MBMartha Beck

38 collected words

Martha Beck

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

Martha Beck / quote

02Undated

There’s a Chinese word that means “soul sister,” and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Please don’t make it worse by condemning yourself. There is no choice that would have left you feeling no guilt. Every time I watch Adam struggle to speak, every time I see another child laugh and point at him, every time I watch his face fall as he realizes he is not going to be treated like the other kids, I feel wrenched by guilt just as you did when you heard my story. Life is hard. We make the best choices we can. Condemnation, whether it comes from around you or inside you, only robs the world of another dram of compassion. God knows, we need all the compassion we can get. If you promise to try to forgive yourself, I’ll try to forgive myself as well. I think, in my heart of hearts, that there is nothing for either one of us to forgive.

Martha Beck / quote

03Undated

Martha," she said. "Just let it go." "I'm trying," I said. I want to explain to her that this was like telling someone who has been mauled to death by a bear to let the animal go while it was still worrying what was left of her leg. I didn't have my situation; it had me. There was nothing I wanted more than to let go of it, but I didn't know how. I eventually figured it out, but the method that works for me proved to be exactly the opposite of what Debra intended. She meant that I should never tell the story, but telling the story is the only way to let go of trauma. Letting it go is precisely what I am doing now, in the hopes that it will help others in similar situations find the courage to tell their stories, but I sincerely doubt that Debra will approve.

Martha Beck / quote

04Undated

I am bewildering you a little. Just enough to help you forget what you came to believe, so that you can remember what you’ve always known.

Martha Beck / quote

05Undated

As a life coach, I love makeovers, from new clothes to surgery, pedicures to highlights. But redoing makes you feel better only if approached with the right attitude.

Martha Beck / quote

06Undated

Whether you've seen angels floating around your bedroom or just found a ray of hope at a lonely moment, choosing to believe that something unseen is caring for you can be a life-shifting exercise.

Martha Beck / quote

07Undated

Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.

Martha Beck / quote

08Undated

Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well. Success is built on failure.

Martha Beck / quote

09Undated

Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories, and after an evening of smacking one another, we'd sit and have a beer while the students swapped tales of martial arts disaster.

Martha Beck / quote

10Undated

I feel about aging the way William Saroyan said he felt about death: Everybody has to do it, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.

Martha Beck / quote

11Undated

No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone.

Martha Beck / quote

12Undated

Western democracies exalt the ideal of social equality, but our economic system arguably emerged from 16th-century Calvinism, a religion whose members believed that God showed favor by bestowing wealth and other forms of success on what they called 'the chosen.'

Martha Beck / quote

13Undated

The thing I love most about my job is watching people age backward, becoming more lively and energetic as they free themselves from situations that are toxic to their essential selves.

Martha Beck / quote

14Undated

Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don't. Emotional pain or numbness are symptoms of living the wrong life, not a long life.

Martha Beck / quote

15Undated

Getting bogged down in old stories stops the flow of learning by censoring our perceptions, making us functionally deaf and blind to new information. Once the replay button gets pushed, we no longer form new ideas or conclusions - the old ones are so cozy.

Martha Beck / quote

16Undated

I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amazing athlete.

Martha Beck / quote

17Undated

The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.

Martha Beck / quote

18Undated

The process of spotting fear and refusing to obey it is the source of all true empowerment.

Martha Beck / quote

19Undated

Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.

Martha Beck / quote

20Undated

When fear makes your choices for you, no security measures on earth will keep the things you dread from finding you. But if you can avoid avoidance - if you can choose to embrace experiences out of passion, enthusiasm, and a readiness to feel whatever arises - then nothing, nothing in all this dangerous world, can keep you from being safe.

Martha Beck / quote

21Undated

People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures.

Martha Beck / quote

22Undated

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.

Martha Beck / quote

23Undated

Every day brings new choices.

Martha Beck / quote

24Undated

If we're stuck with having expectations, there's a very good reason to embrace positive ones: It's that we often create what we anticipate.

Martha Beck / quote