Martha Beck Quotes

But I'm not ready to stop listening to the screwed-up inner voice that's been ordering me around for a lifetime. My head thinks it can kill me... and go on living without me.

Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad.

I don't want to be lofty when I say this, but I don't know what a success is any more. I know how we define it, but that was a moment where I went, "Wait, who am I?" You could feel the business, in particular, kind of go "He's all right, let's go over here." I started to go, "Wait, I know why I love to do this." I think I got off track in why I love to do it.

Start thinking positively. You will notice a difference. Instead of 'I think I'm a loser,' try 'I definitely am a loser.' Stop being wishy-washy about things! How much more of a loser can you be if you don't even know you are one? Either you are a loser or you are not. Which is it, stupid?

It's very hard to be good. It is self-destructive thinking to think that there is too much good.

Just as I sit down to meditate, all the vilest subjects in the world come up. The whole thing is nauseating. Why should the mind think thoughts I do not want it to think? I am as it were a slave to the mind.

It scares me to speak my mind, it might sound self-absorbed, I don't say half of what I think, I wonder what I'm thinking for

I think there are times when you're jamming with the universe, and other times when it feels like no matter how hard I work, no matter how good a person I am, I will always be punished for being mediocre.

I'm used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war.

Why do I doubt her? Perhaps she is just very sensitive, and hypersensitive people are false when others doubt them; they waver. And one thinks them insincere. Yet I want to believe her. At the same time it does not seem so very important that she should love me. It is not her role. I am so filled with my love of her. And at the same time I feel that I am dying. Our love would be death. The embrace of imaginings.

Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am.

I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.

Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors... Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat... What then was music created for? Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves? I think I know.

I'll run through things over and over and over again in my head and think, "How could I have done that better?" Silly things like that.

Sometimes I think, I need to think before I speak. And then other times I think, I shouldn't leave the house or interact with people ever.

The biggest danger, for me, with making yourself your act is that a lot of people with think they know you for better or worse. That's an ongoing struggle with me and it can get really trippy sometimes. I try to be strong about it and assure myself that only my close friends and family can really pass judgement on me personally, but it's impossible to not let it get to you.

The only thing that can possibly keep you from going after your dreams is the person standing in your shoes, wearing your clothes, and thinking your negative thoughts.

Do you even know who the enemy is?" "I think... it's me".

I have to convince myself that this is not a pointless life, even the body is telling me so.

I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.