Chris Rackliffe > Quotes

“Your body speaks to you through pain. It says, Ouch that hurts! If you’re smart, you listen and respond. You do what you need to heal and recover.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“This has become my approach to life: Accept what I can’t change and choose to change everything else. I wasn’t always this way. I found out the hard way that our lives are defined by our relationship with Change.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“We lose our way. This process unfolds simply and predictably over time: •   Change appears in the form of something unforeseen. •   We feel uncertain, anxious, frustrated, worried, and fearful at this unexpected turn of events. •   We resist Change by creating stories of how we think things should’ve turned out. •   Our stories cause us to suffer because they are incongruent with reality. •   Suffering is disorienting and makes us give up our power of free will. •   When we feel powerless to choose, we abandon ourselves and feel lost.
There’s no telling what we’ll do when we feel lost. We spiral. We waste precious time. We fall out of alignment with ourselves. We block our blessings. We make unclear choices. We subvert our best interests. We act out in fear. We numb. We refuse to feel our feelings. We bury our love with resentment. We reach for any coping mechanism possible. We fall from grace. These are all attempts to protect us from pain. They are also the birth of suffering. And that is something far worse because we choose it for ourselves. Even when it’s the last thing we want. THE FIRST ARROW It was the most intense physical pain I’ve ever felt.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“When we fail to make sense of our pain, we decide to take matters into our own hands. We choose to make something up instead. We create stories that exaggerate its importance and impact. We ascribe arbitrary importance to the event. We would rather falsely encode the memory with meaning than truthfully admit that it was unpleasant and move on. We make a huge mistake when we think of our pain in this way instead of allowing ourselves to feel it and let it pass.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“It can be scary to greet Change without knowing what awaits you on the other side. The key is to remember that you are being led, to believe that there’s a force that guided you here and that the same force will continue to guide you every step of the way. Trusting in this presence is the foundation of what it means to have faith. Having faith means believing in something bigger than ourselves, knowing that things are unfolding for our ultimate benefit, and taking things one step at a time even when we can’t see where the road goes. Faith is the choice to surrender our burdens so we do not bear them alone.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“Finding your way forward when you can’t seem to get your footing is one of the most fulfilling challenges in life because it pushes you to find the path that makes the most sense for you. When you think you’ve run out of places to turn, and you seem to hit a dead end, turn it into a fork in the road and forge your own path into the unknown.”
― Chris Rackliffe, 70 Life Lessons I Wish I'd Learned Sooner

“When something happened I didn’t foresee or expect, I did everything possible to avoid or deny it. I ran away. I numbed. I didn’t want to feel the pain or fear or uncertainty. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel in control. I wanted things to be predictable.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“You have a God-given right to choose. When you use that right to defy what you can’t change, you choose against yourself. You waste your time. You focus on all the wrong things. You avoid what you are meant to learn. You become disoriented. That is why you feel so lost.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost

“Change is the Universe’s way of cracking open our hearts so something new and unexpected can burst forth despite all of our efforts to resist. It is a wake-up call. It shows up as the death of a loved one or the loss of your job. It happens when you go through a breakup or you lose everything you own in a fire or a flood or a tornado. It rears its head when you get a diagnosis you never saw coming. It happens to everyone eventually and no one is immune.”
― Chris Rackliffe, It's Good to See Me Again: How to Find Your Way When You Feel Lost