Barbara Sobel > Barbara's Quotes

“If, however, you take a moment to observe how you actually feel immediately after you criticise someone, you'll notice that you will feel a little deflated and ashamed, almost like you're the one who has been attacked. The reason this is true is that when we criticise, it's a statement to the world and to ourselves, "I have a need to be critical." This isn't something we are usually proud to admit.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“True happiness comes not when we get rid of all of our problems,but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice, and to learn.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Life didn't come with a fool-proof manual.”
― Richard Carlson, Ph. D, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Try to maintain the perspective that, in time, everything disintegrates and returns to its initial form.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Your heart, the compassionate part of you, knows that it’s impossible to feel better at the expense of someone else.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Criticism, like swearing, is actually nothing more than a bad habit.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders

“Something wonderful begins to happen with the simple realization that life, like an automobile, is driven from the inside out, not the other way around. As you focus more on becoming more peaceful with where you are, rather than focusing on where you would rather be, you begin to find peace right now, in the present. Then, as you move around, try new things, and meet new people, you carry that sense of inner peace with you. It's absolutely true that, "Wherever you go, there you are.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It's not and it won't. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about what's wrong with life. "It's not fair," we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's all small stuff.”
― Richard Carlson, Ph.D., Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

“...when you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you're free.To hold on is to be serious and uptight. To let go is to lighten up.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Life is a process--just one thing after another. When you lose it, just start again.”
― Richard Carlson, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life

“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.”
― Lao Tzu

“They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.”
― Gabrielle Zevin

“Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. “But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.”
― Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us

“[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached. ”
― Simone Weil

“The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat, he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls, he is crushed.”
― John Burroughs, The Light of Day (Volume 11); Religious Discussions and Criticisms from the Naturalist's Point of View

“...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

“I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“It may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.”
― Peter Høeg, Tales of the Night

“Unrealistic expectations often lead to disappointment, while simple unbiased attention and detachment to outcome often lead to pleasant surprises.”
― Gary Hopkins

“[...]one should act as if the things he cherished the most were already lost or broken.”
― H.J. Brues, Yakuza Pride

“The greatest asset to the human experience is the ability to navigate one’s emotions. By practicing the skill of detachment, one can successfully step back from the potentially destructive and tune into the purely positive”
― Gary Hopkins

“All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.”
― David Baldacci, The Christmas Train

“Never invest so much in anyone romantically that you lose your head. The Buddha of casual sex, I remain detached at all costs.”
― Edward Vilga, Downward Dog

“Assimilate ubiquitously. Doublethink.
To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they're false.
Examples of this in everyday life: "oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable.". Our young men today are being told that women are **, **, things to be **, beaten, **, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death.
So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds.”
― Henry Barthes