End of Year Wise Words

Here I offer you more words of wisdom – part two of my list that I’ve collected over the last year or so. I love, in random places finding inspiration or opportunities to go gently within, with a heartfelt hmmm… I especially love when I find things that speak to the difficulties and joys inherent in the human struggle.

May you have time to pause and reflect on this year as it draws to a close, and in that reflection come to peaceful intentions for yourself and your community in the new year. Many blessings to you. Thank you so much for reading and allowing me to be a part of your life in any way……

• You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you. –Sarah Ban Breathnach
• Our scars are never ugly. Our scars mean we’re alive. – Marie Forleo
• A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means this storyteller is alive. – Chris Cleve
• Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. – Melody Beattie
• Natural kind of mindfulness: where the very act of paying attention is the kindest thing to do, for others and for yourself. – Barry Boyce, Mindful magazine
• F.E.A.R. Has two meanings – forget everything and run, or face everything and rise. The choice is yours.
• Shit happens but also shift happens too.
• Want what you have and don’t want what you don’t have. Here you will find true fulfillment.
• The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
• Where you stumble, there your treasure lies. – Jospeh Campbell
• Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. – Vaclav Havel
• There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering. – Alan Watts
• Like a sandcastle, all is temporary.
  Build it, tend it, enjoy it.
  And when the time comes
  let it go.
• Your days pass like rainbows, like a flash of lightning, like a star at dawn. Your life is short. How can you quarrel? – Buddha
• Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. – Jack Kornfield
• In the Jewish mystical tradition, one great Rabbi taught his disciples to memorize and contemplate the teachings and place the prayers and holy words on their heart. One day a student asked the Rabbi why he always used the phrase “on your heart” and not “in your heart,” and the master replied, “Only time and grace can put the essence of these stories in your heart. Here we recite and learn them and put them on our hearts hoping that some day when our heart breaks they will fall in.”
• Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned. – Buddha
• Gandhi put it so well: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
• The time is always right to do what is right. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
• This too shall pass. – King Solomon
• Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society. Cesar Chaves
• O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. – Henry David Thoreau
• Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. – Golda Meir
• Karma means you don’t get away with nothing! – Ruth Dennison
• Whatever we do, however we act, creates how we become, how we will be, and how the world will be around us.
• We vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, and vastly underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.
• This perspective is called finding the goodness in everything. As proof of the human capacity to do so, here is a prayer written by an unknown prisoner in the Ravensbruck concentration camp and left beside the body of a dead child: “Oh Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill, but also those of ill will. But do not remember only the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember too the fruits we brought forth thanks to this suffering-our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all of this. And when they come judgment, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”
• Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake. – Francis Bacon, Sr.
• Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.
• I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet―within the chambers of a quivering heart. – Terry Tempest Willia
• Our listening creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts within another person. – Rachel Naomi Remen
• But when I learned what it meant to take responsibility for what I can DO with my life instead of focusing on what’s been DONE to me, my life took a different turn.
  I still have plenty of challenges.
  But now I see my part in making my life good.
  I DO have a choice in what I make of my circumstances, my opportunities, and my mindset.
  I can love. I can forgive. I can listen. I can be compassionate. I can serve. I can grow. I can contribute. I can be an example of the kind of person I want to be around.
  And so can you.
  Never forget this:
  YOU have the power to make your life good or bad.
• Remember the Noble truths, no matter the politics or the season: Greed, hatred and ignorance cause suffering. Let them go. Love, generosity and wisdom bring the end of suffering – Jack Kornfield
• In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – Albert Camus
• Sometimes your heart is your biggest fan.- Twitch
• Maybe other people will catch on and become your fans. Maybe they won’t. But either way, your heart needs to be in it if you want to be happy doing what you’re doing. And that is something YOU have a choice in.
• Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. – Henry James
• Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times. – Vaclav Havel
• Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be. – Wayne Dyer
• You are more important than the bad things that happen to you. You are the grace that follows…
• You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being – Malcolm X
• If we do not feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more? – Unknown
• We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but of appreciating what we do have.
• We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives, but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live. – Maya Angelou
• “Greed, Hate and Ignorance create suffering. Generosity, Love and Wisdom bring happiness.”
  “Mind is the forerunner. Speak and act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.”
  “Plant seeds of goodness, and well-being will grow.”
  -Jack Kornfield
• Before you talk, listen. Before you react, think. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try.
• To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe. – Eckhart Tolle

Listening with Heart
Cindi Rivera, MFT
Marriage, Family Therapist
www.cindiriveratherapy.com
[email protected]
(510) 482-4445