Matt Shearing > Matt's Quotes

“You can get a lot of work done if you stay with it and are excited and its play instead of work.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“What does the soul truly want is a story”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“Watching him reminded me of a principle of engineering: Sending out a sharp impulse—like a dolphin uses echolocation to determine the location of a school of fish—can teach you crucial things about your environment. Steve used aggressive interplay as a kind of biological sonar. It was how he sized up the world.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar

“usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology.”
― Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

“AFTER DINNER, WITH A GREAT FLOURISH, my friend Andrew brought out a lovely leather box. “Open it,” he said, proudly, “and tell me what you think.” I opened the box. Inside was a gleaming stainless-steel set of old mechanical drawing instruments: dividers, compasses, extension arms for the compasses, an assortment of points, lead holders, and pens that could be fitted onto the dividers and compasses. All that was missing was the T square, the triangles, and the table. And the ink, the black India ink. “Lovely,” I said. “Those were the good old days, when we drew by hand, not by computer.” Our eyes misted as we fondled the metal pieces. “But you know,” I went on, “I hated it. My tools always slipped, the point moved before I could finish the circle, and the India ink—ugh, the India ink—it always blotted before I could finish a diagram. Ruined it! I used to curse and scream at it. I once spilled the whole bottle all over the drawing, my books, and the table. India ink doesn’t wash off. I hated it. Hated it!” “Yeah,” said Andrew, laughing, “you’re right. I forgot how much I hated it. Worst of all was too much ink on the nibs! But the instruments are nice, aren’t they?” “Very nice,” I said, “as long as we don’t have to use them.”
― Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

“Because visceral design is about initial reactions, it can be studied quite simply by putting people in front of a design and waiting for reactions. In the best of circumstances, the visceral reaction to appearance works so well that people take one look and say “I want it.” Then they might ask, “What does it do?” And last, “And how much does it cost?” This is the reaction the visceral designer strives for, and it can work. Much of traditional market research involves this aspect of design.”
― Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

“It is only at the reflective level that consciousness and the highest levels of feeling, emotions, and cognition reside. It is only here that the full impact of both thought and emotions are experienced. At the lower visceral and behavioral levels, there is only affect, but without interpretation or consciousness. Interpretation, understanding, and reasoning come from the reflective level.”
― Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

“Design must be an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the needs of men. It must be more research-oriented, and we must stop defiling the earth itself with poorly-designed objects and structures.”
― Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change

“Design thinking is a way of finding human needs and creating new solutions using the tools and mindsets of design practitioners.”
― Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All

“By using priming, defaults, commitments, and norms in your own life, you can become a whole lot happier without actually having to think very hard at all about becoming happier. You will be happier by design.”
― Paul Dolan, Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life

“By letting go of what is known, you are free to encounter the living present, in all its perplexity and revelation. Just as silence is the possibility of sound, self-confessed ignorance is the possibility of encounter.”
― Philip Shepherd, New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-First Century

“Biologically speaking, feeling good plays an important role as part of our survival machine. Our brains use it to drive survival behaviors that do not relate to immediate threats. To achieve that, our brains flood our bodies with serotonin, oxytocin, and other feel-good chemicals during acts they want to encourage us to do more often.”
― Mo Gawdat, Solve For Happy: An original, insightful guide to finding joy

“We wear different masks and hide our reality from everyone, including ourselves. Our assumed identities becomes our whole lives, and we start to believe them—even more than others do.”
― Mo Gawdat, Solve For Happy: An original, insightful guide to finding joy

“The fundamental work of the Somatic Coach is to guide the person to feel and be with this animating force that makes them alive. This is life moving toward life.”
― Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion

“Myth 2: Leadership is about individuals. In fact, leadership is a distributed or collective capacity in a system, not just something that individuals do. Leadership is about the capacity of the whole system to sense and actualize the future that wants to emerge.”
― C. Otto Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche”
― Jamie Catto, Insanely Gifted: Turn Your Demons into Creative Rocket Fuel

“It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.”
― Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“All of the diagnoses that you deal with - depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar illness, post traumatic stress disorder, even psychosis, are significantly rooted in trauma. They are manifestations of trauma. Therefore the diagnoses don't explain anything. The problem in the medical world is that we diagnose somebody and we think that is the explanation. He's behaving that way because he is psychotic. She's behaving that way because she has ADHD. Nobody has ADHD, nobody has psychosis - these are processes within the individual. It's not a thing that you have. This is a process that expresses your life experience. It has meaning in every single case.”
― Gabor Mate

“Sometimes people walk away from love because it is so beautiful that it terrifies them. Sometimes they leave because the connection shines a bright light on their dark places and they are not ready to work them through. Sometimes they run away because they are not developmentally prepared to merge with another- they have more individuation work to do first. Sometimes they take off because love is not a priority in their lives- they have another path and purpose to walk first. Sometimes they end it because they prefer a relationship that is more practical than conscious, one that does not threaten the ways that they organize reality. Because so many of us carry shame, we have a tendency to personalize love's leavings, triggered by the rejection and feelings of abandonment. But this is not always true. Sometimes it has nothing to do with us. Sometimes the one who leaves is just not ready to hold it safe. Sometimes they know something we don't- they know their limits at that moment in time. Real love is no easy path- readiness is everything. May we grieve loss without personalizing it. May we learn to love ourselves in the absence of the lover.”
― Jeff Brown

“Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment--where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels--this moment shows us that what is real is sacred”
― Mark Nepo

“I like to remind people that creativity also isn't a spark; it's a slog. Every artist, inventor, designer, writer, or other creative in the world will talk about his work being an iterative experience. He'll start with one idea, shape it, move it, combine it, break it, begin anew, discover something within himself, see a new vision, go at it again, test it, share it, fix it, break it, hone it, hone it, hone it, hone it. This might sound like common sense, but it's not common practice, and that's why so many people are terribly uncreative - they're not willing to do the work required to create something that's beautiful, useful, desirable, celebrated. No masterpiece was shaped or written in a day. It's a long slog to get something right. This knowledge and willingness to iterate is what makes the world's most creative people so creative (and successful).”
― Brendon Burchard, The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive

“FOR THE DYING May death come gently toward you, Leaving you time to make your way Through the cold embrace of fear To the place of inner tranquillity. May death arrive only after a long life To find you at home among your own With every comfort and care you require. May your leave-taking be gracious, Enabling you to hold dignity Through awkwardness and illness. May you see the reflection Of your life’s kindness and beauty In all the tears that fall for you. As your eyes focus on each face, May your soul take its imprint, Drawing each image within As companions for the journey. May you find for each one you love A different locket of jeweled words To be worn around the heart To warm your absence. May someone who knows and loves The complex village of your heart Be there to echo you back to yourself And create a sure word-raft To carry you to the further shore. May your spirit feel The surge of true delight When the veil of the visible Is raised, and you glimpse again The living faces Of departed family and friends. May there be some beautiful surprise Waiting for you inside death, Something you never knew or felt, Which with one simple touch, Absolves you of all loneliness and loss, As you quicken within the embrace For which your soul was eternally made. May your heart be speechless At the sight of the truth Of all belief had hoped, Your heart breathless In the light and lightness Where each and everything Is at last its true self Within that serene belonging That dwells beside us On the other side Of what we see.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“When your life awakens and you begin to sense the destiny that brought you here, you endeavour to live a life that is generous and worthy of the blessing and invitation that is always calling you.”
― John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong