Martha Beck Quotes

With experience, you understand expectations, you understand consequences, but sometimes it gets a little bit hard, especially for me, that I'm a perfectionist - I want to analyse everything. And sometimes it's most important to just let go and trust your instincts. This is what I need to do more of.

Trust your instincts: If your instincts have always served you well, trust them and follow them.

I have asked James Shabazz, I've asked other people who are members of the OAAU, Herman Ferguson and others, what led to that disastrous decision [that the guards didn't carry weapons]? James Shabazz said to me with a shrug, you just didn't know Malcolm. Malcolm was adamant, and that whatever Malcolm wanted, that's what we just did.

Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts. People make their decisions based on what the facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story … facts are not terribly useful to influencing others. People don’t need new facts—they need a new story.

Whenever we need to make a very important decision it is best to trust our instincts, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges.

In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the: process: by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong-surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences.

The only people who have quick answers don't have the responsibility of making the decisions.

Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.

Before making a decision, ask inside for guidance. Be patient and await an answer. Act only when you feel calm and certain.

Trust your instincts. If you have no instincts, trust your impulses.

Politicians often like to suggest that their policies come about through objective thinking, but if you look at British fascists, for example, what you see - what I see - is a group of people coming to the decisions they came to because something happened to them when they were nine-years-old, or because of some deep prejudice that formed in them subsequent to that.

Just do what you want, I don't think you should ever... pointers and tips from people is great, and it's good and I don't think you should ever shun down advice, but if you feel something's wrong, then you don't do it. And that's what I'd say.

The truth is I have from the very beginning listened to my instincts. All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me.

It's how you make decisions that matters, and that ought to be the question that people ask of any candidate for any executive office, whether it's mayor, governor or president. How do you make decisions? Who do you want in the room helping you make those decisions?

When you get older, you kind of learn when something is done, you just walk away. Sometimes people just want to keep fixing things. But you know it's kind of just like your gut that tells you, "You're done, walk away" because you can always keep fixing it.

But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.

If you rely exclusively on the advice of others, you may make terrible mistakes. Your heart knows what you need. Other people have other agendas.

But you have to trust your instincts. Because you're not going to try it 20 different ways during rehearsal. You'll try it two or three different ways, maybe, but then you've got five other scenes you're shooting that day. You've got to keep going.

The establishment uses that rationale all the time, and that's why we do what we do. But leadership requires some understanding that you can say no. People have base instincts, but the transcendent also appeal to them.

When you know something is wrong for you, you have to make difficult decisions and trust your instincts.

Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who have talent.

This is a huge decision [to choose advisers and Secretary of State]. This is where he [Donald Trump] has the least experience and will have to rely on people with experience.

Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way.

Both of my marriages have taught me the same lesson twice over really harsh: listen to your instincts. Don't be a people pleaser.

I wanted people who wouldn't become too worried about casualties. One always should be concerned about casualties, but the risk of incurring casualties can't be allowed to affect decisions, unless it's evident casualties will be prohibitively heavy. There may be no safe way to write this.