Brianna Wiest Quotes

Unless you are a trained expert on the topic, any strong emotions that accompany your opinion on it are usually strictly personal (and therefore keep you away from being objective and realistic). It would take years and an extraordinary amount of research (at the level of Ph.D. candidacy) to be in a position to truly understand a nuanced issue enough to have an extremely strong feeling about it.

Eventually, you will have to stop pouring yourself into the things that will give nothing back, that take without any intent to give. You will have to stop trying to make yourself fit into places you are no longer meant to be. If you are going to give your energy to anything, give it to what’s already working. To the people who already love you, to the things that show potential, to the places that make you feel more alive. Life speaks to us in subtleties, in the smallest possible ways. In the little clicks, the funny coincidences, the ways the ordinary collides into the serendipitous. Sometimes, the quiet whispers are the most accurate ones. The voices of pride and ego and attraction are louder, but they are often devoid of the fullness of truth. Listen for the quiet yes, for what gently sprouts, for what grows, and grows.

If you truly want to let go of a past experience, you have to reenter it through your memory. Close your eyes and find the feeling in your body that is uncomfortable. This is your portal to its root. Follow the feeling and ask it to show you where it started. You’ll remember a time, place, or experience. Sometimes, the memory is fresh enough that you don’t need to do this, and you can simply reenter the memory by imagining that you are back where it all began. Now what you have to do is to superimpose a narrative to your younger self. You need to imagine that you, your healed and happy older self, is imparting some wisdom. Imagine sitting next to your younger self as they got their heart broken and giving them very specific instructions about why this is absolutely for the best and although they cannot know it yet, there is another relationship out there that is far, far better. Imagine sitting next to your younger self when they felt really down and giving them the exact instructions regarding what they need to do to feel better: who they need to call, where they need to go, what they need to begin doing, and what they need to stop doing. Most importantly, imagine telling your younger self that absolutely everything — yes, everything — is going to be okay. That their fears are largely unfounded, that good things are coming, and that life will turn out well in the end.

Your life is ultimately measured by your outcomes, not your intentions. It is not about what you wanted to do or would have done but didn’t have the time. It’s not about why you thought you couldn’t; it’s just whether or not you eventually did.

They never overgeneralize other people through their behaviors. They don’t use “you always” or “you never” to illustrate a point. Likewise, they root their arguments in statements that begin with “I feel” as opposed to “you are.

Read. If you don’t read, it’s not because you don’t like reading; it’s because you haven’t picked up anything that interests you. What you read now will affect the person you’re going to be for decades to come. Read articles and essays online about how people cope with their fears — in it you will find camaraderie, how many strangers feel just as you do. Read about things you don’t understand, that scare you and fascinate you. Just read, damnit.

Our inability to perform is not based in fear or lack of skill, it is based in an inherent knowing that this is not what we want for our lives, and perhaps we’re feeling lost or unable to change our path.

Many people are afraid that “being happy” = giving up on achieving more. Happiness is, in an essential form, acceptance. It’s arriving at the end goal, passing the finish line, letting the wave of accomplishment wash over you. Deciding to be that way every day can make it seem as though the race is already over, so we subconsciously associate “happiness” and “acceptance” with “giving up.” But the opposite is true: The path to a greater life is not “suffering until you achieve something,” but letting bits and pieces of joy and gratitude and meaning and purpose gradually build, bit by bit.

It would make sense to assume that moods are created from thoughts or stressors, things that crop up during the day and knock us off-kilter. This isn’t so. Psychologist Robert Thayer argues that moods are created by our habitualness: how much we sleep, how frequently we move, what we think, how often we think it, and so on. The point is that it’s not one thought that throws us into a tizzy: It’s the pattern of continually experiencing that thought that compounds its effect and makes it seem valid.

If you wait on the feeling of “readiness,” you’ll be waiting forever, and worse, you’ll miss the best of what’s in front of you.

The ways in which your current situation — though perhaps unplanned or unwanted — could be the path to the place you’ve actually always wanted to be, if only you’d begin to think of it that way.

The breakdown is often just the tipping point that precedes the breakthrough, the moment a star implodes before it becomes a supernova.

You can control how you treat people, but you cannot actually control what they think. The idea that behaving a certain way will elicit a certain response is a delusion that will keep you puppeteering through your life. It will distance you from the person you want to be and the life you want to live.

As children, routine gives us a feeling of safety. As adults, it gives us a feeling of purpose.

If you consciously learn to regard the problems in your life as openings for you to adopt a greater understanding, and then develop a better way of living, you will step out of the labyrinth of suffering and learn what it means to thrive.