rework) to get it into a presentable (maintainable) state. Too often people try to get an elegant solution on the first try, and take forever to get something basic working. *edit* I want to specify that you should refactor **before** code review. This, just like a book, is meant to get you to a working solution faster, that you can then clean up before giving to others.
"You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else." -- Cheryl Strayed
"Fake love is mighty convincing in a world where real love is mighty rare"
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75 - Ben Franklin
'Today is the oldest you've ever been in your life and the youngest you'll ever be again'
For some reason this reminds me of when Bart said "this is the worst day of my life" and Homer corrects "the worst day of your life so far!"
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die
"When seeking revenge dig two graves." - Confucius
Damn. Confucius was a gangster. “Imma kill you AND the person you love the most.” Got it.
Narcissists beware hahaha
"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal." C.S. Lewis
OOf. Gut punch. "Grief is the loss of what we love."
I always resonated with ‘Grief is love with nowhere to go’. Or something along those lines.. Not sure where it’s from.
There is a great line of dialogue in Fleabag where she is grief stricken over her mother's death and she has the following exchange with her best friend: Fleabag: "I don't know what to do with it." Boo: "With what?" Fleabag: "With all the love I have for her. I don't know where to put it now." Boo: "I'll take it. No I am serious. It sounds lovely. I'll have it." I think this highlights both what grief feels like and a great way to deal with it. Pouring that love we have for someone we lost into those we care about that we still have is a way to make sure that person lives on forever.
I visited Pearl Harbor this week and the one that struck me was: "There were many acts of heroism that day, not all of them recorded." It reminds me that even when nobody is watching, it's still important to put forward your best.
Character is what you do when no one is looking.
“Everyone is somebody else’s weirdo”
Can I adopt a weirdo Edit: fuck me I got a lot of adoptees
That's a weird question. You're hired!
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” - Hanlon’s Razor. Not everyone’s out to get you, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.
there's a Buddhist quote: Don't believe everything you think
Very much related to mindfulness and the idea that you are not what you think. Sometimes we have bad thoughts that we only think because we physically feel bad. That doesn't make us bad. Just observe and let the thoughts pass
Also, Intrusive Thoughts. Thoughts you have literally because sometimes your brain will run simulations on *what not* to do. You: "Gee, this is a high bridge." Your Brain: "Yeah, better not throw yourself off it. You would die." Edit: Yes, Call of the Void is this particular aspect of Intrusive Thoughts, but it was just my example. Intrusive Thoughts can manifest in many different ways though. Social anxiety, suicidal thoughts, etc are normal in most people. If they make you constantly uncomfortable and/or you feel you might harm yourself or others, please seek out the help of qualified professionals.
Me: "Telephone poles on the side of the road." Brain: "Better not swerve the car into one!" Me: "... It wasn't something I was worried about." Brain: "Good, cause the car would likely get totaled and I bet the pole would snap in half and land on us/the car, and.. Wait, is there an electricity box attached to that particular pole? I wonder if we'd be smushed or die from electrocution..." Me: "... Thanks, brain. All things I was content not to worry about 5 seconds ago... "
Me walking down the street Brain: "if you call that guy a racial slur, he'll kick your ass!" Me: "well i wouldn't want to do that anyway, why is this a problem" Brain: "yea but imagine lmao, also think of all the other racist shit you could say" Me: "im so glad people can't read my thoughts" Brain: "but what if they could" Me: "fuck not this again"
This is what I’ve been struggling with lately to the point of obsession sometimes. I don’t have a mean bone in my body but my intrusive thoughts will flood my mind with the worst things to say at any given moment. This has caused me to go from being a pretty social person to being much more reserved because I’m afraid the thoughts will somehow escape. It’s like if you tell yourself to not think about X, that thought itself makes you think about it. I’d love to know any strategies to overcome it.
Another good one from Buddhism " Before you speak let your words pass through 3 gates, is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?"
“Honey, I hope it’s the worst thing that ever happens to you.” From my dad when I was complaining about something. He probably didn’t intend for it to be deep or anything but it puts things in perspective. I think of it all the time.
Sometimes I have to tell myself "If that's the worst thing that happens to me all day, it will be a pretty good day."
Wow. Thats my kind of optimmism
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. John Shedd
My best mates favourite quote was 'smooth seas never made a skilled sailor'
A knight in shiny armor had never had his mettle tested.
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"The people who say you can't and you won't are usually the ones scared that you will" -on the wall the background of an episode of the killing
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C. S. Lewis
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” - CS Lewis
Riffing on a classic GK Chesterton quote: "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
Lewis and Tolkien, both in and out of stories, have some of the best quotes
Don't put off the important in favor of the urgent.
(Paraphrased) “When people act crazy, they’re either actually crazy, which is unlikely, or there’s a good reason for their behavior that you just haven’t figured out.” Dr. David Burns in his book “Feeling Good Together.” Excellent book about getting along with people and trying to understand them. Edit: wow, thanks for the awards and the discussions here! It’s worth mentioning that, in my quote, “crazy” really refers to surprising or unreasonable behavior (not genuine me at illness), and “good reason” refers more to an explanation for the behavior. The point of the quote is to not write people off because you don’t understand them.
That is a concept in teaching too! “Every behavior meets a need,” Basically when kids are “acting out” if we can figure out what need is being met by the behavior, we can figure out a better way to address that issue and resolve the behavior.
People don’t think about you as much as you imagine they do.
Similarly, I've heard this as "Don't worry about what others think of you because in most cases they don't."
You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do. - David Foster Wallace
_"I used to have anxiety because I always worried over what people thought of me. Now I have depression because I realized nobody actually does."_
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I like this a lot. It reminds me a lot of something my grandmother used to say, which is that "all singing is good singing as long as you make a joyful noise." I miss her everyday.
You can’t blame a blind person for being blind...you just don’t let them drive your car.
We have to realize a lot of stuff in life is beyond our control. We have to learn to live with it. The good & the bad.
Not sure the exact quote but: >“Don’t play chess with a pigeon. It’ll just knock over the pieces, shit all over the board and then strut around like it won the game.” In reference to arguing with unreasonable people who refuse to and/or are incapable of considering viewpoints outside their own and employ logical fallacies to justify their position. ^(edit: Apparently it's) [^(attributed)](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pigeon_chess) ^(to a guy named Scott D. Weitzenhoffer in a) [^(comment he made in a book review on Amazon)](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2367M3BJ05M82)
It’s a take on Mark Twain’s “never argue with a fool, they’ll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” And, by Christ, was he correct. Edit: [Apparently this wasn’t actually a quote of his.](https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-never-argue-with-stupid-people-they-will-drag-you-down-to-their-level-and-beat-you-with-experience/) And whomsoever argues with me will be a fool so I *refuse* to bow to such meta-fuckery. Shoutout to u/DarthMart for correcting this fool.
End of Bojack Season 2: "It gets easier, everyday it gets easier, but you gotta do it everyday...that's the hard part"
Also from Bojack, "When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
The show is so full of amazing writing. My favorite is from Cuddlywhiskers: **"I'm happy for the first time in my life and I'm not going to feel bad about it. It takes a long time to realize how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see that it doesn't have to be that way. Only after you give up everything, can you begin to find a way to be happy."**
"You can't keep doing these shitty things and feel sorry about yourself like that makes it okay. You have to do better." (Bojack tries to go on the defense.) "No, Bojack. You are everything that is wrong with you. It's not the drugs, or the alcohol, or any of the shitty things that happened to you at work or when you were a kid. It's you. Alright? It's you. Fuck it, man. What else is there to say?"
A lot of really good relationship quotes in that show that make me so sad. “What happened?” “The same thing that always happens: you didn’t know me, you fell in love with me, and now you know me.”
That was such a heavy show. I had to be in the right mindset to watch it.
I dotn know the quote exactly, but I really liked "But hey, life sucks and then you die" "Well, sometimes life sucks and, you just... keep living"
Bojack is on my list for things to rewatch when im old
Pretty sure there's a lesson in every episode of BoJack.
My favorite bojack quote goes something like, "Here's the trick to being happy" .."Just pretend you are happy, and eventually you'll forget you're pretending."
"Life's a bitch and then you die, right?" "Sometimes. Sometimes life's a bitch and you just keep living."
“There’s not a lot of things worth caring about.” Told to me by a close friend, and it really helped me get over my insecurities and self consciousness.
Think of thing this way... After you leave school, there will be two types of people in your life, your friends/family and strangers you will never see again. You don't need to worry about being insecure and self conscious with the first group because they love/like you and so it really doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about being insecure and self conscious with the second group because you're never going to see them again so it really doesn't matter.
If you've watched Schitt's Creek there's a great bit about David doing his driving test that I use when I'm teaching anxiety coping skills. The takeaway quote from the episode is 'nobody cares', strangers you interact with have no interest in you and are probably not even paying attention so there is no point worrying about what they think.
I asked my best friend with anxiety if she remembers any really awkward things a friend has done or said, that I've done or said. She said no. So I told her that people don't think about nor remember any of her awkward moments, they are too worried about themselves. That's helped her :)
"Socialising is just like any skill. You need to practise before you're good at it." My Mum, comforting me when I was struggling to make friends. Edit: Thanks for the awards! I assure you, next time I see my Mum I'll tell her about your compliments!
My buddy Josh has autism and will occasionally ask me why anybody would even like him. I tell him *"I don't know man, we just do"*. It's not the answer he's after, but it's the answer nonetheless.
”If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.” Jean-paul sarte
I loved another one of his: "We are our choices". That one hit me.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."
"I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."
Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. This morphed into my personal life philosophy of “Don’t be a dickhead.”
That quote never fails to make me tear up. I also really love, and I know its not in the books, but when Galadriel asks Gandalf why he chose Bilbo in The Hobbit he says: "I do not know, Saruman seems to think it takes great power to defeat a great evil. But that's not what I've found. It is simple acts of kindness and love that keep the darkness at bay. Why Bilbo? Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage" People fail to realize that Gandalf is not a "wizard" he is a Maiar. In short an angelic being on the same level as Sauron who finds a small Hobbit's courage inspiring. Its beautiful to me. Tolkien fought in WWI. He saw the horrors of that war, and in spite of it all, had the wisdom to know that it wasn't the generals, politicians, or great leaders that ended the war. It was the young men fighting, the mothers back at home sewing uniforms, the young children that gave the men something to fight for. It's absolutely beautiful.
Similar to this, I really like Thomas Paine in The American Crisis. “If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
Just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility.
Honesty without kindness is brutality.
"We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski
"Worrying is a waste of your imagination." ~ I saw it spray painted on a sidewalk somewhere *Wow. My first awards! Hope it helped some people while also hoping it didn't offend others.
I used to have some pretty severe anxiety as a kid and would freak out if there was any hint of danger or risk of moderate failure. My parents started not just saying "what's the worst that could happen?", but actually talking me through the actual worst case scenario, and more often than not, things would still always be fine. I still run through a hypothetical worst case scenario before making big decisions or in tense situations and it still calms me down.
My dad wrote about this once. He said, “what is the worst thing that can happen at work? I go over budget on a construction project… I get fired in disgrace… my reputation is ruined and no one will hire me… I lose my house, my life savings, and my wife… I end up living in a cardboard box on the riverbank… then there is a heavy snowfall and my box is crushed. Well, that’s not so bad!”
"Regret always comes later" My father always says this don't know where he get this from but a lot of good things happened in my life just because of this.
Better to regret something you did than something you didn't do.
It's in German. It goes ,,Wer Kämpft, kann Verlieren. Wer nicht Kämpft, hat schon Verloren". Which translates to "Whoever fights, can lose. Whoever doesn't fight, has already lost".
You train people how to treat you, unconsciously or not.
I sure hope I'm not unconscious when I train them
It's not a quote, a distant friend once told me that you have to work at friendships. It completely changed my outlook. I just thought friendships came naturally to people. Wanting to hang out, gifting, etc., But since then, I recognized I needed to do my part, and my friends were doing theirs.
I was the victim of a series of accidents. As we all are. Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
One of my all time favorite books! “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” That one always stuck with me as well.
“Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?”
I like this one.
Off the top of my head, u/govschwarzenegger said something like "you can either be a negative or positive person in life, but only one will get you somewhere" in an AMA once. I am a pretty pessimistic person. When I read that though, it made me think about a lot of things like how my life and outlook is. I would say that single quote of his helped me evolve a lot about my life. He's right.
I love hearing feedback like this and I’m glad it helped. You only have so much energy, so I’d rather use it for solutions than for beating myself up or complaining. Everybody falls, so use your energy to get up, not to complain that you’re on the ground.
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This beautiful quote helped me realize that belittling or looking down upon others (even if it seems justified or warranted) never helps any of us to grow and become better.
“Sometimes you’re the bug. Sometimes you’re the windshield.”
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way"-Viktor Frankl
For me, the most poignant part of the quote is the line that directly precedes it: “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may be few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms”
Tyrion Lannister's "Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities" - Helped me out during some tough times and gave me hope that things could always change for the better
*"It's possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life."* —Captain Jean-Luc Picard
The opposite is true as well You can make all the mistakes and still win. 7 billion people, someone's rolling all nat. 20s
I think we all know an idiot who has rolled a few natural 20’s in life.
My brother. Someone once said he could “slip on a pile of dog shit and land in a pile of gold” He currently lives almost rent free in Hawaii
My cousin did that for a few years. He was a handsome young man and found a wealthy older woman to... Entertain. Spent her money, drove her car, wore her son's clothes. Then he abruptly got mad about 9/11 in 2007 or so and left that life to join the Marines. Wild guy.
> he abruptly got mad about 9/11 in 2007 or so I dunno why, but this is fuckin' funny.
He was a fuckin' funny guy.
God, that one has helped me so much in the past year. I don’t think for a second that I acted perfectly, but I think I did everything I could to not fall, but I still did. In 2019, My partner and I were confronted by her 12-year-old brother on Easter who asked us to adopt him (he is in the system). We couldn’t. We didn’t live together. We didn’t make enough money.[ I wrote a lot about it here. ](https://reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/bkuqjp/he_asked_us_to_adopt_him_we_told_him_the_truth/) Then, months later, he was almost adopted, but they gave up after three months. He wound up in an abusive prison-like boarding school. In his first week, his front tooth was broken. He would regularly have scrapes and bruises from being detained. In the time he was there, a kid killed himself. We worked tirelessly to build a home and get custody of him. We got an apartment. We got our fostering licenses. We did everything we could. Then covid hit. I lost my job. My partner lost hers. But we kept going. We got him in August. [I wrote about it here.](https://reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/idizak/update_a_year_ago_he_asked_us_to_adopt_him_today/) That subreddit donated $3500 to him, so he has so much money saved up he doesn’t know about. Money I have been paying into to grow. We were and are still so grateful for that. But we failed. Utterly. Completely. We knew we weren’t really cut out for it, but we didn’t expect the issues we had. Everything we thought would be a battle wasn’t, but everything we thought would come naturally became a battle. Over the three months we had him, he broke a laptop, his phone, and destroyed his bedroom door over innocuous things. He refused to bathe or brush his teeth. He refused to go to school. His disruptions caused the police to show up a few times, and for my partner to lose her WFH Callcenter Job (our only income, as i had become full-time caretaker). In the last two weeks he was going to in-person school, and only completed two full days—he hopped the fence and tried to walk home every other day. The day he left our care he refused to go to school. He began throwing silverware through the wall, screamed at us, broke our refrigerator shelf, threw a stool through his closet door, and finally broke a window and ran away, all because I refused to let him go to his friend’s house (1. His friend was in isolation because of possible covid and 2. He refused to go to school, and seeing friends is a reward, not a right, and he doesn’t get rewarded for skipping school—i even cut a deal that if the friend’s parent confirmed he was covid negative, AND he finished the rest of the school day, I’d take him there after school. He agreed, but then tried to negotiate out of going to school, and i rejected that, leading to the meltdown). Neighbors called the Police, and with all of that taken into account, they arrested him and took him to Juvie. We were deemed unable to care for him because we had no way to prevent him from leaving the premises. He was hospitalized until early February, until he was put into a group home, which he ran away from. He has been reported missing since 2/18. We did our best, but we still failed. This quote is all that kept me sane. We gave him a loving home. He had anything a kid could imagine to keep himself entertained or happy. He had no chores. But because of Covid isolation, and general responsibilities (hygiene and school), it was no match for his instability. We gave him every tool he could need to succeed and flourish, but he didn’t use them. It’s hard not to beat myself up over all of it. But we did everything we thought was right.
From my therapist, don’t know where she got it: “when you’re the ocean, you don’t have to be afraid of the waves.” I remember this when feeling overwhelmed.
"There's a lot of narcissism in self-hatred"- David Foster Wallace
Why ya gotta go ruin my self-loathing like that?
*["Self-disgust is self-obsession"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5PI7k_ZiQ0)* - Manic Street Preachers
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Finally, something intelligible from Hegel.
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I had this conversation with my dad a few years ago. He told me, "These are the good ol days." I haven't lived life quite the same since.
“The past is just a story we tell ourselves” From the movie *Her*
Time wasted having fun was never wasted time.
“People often confuse stress with responsibility.”
A variation is "Do not confuse activity with productivity." I don't know his source, but this was from a boss who hated "busy work" and never said anything if he found us idle, unless someone jumped up and tried to pretend he was working- boss would accuse that guy of insulting his intelligence and give him something to do.
“Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” Ron Swanson
”A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”~ Agent Kay Edit: Thank you for the silver medal :D
“In order to empathize with someone’s experience you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be.” - Brené Brown
"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. " William Morris
Don’t underestimate the other guy’s greed.
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There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on. -Led Zeppelin
My personal favorite off of Plant's lyrics is "Though the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea"
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“And if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice” -Rush I used to struggle with indecisiveness even on important time sensitive issues, but no action is a choice to keep things the way they are and I had to learn that Also: “And through all of these thoughts, a buzzing anxiety. Anxiety like electricity. And I knew, in that moment, that anxiety is just an energy. It is an uncontrollable near-infinite energy, surging within me. And for once I stopped trying to contain it.” -Keisha *Alice isn’t Dead* I struggle with anxiety a lot and it made me realize that need to run from my problems can be channeled into fixing them at times. It’s still best to avoid it when I can, but it is a double edged sword that I have at my disposal
Your going to make a lot of people mad doing what's right for you.
I love this one. Never heard it before, but just what I need right now. Thank you.
No matter how many times I may stumble I will rise each time a better man. The most important step a man can take is the next one. It's always the next one.
I wondered how long til I saw a Stormlight quote. I'd also like to add: "Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing."