Melody Beattie Quotes

Accept what you cannot control.

It took me a while to learn the true meaning of patience and surrender, but I have finally accepted that healing doesn't happen on our schedule. It doesn't have a clock or a calendar.

The more you feel like you need to fix something, the more you need to not.

Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

As you focus on simplifying your life, make sure that your approach to the process is a loving and accepting one. Know that you are doing all that you can do right now, and that is all anyone can do.

I've learned to take things a little more easily, to be a little more forgiving of myself.

I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn't sell this number of records, why I don't have corporate sponsorship. I just don't buy into any of that anymore.

Life is where you're at. Whatever you're doing is enough. You don't need to do everything well all the time. When you live your life like that, it's a huge relief.

I would say I was always very ambitious and goal-oriented, but rather than being just a go-getter hustler, now I surrender a lot more and I trust my path a lot more.

The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together. And so I tell people: No, you should see my house, it's a mess.

I've realized that no problem is as hopeless as it first may seem, I've learned how to live day to day and show others how to do the same, and most of all, I've learned how to just be.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is, “It’s okay.” It’s okay for me to be kind to myself. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to get mad. It’s ok to be flawed. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to move on.

So the best thing is to really work on yourself and opening your own heart and just letting all that stuff [worrying] go. And it is possible. It's sometimes takes a lot of time; it's not easy. And a lot of sitting with yourself and trying to work with your own heart.

Acceptance is the key to be truly free.

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

Teach me, 0 God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.

There's no magic bullet; there's no pill that you take that makes everything great and makes you happy all the time. I'm letting go of those expectations, and that's opening me up to moments of transcendent bliss. But I still feel the stress over 'Am I thin enough? Am I too thin? Is my body the right shape?'

Unless we're completely awake, have a degree of that. We tense against love and hold on in a way that doesn't let it flow. When that's really strong, the key piece to freeing our hearts is self-compassion.

Breathe and don't try to be perfect.

Letting go is not the same as aversion, struggling to get rid of something. We cannot genuinely let go of what we resist. What we resist and fear secretly follows us even as we push it away. To let go of fear or trauma, we need to acknowledge just how it is. We need to feel it fully and accept that it is so. It is as it is. Letting go begins with letting be.

Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.

Letting yourself off the hook takes the stress away.

I don't burden myself too much with others' expectations - or even my own expectations. I think your happiness grows in direct proportion to your acceptance, and in inverse proportion to your expectations. It's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other - or doing the next right thing, so to speak.