Martha Beck Quotes

One cannot let the events of one's past murder one's future.

The most positive action we can take about the past is to change our perception of it.

A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.

Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.

I know I can't change the past, but I change the future. I can change, too. And I will.

The real difference between telling what happened and telling a story about what happened is that instead of being a victim of our past, we become master of it.

Don't allow your past or present condition to control you. It's just a process that you're going through to get you to the next level.

You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past.

But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

Start telling the story of your amazing life, and the law of attraction must make sure you receive it!

Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.

Do not let anything from your past inhibit you in this Present Moment. Start over. Start Fresh. Each day. Each hour, if it serves you. Heck, each minute. Just get going. Just do it. Just say it. With love. All else will take care of itself.

Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.

A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.

The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.

These are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you; your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they’re not necessarily evil, unless you let them be.

Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.

The past does not define, you the present does.

Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.

Do one thing every day that scares you... Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own... Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

I use memories but I will not allow memories to use me.

Memories were moving pictures in which meaning was constantly in flux. They were stories people told themselves.

When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.

Moments are history. If you have enough of them, they become a story.