Getting Unstuck Quotes

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I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
This is how you get unstuck. You reach.
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Give me the discipline to get rid of the stuff that's not important, the freedom to savor the stuff that gives me joy, and the patience not to worry about the stuff that's messy but not hurting anybody.
Vinita Hampton Wright (Simple Acts of Moving Forward: A Little Book About Getting Unstuck)
The most effective way to transform your life, therefore, is not by quitting your job and moving to an ashram, but, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, by doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life)
When we show up fully, with awareness and acceptance, even the worst demons usually back down. Simply
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
We still don’t like the things we don’t like –we just cease to be at war with them. And once the war is over, change can begin.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life)
I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
Getting stuck is reactive, getting unstuck is proactive.
Sherene McHenry
Don't wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves. This is precisely why you're stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way. The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now. Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can't help but improve, can't help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star. You might not end up with perfect, but it's significantly more valuable than being stuck. Don't just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.
Seth Godin
The parent who praises a child’s accomplishment by saying, ‘You studied hard!’ promotes a growth mindset. The parent who says, ‘Look at your A, son! You’re a genius!’ promotes a fixed mindset.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life)
It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. it was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life)
To move up the emotional ladder, you have to stop judging your own emotions. This is a key to getting unstuck emotionally, too. You can stop oscillating in a stuck emotion by being aware.
Shawn Kent Hayashi (Conversations for Change: 12 Ways to Say It Right When It Maconversations for Change: 12 Ways to Say It Right When It Matters Most Tters Most)
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck. So the question is: Have you ever done that?
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
If you are lost, find yourself by filling your days with constant experimentation.
Trevor Carss
Our contract with life is a contract that is brokered with fragility, and with sadness, and with anxiety. And if we’re going to authentically and meaningfully be in this world, we cannot focus on one dimension of life and expect that focusing on that dimension is going to then give us a well-rounded life.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Movement. Action. Curiosity. Discovery. Sometimes being stuck means going deep and deep discoveries are made there, but sometimes stuck is just stuck and some kind of movement is required to get things going.
Shellen Lubin
In looking for the right places to make these tiny changes, there are three broad areas of opportunity. You can tweak your beliefs—or what psychologists call your mindset; you can tweak your motivations; and you can tweak your habits. When we learn how to make small changes in each of these areas, we set ourselves up to make profound, lasting change over the course of our lives.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Hi" he said "Hi" "I'd like to kiss you" He waited a moment for my response, then added, "Or, if you rather, we can dance, as long as we can get you unstuck." "I think I'm in deep." "Me, too," he said, looking into my eyes. His head moved closer to mine. Then he lifted his hand, cupping my cheek ever so gently. His lips touched my lips, light as a butterfly, once, twice. The kisses were so lovely, so lovely I couldn't help it-I did a totally stupid, uncool thing. I sighed. I heard the laughter rumbling inside Nick and I started to pull away. But his arms wrapped around me. He held me close and pressed his lips against mine. A thrill went through me. I kissed him back-I didn't think about it, just kissed him with all that my heart felt.
Elizabeth Chandler (Don't Tell (Dark Secrets, #2))
Emotional agility is about loosening up, calming down, and living with more intention. It’s about choosing how you’ll respond to your emotional warning system.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Staying emotionally agile requires us to find the equilibrium between overcompetence on the one hand and overchallenge on the other. This is the teeter-totter principle.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Getting people to finally see the stark incompatibility of certain desires is often what finally gets them unstuck.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Getting unstuck is a matter of choice. If you want flourish in life make a choice today to move into that reality. You can do it.
Sereda Aleta Dailey (Stress Relief for Your Body & Mind)
Who’s in charge—the thinker or the thought?” Are we managing our own lives according to our own values and what is important to us, or are we simply being carried along by the tide?
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
If you can't do what you long to do, go do something else. Go walk the dog, go pick up every bit of trash on the street outside your home, go walk the dog again, go bake a peach cobbler, go paint some pebbles with brightly colored nail polish and put them in a pile. You might think it's procrastiantion, but - with the right intention - it isn't; it's motion. And any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
Grounding is most effective when you have some place to go. When you know where you are going, grounding brings strength and confidence, when you’re stagnant you get caught in the past.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Life is full of diving boards and other precipices, but, as we’ve seen throughout this discussion of emotional agility, making the leap is not about ignoring, fixing, fighting, or controlling fear—or anything else you might be experiencing. Rather, it’s about accepting and noticing all your emotions and thoughts, viewing even the most powerful of them with compassion and curiosity, and then choosing courage over comfort in order to do whatever you’ve determined is most important to you. Courage, once again, is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking—or
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Perhaps the best term to describe living at the edge of our ability, thriving and flourishing, being challenged but not overwhelmed, is simply “whelmed.” And a key part of being whelmed lies in being selective in our commitments, which means taking on the challenges that really speak to you and that emerge from an awareness of your deepest values.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. —Goethe
Julie Morgenstern (SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck)
Take the time to celebrate stillness and silence and see the joy that the world can bring, simply.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Toxic people sell you short. When you listen to them, you give them power, that’s when you sell yourself short.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Refraining is very powerful because it gives us an opportunity to acknowledge when we’re caught and then to get unstuck.
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
People frequently die in fires or crash landings because they try to escape through the same door they used when they entered.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
When you choose intuitive living, you are signing a contract with the Soul and the Spirit that you will follow your own path.
Katalin Bator-Hos (The SUPERMAGICIAN Within: Get Unstuck and Discover a Whole New Life With Your Intuitive Self)
To get food unstuck from a frying pan, just pour water in the pan and wait. After a while the food loosens on its own. Don't struggle to heal your wounds. Just pour time into your heart and wait. When your wounds are ready, they will heal on their own.
Haemin Sunim (The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World)
Of course, determing what you truly care about is only half the process of walking your why. Once you've identified your values, you then have to take them out for a spin. This requires a certain amount of courage, but you can't aim to be fearless. Instead, you should aim to walk directly into your fears, with your values as your guide, toward what matters to you. Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
God's primary concerns have to do with your well-being, not your performance.
Vinita Hampton Wright (Simple Acts of Moving Forward: A Little Book About Getting Unstuck)
Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.” -          Ralph Waldo Emerson      
Laura van den Berg Sekac (Get Unstuck Now: How Smart People Gain Clarity and Solve Problems Fast, And How You Can Too)
We need people to think. We need people to think better. We need people to think more. Reflection is a valuable tool, but only in the way to drive a way forward.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Nature favors evolution, not revolution. Studies from many different fields have demonstrated that small shifts over time can dramatically enhance our ability to thrive.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Emotions pass. They are transient. There is nothing in mental experience that demands an action.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
One way to start doing this is to answer a single question, in writing, each night before bed: “As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
expectations are resentments waiting to happen.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life)
Sometimes, discomfort means we are on the verge of a major turning point or revelation.
Laurie E. Smith (Soul Wisdom: A Guide To Miraculous Living, Book 1)
The ultimate goal of emotional agility is to keep a sense of challenge and growth alive and well throughout your life.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Emotions are data, they are not directives
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
If you have found yourself in a ditch, guess what? You can find your way out. Scratch, crawl, strive, climb and press as if there’s no tomorrow. Manifest the greatness inside of you!
Rodney Walker
Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to start identifying your values: - Deep down, what matters to me? - What relationships do I want to build? - What do I want my life to be about? - How do I feel most of the time? What kind of situations make me feel most vital?
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
This is one of the harshest after effects of the pandemicthat I am witnessing someand experiencing some,a diminished ability to deal with resistance,and soa willingness to stay in one place for too long,shut off from the outside world,nose in phone or binge-watchingsome showwhen once upon a timewe used to have to wait a week for the next installmentand discussed it with colleagues over water coolersand over landlines with friends. We need colleagues.We need friends.
Shellen Lubin
If you are never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out being. P'raps this is what you will discover - what you are made of and what you are capable of. And when you finally do remember who you are, p'raps you will find that you have become a better man than he ever was. P'raps he was a man why never ever grew any more once he reached manhood. P'raps he needed to do something drastic like losing his memory so that he could get his life unstuck.
Mary Balogh (Slightly Sinful (Bedwyn Saga, #5))
Compassion gives us the freedom to redefine ourselves as well as the all-important freedom to fail, which contains within it the freedom to take the risks that allow us to be truly creative.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
This is one of the harshest after effects of the pandemic that I am witnessing some and experiencing some, a diminished ability to deal with resistance, and so a willingness to stay in one place for too long, shut off from the outside world, nose in phone or binge-watching some show when once upon a time we used to have to wait a week for the next installment and discussed it with colleagues over water coolers and over landlines with friends. We need colleagues. We need friends.
Shellen Lubin
This idea that you’re undeserving, a fraud—that you’re not as smart or talented or “together” as people might think makes you an “imposter” and therefore unqualified in whatever it is you want to do and someday you’re going to be found out. By whom? The imposter police? You’re not an imposter, you’re a human being.
Anthony Meindl (Unstuck: A Life Manual On How To Be More Creative, Overcome Your Obstacles, and Get Shit Done)
Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.
Adam Alter (Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most)
These micro-moments of intimacy or neglect create a culture in which the relationship either thrives or withers. The tiny behaviours feed back on themselves and compound with time, as every interaction builds on the previous interaction, no matter how seemingly trivial. Each person's moments of pettiness and anger, or generosity and lovingness, create a feedback loop that makes the overall relationship either more toxic or happier.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach at times - a distant tower of flame, accessible only to geniuses and to those who are specially touched by God. But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. The stakes of curiosity are also far lower than the stakes of passion. [...] Curiosity only ever asks one simple question: "Is there anything you're interested in?" Anything? Even a tiny bit? No matter how mundane or small? The answer need not set your life on fire, or make you quit your job [...]; it just has to capture your attention for a moment. But in that moment, if you can pause and identify even one tiny speck of interest in something, then curiosity will ask you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look at the thing a wee bit closer. Do it. It's a clue. It might seem like nothing, but it's a clue. Follow that clue. Trust it. See where curiosity will lead you next.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” - Pope Paul VI
Yann Girard (The Art of Being Remarkable: How To Get Unstuck, Unfucked & Unleash Your Potential)
Our hidden demons are simply the residue of perfectly ordinary and almost universal insecurity, self-doubt, and fear of failure. Maybe you still resent your sister for flirting with your boyfriends in high school. Maybe you feel undervalued by your new boss. This is not even the stuff of a good, tear-soaked Oprah episode. But it can be enough to hook you into behaving in ways that don’t serve you.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
You can apply this simplification-by-restriction philosophy more broadly by automating as much of your life as possible. Automation restricts your options by eradicating decision points. Instead of choosing between a set of options, for example, you pursue a default option.
Adam Alter (Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most)
People in that robotic, drone-like state, walking the earth with no set mission other than to survive another day. Missing the glory of the day, missing the potential for beauty and magic that each moment brings. Missing the gift of life, to walk in the footsteps of the mundane.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
And if something feels new, difficult, or even slightly incoherent, fear kicks in. And while fear comes in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes it appears in disguise (as procrastination, perfection, shutting down, unassertiveness, or excuses), it speaks only one word: no, as in "No, I'll just screw it up." "Nah, I wouldn't know anyone there." "Nope, that will look awful on me." "Nuh-uh, thanks; I'll sit this one out.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
At times, don’t be forced to play nice with others, especially when their version of playing nice favours them, and is focused on them. Playing nice means working together for a shared result. I’m not sorry for not being able to play nice with everyone, sometimes I only play nice with the best.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
A child’s sense of secure attachment—this idea that I, in all my glory, as well as all my stinkiness and imperfection, am loved and accepted—allows him not only to take risks in the world but also to take risks with his own emotions. Knowing he will not be invalidated, rejected, punished, or shamed for feeling whatever he feels, he can test out sadness, happiness, or anger and figure out how to manage or respond to each of these emotions in turn.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
So, rather than guess about whether people will understand our ideas, we should ask, “Is it concrete?” Rather than speculate about whether people will care, we should ask, “Is it emotional? Does it get out of Maslow’s basement? Does it force people to put on an Analytical Hat or allow them to feel empathy?
Chip Heath (Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck)
Luckily, scientists have uncovered a few secrets to help make the process of creating habits easier. In their bestselling book Nudge, the economist Richard Thaler and the law professor Cass Sunstein show how to influence other people’s behavior through carefully designed choices, or what they called “choice architecture.” You
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Happiness is a choice, To make a choice is utilizing your freewill to choose. Courage is getting out of your own way to let Happiness happen in your life in Abundance!
Sereda Aleta Dailey (The Art of Manifesting Abundance)
The very first thing you need to do to get your life back, heal your past or excel in your future is to suspend certain beliefs.
Tanja Diamond (Riding The Phoenix: The Ultimate Guide To Get Unstuck in Life Love and Money)
When we are stuck in a rut we are being invited to grow and expand.
Dana Arcuri (Reinventing You: Simple Steps to Transform Your Body, Mind, & Spirit)
You get the results your belief dictates
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
We believe in the good old days; we believe our best is in the past. Our past is our memories, our past is our learnings, our past should stay where it is. And we should let it.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
When you find yourself internally, you find what nourishes you from within. You lose that entitlement and anger when YOU deliver.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Even small waves make it to shore. Use the potential you have through intention and action and enjoy your journey.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
One thing I can assure you, life is not easy, but it can be simple. Focus on what's important and don't let your distractions derail you.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Could you free yourself from the chains of the oppressors and learn to live in the beauty of YOU?
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Start maximising what you have, instead of worrying what you don’t have.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Live Life. Fight for life. Every day is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. In memory of Carter Desmond McFillin.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Don’t clock off from life, you are still standing and that is testament there is more to live. Embrace life.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” Mandy Hale
Vishnu Subramaniam (How Do I Get Unstuck: Overcome Internal Resistance, Get Out of Your Own Way, Go After the Life You Want)
Emotional agility means being aware and accepting of all your emotions, even learning from the most difficult ones. It also means getting beyond conditioned or preprogrammed cognitive and emotional responses (your hooks) to live in the moment with a clear reading of present circumstances, respond appropriately, and then act in alignment with your deepest values.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Friend, you were on my heart when I mapped out this book. You were made for more than the daily grind. More than making ends meet. More than the list of should's, can'ts or wish I hads.
Emily Grabatin (Dare to Decide: Discovering Peace, Clarity and Courage at Life's Crossroads)
Grit embodies—but is not the same as—resilience, ambition, and self-control. The University of Pennsylvania psychologist and researcher Angela Duckworth defines it as passion and sustained persistence in trying to achieve a goal over the very long haul, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way. Resilience is about overcoming adversity; ambition, at some level, suggests a desire for wealth, fame, and/or power; self-control can help you resist temptations, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re persistently pursuing a long-term goal.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Validate your direction, verify your results. Make resistance work for you by motivating you to continue the path you are on, to continue the journey to your very best. To continue on to where you previously feared to go.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
One thing that is guaranteed not to work. Doing Nothing. A goldmine when you realise it. Don't be paralysed by analysis. Don't be paralysed by fear. The one thing that is guaranteed not to work. Doing nothing achieves nothing.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
My mother. I don't think too harshly of her. I know she did all she could not to have me, except of course the one thing, and if she never succeeded in getting me unstuck, it was that fate had earmarked me for less compassionate sewers.
Samuel Beckett (Molloy)
listening to Barack, I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck. I was gripped all over again by a sense of how special he was. Slowly, all around me, too, the church ladies began nodding their approval, punctuating his sentences with calls of “Mmmm-hmm” and “That’s right!” His voice climbed in intensity as he got to the end of his pitch. He wasn’t a preacher, but he was definitely preaching something—a vision. He was making a bid for our investment. The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. “What’s better for us?” Barack called to the people gathered in the room. “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” It was a phrase borrowed from a book he’d read when he first started out as an organizer, and it would stay with me for years.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. - Franz Kafka
Yann Girard (The Art of Being Remarkable: How To Get Unstuck, Unfucked & Unleash Your Potential)
I needed to realise my role in the drama and it was only then that I could learn and be better for it, and it was only then that I could move forward. I needed to move forward and had to look at each day as a way of becoming a better me. And when I got better, the people around me reciprocated.
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
I remember something else from the time I spent trapped. I remember Bitterblue’s voice, calling down from above. I remember how inconsolable she was, terrified that I was stranded in a place she wouldn’t be able to reach me. And I remember that even in that moment, my own pain began to shift into the wish to comfort her pain. I lose myself in that wish. I disappear. Suddenly Bitterblue is there, and I am gone. It’s not her fault. It’s my whole thing, right? I disappear from myself. It’s a way of being I got stuck inside, a long time ago. I’ve been thinking about how to get unstuck. Even if it hurts.
Kristin Cashore (Seasparrow (Graceling Realm, #5))
give compassion to the part of you that feels angry, guilty, or resistant, even if you cannot define what that part is, or what the aversion is about. Give it permission to move out of it. Say to yourself: “It’s okay to feel resistance. I understand it. Thanks for the warning. It’s okay to leave. It’s okay to follow my own heart, and to be me.” Embrace your feelings with compassion, and choose NOW to express your joy, vision, and dreams without guilt, anger or other negative emotions. Your life belongs to you and to you only. You are not accountable to anyone for your values or the choices of your heart.
Laura van den Berg Sekac (Get Unstuck Now: How Smart People Gain Clarity and Solve Problems Fast, And How You Can Too)
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assumes its true importance. It seemed small because our previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution. Unless you are a real master at staying stuckk you can't prevent this. The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time. What's really been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness through the cars of your train of knowledge looking for a solution that is out in front of the train. Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1))
each difficulty we face in life is a reminder that something is not quite in harmony with who we truly are and what our life purpose is. When we correct it right away, at the beginning, we’ll will get back on course quickly and easily. But when you don’t take those difficulties seriously, the inconveniences caused by them become challenges. You often may not be aware of the red flags that signal them. “This is my daily life,” you may think. But these challenges then become frustrations, and when you still do nothing to bring them in harmony with your true self, they grow and mutate into a monstrous problem. Finally, the problem swallows you up, and you get stuck.
Laura van den Berg Sekac (Get Unstuck Now: How Smart People Gain Clarity and Solve Problems Fast, And How You Can Too)
People frequently die in fires or crash landings because they try to escape through the same door they used when they entered. In their panic, they rely on an established pattern instead of thinking of another way out. In the same manner, our suffering, our disengagement, our relationship challenges, and our other life difficulties are almost never solved by thinking in the same old, automatic way.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
The curse of comfort--defaulting to the familiar and accessible--wouldn't matter so much if the only place it led you was down the supermarket aisle, past the unfamiliar and difficult-to-pronounce exotic foods, and straight to your favorite brand of peanut butter. Its impact, though, is much more insidious and far-reaching. It can lead to mistakes that waste our time and keep us from getting where we want to go--sometimes literally.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
The Hobo One day while strolling through the great park in Kansas City, he and his mother saw a young woman get her foot caught in the tracks at a railroad crossing. The woman’s husband was desperately trying to free her because a train was bearing down on them. The train was travelling far too quickly to stop before the crossing. As Heinlein and his mother watched the terrifying situation unfold, a hobo suddenly appeared and immediately joined the husband’s futile effort to pull the woman free. But tug and twist as they might, they could not get her foot unstuck. The train killed all three of them. In his description of the vagabond’s effort Heinlein observed that the hobo did not so much as look up to consider his own escape. Clearly, it was his intention either to save the woman or to die trying. Heinlein concluded his account of the nameless hero’s action with this comment: “This is the way a man dies,” but he then added, “And this is the way a man lives.
Jack Hoban (The Ethical Warrior: Values, Morals and Ethics - For Life, Work and Service)
The lesson: Once our minds slip into default mode, it takes a great deal of flexibility to override this state. This is why specialists are often the last ones to notice commonsense solutions to simple problems, a limitation economist Thorstein Veblen called the “trained incapacity” of experts. Inflated confidence leads old hands to ignore contextual information, and the more familiar an expert is with a particular kind of problem, the more likely he is to pull a prefabricated solution out of his memory bank rather than respond to the specific case at hand.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Sooner or later, some screw was going to peek behind Rita Hayworth just to make sure Andy didn’t have a sharpened spoon-handle or some marijuana reefers Scotch-taped to the wall. And his response to that second assumption must have been To hell with it. Maybe he even made a game out of it. How far in can I get before they find out? Prison is a goddam boring place, and the chance of being surprised by an unscheduled inspection in the middle of the night while he had his poster unstuck probably added some spice to his life during the early years. And I do believe it would have been impossible for him to get away with it just on dumb luck. Not for twenty-seven years.
Stephen King (Different Seasons: Four Novellas)
It’s hard to make ideas stick in a noisy, unpredictable, chaotic environment. If we’re to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. Not simple in terms of “dumbing down” or “sound bites.” You don’t have to speak in monosyllables to be simple. What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea. “Finding the core” means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea. The Army’s Commander’s Intent forces its officers to highlight the most important goal of an operation. The value of the Intent comes from its singularity. You can’t have five North Stars, you can’t have five “most important goals,” and you can’t have five Commander’s Intents. Finding the core is analogous to writing the Commander’s Intent—it’s about discarding a lot of great insights in order to let the most important insight shine. The French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once offered a definition of engineering elegance: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” A designer of simple ideas should aspire to the same goal: knowing how much can be wrung out of an idea before it begins to lose its essence.
Chip Heath (Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck)
Compared with a typical mail-order ad, the “imagine cable television” appeal is a much more subtle appeal to self-interest. Note that the benefits offered were not fantastic in a Caples-esque way. The gist was that you could avoid the hassle of leaving home (!) by ordering cable. Indeed, just hearing about the benefits, in the abstract, wasn’t enough to lure additional subscribers. It was only when people put themselves in the starring role—I can see myself watching a good movie at home with my hubby, and I can get up and check on the kids in the next room whenever I like … and think of all that babysitting money I’d save!—that their interest grew. This finding suggests that it may be the tangibility, rather than the magnitude, of the benefits that makes people care. You don’t have to promise riches and sex appeal and magnetic personalities. It may be enough to promise reasonable benefits that people can easily imagine themselves enjoying.
Chip Heath (Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck)
If marriage is the great mystery of the City, the image of the Coinherence - if we do indeed become members one of another in it - then there is obviously going to be a fundamental need in marriage for two people to be able to get along with each other and with themselves. And that is precisely what the rules of human behavior are about. They are concerned with the mortaring of the joints of the City, with the strengthening of the ligatures of the Body. The moral laws are not just a collection of arbitrary parking regulations invented by God to make life complicated; they are the only way for human nature to be natural. For example, I am told not to lie because in the long run lying destroys my own, and my neighbor's nature. And the same goes for murder and envy, obviously; for gluttony and sloth, not quite so obviously; and for lust and pride not very obviously at all, but just as truly. Marriage is natural, and it demands the fullness of nature if it is to be itself. But human nature. And human nature in one piece, not in twenty-three self-frustrating fragments. A man and a woman schooled in pride cannot simply sit down together and start caring. It takes humility to look wide-eyed at somebody else, to praise, to cherish, to honor. They will have to acquire some before they can succeed. For as long as it lasts, of course, the first throes of romantic love will usually exhort it from them, but when the initial wonder fades and familiarity begins to hobble biology, it's going to take virtue to bring it off. Again, a husband and a wife cannot long exist as one flesh, if they are habitually unkind, rude, or untruthful. Every sin breaks down the body of the Mystery, puts asunder what God and nature have joined. The marriage rite is aware of this; it binds us to loving, to honoring, to cherishing, for just that reason. This is all obvious in the extreme, but it needs saying loudly and often. The only available candidates for matrimony are, every last one of them, sinners. As sinners, they are in a fair way to wreck themselves and anyone else who gets within arm's length of them. Without virtue, therefore, no marriage will make it. The first of all vocations, the ground line of the walls of the New Jerusalem is made of stuff like truthfulness, patience, love and liberality; of prudence, justice, temperance and courage; and of all their adjuncts and circumstances: manners, consideration, fair speech and the ability to keep one's mouth shut and one's heart open, as needed. And since this is all so utterly necessary and so highly likely to be in short supply at the crucial moments, it isn't going to be enough to deliver earnest exhortations to uprightness and stalwartness. The parties to matrimony should be prepared for its being, on numerous occasions, no party at all; they should be instructed that they will need both forgiveness and forgivingness if they are to survive the festivities. Neither virtue, nor the ability to forgive the absence of virtue are about to force their presence on us, and therefore we ought to be loudly and frequently forewarned that only the grace of God is sufficient to keep nature from coming unstuck. Fallen man does not rise by his own efforts; there is no balm in Gilead. Our domestic ills demand an imported remedy.
Robert Farrar Capon (Bed and Board: Plain Talk About Marriage)