Corey

“Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“Forgive yourself for how you chose to survive. Forgive yourself for the desires you judged harshly. Forgive yourself for indulging in things that took up your time but didn’t fulfill you. Forgive yourself for declaring yourself as someone you’re not. Forgive yourself for your chosen avenues of negative expression. Forgive yourself for all the times you didn’t add value to others. Forgive yourself for what you discovered about yourself that you didn’t like. Forgive yourself for whatever ugliness you saw in yourself. Forgive yourself for not correcting what you think you should have. Forgive yourself for the parts you couldn’t respect. Forgive yourself for all these judgments. Forgive yourself for not being able to forgive yourself before.”
― Emily Maroutian, The Book of Relief: Passages and Exercises to Relieve Negative Emotion and Create More Ease in The Body

“What if you offered your body love instead of criticism? What if you offered it some compassion instead of insults? What if you saw the decades of abuse, wear-and-tear, and aging as cause for more love instead of less? What if you acknowledged the thousands of miles it has trekked through this rough and wild world and you felt nothing but appreciation and love for all it has withstood for you? What if you offered it more sleep, more hot baths, better foods, healthy exercise, fun activities, and more rest? What if you gave it more love? What if you stopped punishing it for belonging to you?”
― Emily Maroutian, The Book of Relief: Passages and Exercises to Relieve Negative Emotion and Create More Ease in The Body

“Here's what I want you to learn from this: Never let someone answer a question for you. Jump in with anything at all to make sure hat you're the one talking. Say, 'That's an interesting question', or 'I'm glad you asked that question,' or 'Oh goody, my favorite subject.' Say anything that will guarantee that you're in the conversation about yourself and not out of it like a teenager standing next to her mother at a cocktail party.
You must tell your own story, never let someone, even someone as familiar to you as your sister-in-law think she knows you better than you know yourself. She only sees what you do, she doesn't' see who you are inside. If I regret anything when I look back, it's how often I allowed people to think what they wanted to thing. I should've stopped them sort. I should've laughed at their assumptions. I should've hooted with laughter, 'Hoo hoo hoo,' and followed with twinkling, mischievous smile just to throw them off, just to keep them guessing,
The problem is they watch what you do, who you love, how you cook, what you read and what you don't read, and they decide what it means, and sometimes you're not there to stop them, or you get the timing wrong. I've always wondered why people look so much to action for meaning. When people tell you a story, something that happened to them, something important, don't ask them what they did , ask them what they wanted to do, what they want to do is who they are. Actions are whispers compared to dreams.”
― Alison Jean Lester, Lillian on Life