The following lines are from Brianna Wiest’s 101 Essays that will Change the way You Think. This book has contributed to mindset shifts and perspective changes I have had within the last few months, so I wanted to share with you 101 motivational lines from the book. Enjoy!
Many of the world’s ‘best’ people understood that to change their lives, they had to change their minds (11)
To believe is to become (11)
[Don’t] convince yourself that any given moment is representative of your life as a whole (14)
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. (15)
What you choose [to define you] is indicative of your present state of mind (16)
Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter through which you experience your life (18)
[Emotionally intelligent people] are kind to all but truly open to a few (24)
We all start as strangers, but we forget that we rarely choose who ends up a stranger, too (27)
[Socially intelligent people] function in such a way that they are able to communicate with others and leave them feeling at ease without sacrificing who they are and what they want to say (29)
Real emotional maturity is how thoroughly you let yourself feel anything (39)
Your numbness isn't feeling nothing, its feeling everything, and never having learned to process anything at all (40)
We’re more invested in how we’re perceived than who we are (44)
…the number of people you can claim to be in your tribe has no bearing on how much you feel intimacy, acceptance, community, or joy (46)
The real stuff is [in] the product of an intentional, mindful, daily practice, and it begins with choosing to commit to it (49)
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 (51)
Seek what’s positive, and you’ll find that your threshold for feeling it expands as you decide it can (53)
…people who choose to never fully step into their lives never have anything at all (55)
You will never be ready for the things that matter, and waiting to feel ready before you start acting is how the knowing-doing gap widens (62)
It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking rather than think your way into a new way of acting, so do one little thing today and let the momentum build (63)
What kind of person [do] you want to be known as (68)
Everything is hard; it’s just a matter of what you think is worth the effort (71)
What work are you willing to do even if nobody claps? What will be worthwhile if it goes unacknowledged? (77)
If you think love is something that exists anywhere but within your own mind and heart, you will never have it (79)
Your mind creates; it [meaning, your circumstance] is not created (80)
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 (81)
You are not responsible for being the person you once thought you’d be (83)
If you’re wondering “what you should do with your life,” it’s likely that you’re in limbo between realizing you don’t want what you once did and giving yourself permission to want what you want now (84)
“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence, but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct (85)
[Don’t] prepare for the worst and rob [yourself] of the best in the process (90)
The emotion [itself] doesn’t have to be fixed; the thing that it’s signaling your attention to does (94)
“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice” (97)
Hold yourself to your own standard (100)
Seek out ways to appreciate the way people are, not the way you want them to be (101)
The way you honestly feel can be different from how you truthfully feel- the former is usually temporary, and the latter is deeper, and consistent (105)
Do not make decisions when you’re upset. Let yourself come back down to neutral first (105)
Thoughts are illusions but powerful ones (106)
Make sure you’re living more than you’re thinking about living (107)
Learn to see each day from the perspective of your older self (110)
Consume your mind with things that interest you- aside from your own problems (113)
Choose to build your life from a place of gratitude and vision rather than running from your own fears (114)
Choose to do things because you want joy more than you choose to do them because you want to avoid pain (115)
Make your life about more than just your own wants (116)
Redefine “happiness” not as something you experience when you get what you want but something you feel when you have something meaningful to work toward each day (116)
Recognize that fear is an indicator that something is powerful and worthwhile (118)
…when you have a pre-prescribed path in mind, it means you are trying to align with somebody else’s. It means that the inspiration you have found is you creating your own version of somebody’s something else that made you tick and flow (122)
You either see yourself as a victim of what happens to you or as someone given the opportunity to change, grow, see differently, and expand (125)
The real work of anything is simply becoming conscious of what is already true (139)
Outcomes are just ideas. Actions are results (149)
If you assume you “have time” to do something or that you’ll do it later, you probably don’t want it as much as you think you do (149)
Motivation and inspiration are not sustaining forces (150)
…what you value is crucial to understanding who you are (158)
Let people into your life in a true way. Let them enter a moment in your life just as it's happening (159)
Self-esteem is not how much confidence you have in how well people perceive you, but how much confidence you have in whether or not you can manage your life (165)
Self-acceptance [is] seeing your whole self without judging or condemning parts of it (166)
Sometimes the way light enters us is, in fact, through the wound (170)
The best things will not make sense- not initially, at least (173)
Love is not logical (173)
Clarity comes from doing, not thinking about doing (174)
We were born to actualize our potential, not just analyze it (183)
A sign that the only problem with your life is that you think about it more than you want to live it…is you want to change something about your life, but your focus is on dismantling the old rather than building something new that renders it obsolete (185)
Passion is the spark that lights the fire; purpose is the kindling that keeps it burning all night (187)
As will all things passion is born of, it can only sustain an idea, not a reality (193)
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” (195)
You ultimately are defined not by what you do, but how you do it (196)
The point of anything is not what you get from having done it; it’s what you become from having gone through it (204)
A good life isn’t passionate; it’s purposeful (207)
…know how to use your heart and mind in tandem- the heart as the map and the mind as the compass (224)
The heart will tell you what; the mind will tell you how (224)
It is noble and humbling to tell someone that they matter to you, regardless of whether or not you matter to them (229)
…we surrender our ability to choose, when really it’s up to us to decide how we react, when we change, what we entertain our minds with (241)
If healing is just acknowledging pain, then maybe living is just acknowledging life (244)
…your life improves in direct proportion to how often you are put into situations in which you have no choice but to seek a greater truth (259)
…there is only one right way to guide your life, and it is by consistently focusing on the next right step (270)
You can’t reflect your way into a new existence, but you can think yourself into paralysis (270)
Rather than work toward an end goal, work toward liking the process of getting there (273)
…all you can control is how much work you put in (273)
The way we get the most tripped-up is when our ideas don't evolve as our beings do, and we create what we want while still being attached to an old idea (278)
Your deepest revelations happen in silent moments with yourself (279)
The most hilariously ironic thing of life is that you have the most success doing what feels right (280)
Your identity does not have to be cohesive. Your story doesn’t have to flow. You don’t have to be neatly packaged in a way that other people understand (280)
Things will work out better than you could have chosen or designed them (281)
You should evaluate your choices not in light of how other people will perceive them, but how in line with your deepest, truest self they are (298)
You are bound by nothing but your own fear, so you will not find freedom anywhere but within yourself (298)
If you must walk out of something, learn to do so gracefully, so the door won’t be locked if you need to walk back in (308)
Stop numbing your life because you’re afraid of yourself. The only beast there is to tame is the one who doesn’t want to really live (310)
To be truly fulfilled is to be happy because of your own self-realization. It is to come to such a genuine understanding of what you want that not doing it isn’t an option anymore (311)
It is a privilege, albeit an extraordinary challenge, to awaken yourself. Even more so is to have someone who loves that person, a job that utilizes that person, and a life that fully realizes that person, even if you denied them along the way (315)
Learn that truths can coexist. That’s the only thing that will set you free in this world (321)
The magnitude of one's life is directly parallel to how deep their perception of it is (323)
[If you don’t know what to do with your life] it’s likely that you’re between realizing you don't want what you once did and giving yourself permission to want what you want now (326)
Your life exists in its days. Not in your ideas about those days. Your habits accumulate and begin to default (337)
…peace [is] when neither the desire for a high or the suppression of the low is present (359)
It’s as though we live to write our eulogies (369)
You have to stop living for how other people will remember you. Stop living by telling yourself the story that you think other people will be happy reading (370)
It's not about having a relationship; it’s about being in one (370)
You eventually realize it was love that created you, not the pain that is the byproduct of lost love (380)
…mindset is cultivation, and to that end, it is ultimately a choice. We can change it (383)
The only way you ever really heal or find some sense of genuine contentment is in narrating your life as someone who loves you would. Because you should love you (390)
You must start where you are, you must use what you have, you must do what you can (432)
Imagine your life from the perspective of the person you hope to be. It will put many things back into alignment (436)
It’s never about how certain you are, it’s about how willing you are to try anyways (440)