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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
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Anaïs Nin
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life shrinks and expands on the proportion of your willingness to take risks and try new things.
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Gary Vaynerchuk (#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness)
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Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” - Anais Nin
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Mark Manson (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ANAÏS NIN
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Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity)
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We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely...When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.
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Anaïs Nin
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Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it
becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.
"You do not know what you are missing by your micro-scopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.
If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with
tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine. How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range,
what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art . . . We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.
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Anaïs Nin (Delta of Venus)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” –Anaïs Nin
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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Life will either shrink or expand based on your decision to have courage.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion with one's courage." Anais Nin
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Jayne Stone (Lost Dreams: The Story of Eadburg, Queen of Wessex)
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Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life. I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine.
When I would not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom (Thick: And Other Essays)
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Life expands when you dare and share. Life shrinks when you seek consistency and fear.
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Debasish Mridha
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Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life, we write to lure and enchant and console others, we write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth, we write to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely. We write as the birds sing. As the primitive dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write. Because our culture has no use for any of that. When I don't write I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire, my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave. I call it breathing.
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Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955)
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We’ve fallen for the devil’s lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. However, in reality, sin robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn’t make life interesting; it makes life empty. Sin doesn’t create adventure; it blunts it. Sin doesn’t expand life; it shrinks it. Sin’s emptiness inevitably leads to boredom. When there’s fulfillment, when there’s beauty, when we see God as he truly is—an endless reservoir of fascination—boredom becomes impossible.
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Randy Alcorn (Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” —Anaïs Nin
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Jenna Fischer (The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anaïs Nin
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Parker S. Huntington (Asher Black (The Five Syndicates, #1))
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We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express—not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life—but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves—always with respect—the mildest possible grimace of irony.
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Doris Lessing (Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (Canopus in Argos, #1))
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Is alcohol getting in the way of my happiness, my life, my self-esteem? Is it getting in the way of my dreams, or maybe just not working for me? Does it cost more than it gives, does it shrink more than it expands, does it cut pieces out of me I can’t reclaim? Does it make me hate myself, even just a little bit?
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Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
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It was a lesson for me. Even in my loneliest times, I knew I could go deep into my imagination and create a better reality for myself. And then that’s built into my life in so many other areas. Those little moments kept me expanding instead of shrinking into myself.
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Jonathan Van Ness (Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. Anais Nin
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William Bernhardt (Powerful Premise: Writing the Irresistible (Red Sneaker Writers Book Series 6))
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
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Anaïs Nin
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One’s world shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s sensual growth.
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Lebo Grand
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I have missed it my little Chinese book. Forty-four. What is more important, fame or integrity. What is more valuable, money or happiness. What is more dangerous, success or failure. If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy. Be content with what you have and take joy in the way things are. When you realize you have all you need, the World belongs to you. Thirty-six. If you want to shrink something, you must first expand it. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must allow it to be given. The soft will overcome the hard. The slow will beat the fast. Don’t tell people the way, just show them the results. Seventy-four. If you understand that all things change constantly, there is nothing you will hold on to, all things change. If you aren’t afraid of dying, there is nothing you can’t do. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the place of the Master Carpenter. When you handle the Master Carpenter’s tools, chances are that you’ll cut your hand. Thirty-three. Knowing other people is intelligence, knowing yourself is wisdom. Mastering other people is strength, mastering yourself is power. If you realize that what you have is enough, you are rich truly rich. Stay in the center and embrace peace, simplicity, patience and compassion. Embrace the possibility of death and you will endure. Embrace the possibility of life and you will endure. This little book feeds me. It feeds me food I didn’t know existed, feeds me food I wanted to taste, and have never tasted before, food that will nourish me and keep me full and keep me alive. I read it and it feeds me. It lets me see what my life is in simple terms, it simply is what it is, and I can deal with my life on those terms. It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don’t force or fear, don’t control or lose control. Don’t fight and don’t stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.
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James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)
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the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn’t have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one’s exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium.
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Chris Hadfield (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth)
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Stimulate the brain with new things to do or new individuals to interact with and it reacts by creating new connections that cause it to actually expand in size. But deprive your brain of new stimulation or bore it with doing the same thing day after day after day, and the connections will wither away and your brain will actually shrink.
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Wendy Suzuki (Healthy Brain, Happy Life)
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When you can’t talk about something, you’re prevented from naming and describing it, from making it real. And what you can’t name and describe and make real becomes infinite and limitless and impossible to decipher or resolve because it can expand to fill your whole life and self to its tiniest corners or it can shrink to nothing; nothing being the size of things that are not real. You are alone—with it, with yourself. With this unsolvable problem.
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Isaac Fitzgerald (Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional)
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I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.
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Andrew Levkoff (A Mixture of Madness (The Bow of Heaven, #2))
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Some moments, hours, days, last longer for some people than others, depending. Daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically composed of two lives, said Forster: the life in time, ticking, marching by, regular, implacable, and the life by values, slowing or accelerating, shrinking or expanding, condensing or prolonging. The same sixty-second spans experienced as short minutes, as elongated minutes (as thin minutes or thicker minutes). As separated minutes: distinctive pockets, or stand-out portions of detached, delimited time.
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Kate Briggs (The Long Form)
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Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn’t have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one’s exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don’t need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term.
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Chris Hadfield (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth)
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Reach out to the younger generation—not to advise them but to learn from them, gain energy from them, and support them on their way. Erik Erikson called this kind of reaching out “generativity,” an alternative to the “stagnation” of age that sooner or later leads to despair. 2. Move toward whatever you fear, not away from it. I try to remember the advice I was given on an Outward Bound course when I was frozen with fear on a rock face in the middle of a 100-foot rappel: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” If, for example, you fear “the other,” get into his or her story face-to-face, and watch your fear shrink as your empathy expands. 3. Spend time in the natural world, as much time as you can. Nature constantly reminds me that everything has a place, that nothing need be excluded. That “mess” on the forest floor—like the messes in my own life— has an amazing integrity and harmony to it.
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Parker J. Palmer (On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, & Getting Old)
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Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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Dear Shift in the storm,
This is abnormal, but I love how the clouds are shifting in my life. I noticed the lens flare as the clouds drift away. I used to think I was better off because the storm was the storyteller of my life, and I thought it was here to stay.
Now that the clouds are finally drifting away, the scattered light is awaking my soul to a brighter day. I use to be so lost, but Nurse Hope's kindness is helping me find my way. Her actions have made me realize that love doesn’t cost a thing and that I want more out of life. I know that it is possible.
Dear shift in the storm, would you take my complex memories with you? Therefore, curiosity will not enable me to continue to think of the ‘what-ifs.' If you can, would you do me the honor of shrinking my and Kace's memories? Could you void them as they shrink in the fading light? There’s no need to expand what we are trying to do away with.
May you melt our frozen tears? If not, could you please make them invincible in the light? Could Kace and I become intangible as our old life disappears in the shift of the storm? We’ve had more than our share of fragments—and we are ready to be set free. For far too long, we’ve reached our breaking point.
Dear shift in the storm, could you wash away our fears and wash us whole—as we step into our new life? Let there be no more secrets and lies, for Kace and I have endured enough. We are ready to shed our skin, and we are most certainly ready for our new beginning. I feel the change because the tear stains on my face have left their footprints for me to walk into a new world. During this shift, I am going to be still because I know when the storm is over that I am going to be alright.
I no longer have to be selfish for all the wrong reasons.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us. Leaving no one behind, left out, looked down on. We must get back to that mission. And do it with both energy and humility, knowing that our time is fleeting and our power is not an end in itself but a means to achieve more noble and necessary ends. The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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The potential of your life experience shrinks or expands according to your ability to love.
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Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ANAÏS NIN
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Denise Duffield-Thomas (Get Rich, Lucky Bitch: Release Your Money Blocks and Live a First-Class Life)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. —ANÄIS NIN, WRITER
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Gail McMeekin (The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor)
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see every day: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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alcohol getting in the way of my happiness, my life, my self-esteem? Is it getting in the way of my dreams, or maybe just not working for me? Does it cost more than it gives, does it shrink more than it expands,
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Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
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Anaïs Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
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Reshma Saujani (Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder)
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I wish you-
Braveness and resilience; to face this life;
for life shrinks or expands in
proportion to one's courage.
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Sahndra Fon Dufe
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Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage.
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Anaïs Nin (7 Volume SET the Diary of Anais Nin 1943 Thru 1974)
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The fastest learners on the planet are children, and that’s partly because they don’t care what others think of them. They have no shame around failing. They will fall 300 times and get up 300 times in the course of learning to walk, and don’t feel embarrassed; they just know they want to walk. As we get older, we have a harder time staying this open. We might take a singing lesson, or maybe a coding class, and if we hit a flat note or make a mistake as we learn, we shrink or stop. Part
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Jim Kwik (Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. – Anaïs Nin
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Massimilla Harris (Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality)
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It was a life in which a man’s soul would either shrink to nothing or expand until it became too large to find contentment within the horizon of such an existence. Some
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George W. Ogden (The George W. Ogden Western MEGAPACK ™: 8 Classic Novels and Stories)
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Big obstacles shrink when you confront them; small obstacles expand when you dodge them.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Love is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself.
Love is overflowing joy.
Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from Existence.
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being.
Fear is the opposite of love. In love, one expands. In fear, one shrinks. In fear, one becomes closed. In love, one opens.
In fear, one doubts. In love, one trusts.
Do not be afraid, this Existence is not your enemy. This existence loves you, this existence is ready to support you in any way.
Trust and you will feel a new overflowing energy. That energy is love. That energy wants to bless the whole existence. Because of this energy, one feels blessed.
Love is a deep desire to bless the whole Existence.
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Swami Dhyan Giten
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On my coffee table at home, I have a piece of driftwood. Its sole purpose is to display a quote by Anaïs Nin, which I see every day: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take. The most fulfilled and effective people I know—world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more—look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves. This book is not intended to be a passive experience. It’s intended to be a call to action. You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world. It’s never too late to begin a new chapter, add a surprise twist, or change genres entirely.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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The mind shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s wisdom; the heart, in proportion to one’s courage; and the soul, in proportion to one’s love.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Bone would pierce his skin, and once he'd fallen to the earth, his blood would seep out of his flesh and drip into the soil. An endless world of miniature organisms would rise and fall within his blood, nourishing the pampas grass beneath his boots. Entire ecosystems and galaxies would expand and shrink, feeding off his remains, passing along the breath of life through nutrients sipped by plant roots.
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Robyn Abbott (A Sin & a Half)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” —Anais Nin
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J.L. Collins (Pathfinders: Extraordinary Stories of People Like You on the Quest for Financial Independence—And How to Join Them)
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The motivation for any work should be inspiration, not worry. Inspiration is an overflowing energy that
expands your capacity to do things. It is completely energizing. Worry, on the other hand, is something that shrinks your capacity. It limits what you are capable of really doing because it takes away your energy.
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Parmahamsa Nithyananda
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Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills, he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important.
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Peter D. Kaufman (Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition)
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In compassionate adepts, the brain’s insula begins to enlarge. The insula makes us aware of our internal emotional states and raises our level of attention to their signals. It also has rich connections to the heart and other visceral organs, allowing it to track and integrate signals coming from the body. In empathetic people, the insula responds strongly to the distress of others, just as though we were suffering ourselves. Activation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) indicates that we can see things from the perspective of another person. This allows us to put ourselves in their shoes and take their needs into consideration. 6.10. Empathy is a neurological event, not simply an emotional state. There’s a part of the anterior cingulate that lights up only when we’re contemplating actions that help others. It isn’t activated by outcomes that favor only us. This region is also associated with impulse control and decision-making; we can choose win-win options rather than the desire-driven cravings of the nucleus accumbens. When adepts are confronted by the suffering of others, the premotor cortex lights up. This means that the brain hasn’t just noticed the distress of a fellow being; it’s getting ready to take action. In experienced meditators, the nucleus accumbens shrinks. This structure, which we looked at in Chapter 3, is active in desire and addiction. Deactivation of the nucleus accumbens through empathetic connection equates to a weakening of self-centered attachment. Calming our emotions and focusing our attention, we’re no longer driven by our wants and compulsions, and the brain circuitry associated with this part of the reward circuit begins to wither. When training people in EcoMeditation retreats, I focus on the Empathy Network only after the first three networks are active. First I have them focus on self, then on just one other person. Only after that do we expand our compassion to the universal scale. That’s because thinking about other people can easily take us into mind wandering. People I love, people I don’t, and the things that happened to cause those feelings. Trying to be compassionate toward people who harmed us can lead us out of Bliss Brain. So I activate the Empathy Network only after the Attention Network is engaged. BRAIN CHANGE IS LIFE CHANGE The fact that blissful states, practiced consistently, become blissful traits is a profound gift to us human beings. It means that we aren’t condemned to live in the Caveman Brain with which evolution endowed us. That practice can evolve our brains, some parts slowly, some parts quickly, is a remarkable innovation.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. ... The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice.
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Thomas Robert Malthus (An Essay on the Principle of Population)
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standing up straight with your shoulders back is not something that is only physical, because you’re not only a body. You’re a spirit, so to speak—a psyche—as well. Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being. Your nervous system responds in an entirely different manner when you face the demands of life voluntarily. You respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for a catastrophe. You see the gold the dragon hoards, instead of shrinking in terror from the all-too-real fact of the dragon. You step forward to take your place in the dominance hierarchy, and occupy your territory, manifesting your willingness to defend, expand and transform it. That can all occur practically or symbolically, as a physical or as a conceptual restructuring. To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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That’s one of the most interesting things about selfishness: When we’re constantly thinking about ourselves, our world shrinks and our pain becomes suffocating. But when we think about others, our world expands and our own pain becomes less intense—because it’s no longer our primary focus.
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Seth Adam Smith (Your Life Isn't for You: A Selfish Person’s Guide to Being Selfless)
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Anaïs Nin, which I see every day: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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The adventures of life shrink or expand in direct proportion to one's sensuality.
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Lebo Grand
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.
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Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
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Heloise Hull (Making Midlife Magic (Forty is Fabulous, #1))
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If Genesis 1 is a welcome to transcendence, then Genesis 3 is about the tragedy of the shrinking of transcendence. Adam and Eve were created so that their lives would reach as wide as the kingdom and glory of God. In that one disastrous moment they did not expand their boundaries; they dramatically narrowed them. The vertical “more” for which transcendent human beings were created was replaced by a horizontal “more” that was never to be a human being’s life motivation. In that one tragic moment, Adam and Eve migrated to the center of their world, the one place where glory-wired human beings must never live. They did not just opt for independence; they opted for God’s position, and in doing so they forsook any chance of a personal participation in the transcendent glory of a relationship with God. This is why God sent his Redeemer Son to earth. He came to rescue us from ourselves and return to us participation in his transcendence. In his adoption we are restored to the God glory which is to be central to everything we do. In his church we are restored to the community glory in which we were built to participate. In freeing us from idolatry, rather than being ruled by the creation, we are restored to the stewardship glory over creation to which we were called. In the ministry of his indwelling Spirit, through Scripture, we are restored to the truth glory that was meant to be the interpretive lens of every human being since Adam took his first breath. His is a gorgeous work of rescue!
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Paul David Tripp (A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger than You)
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You're not too much Piper. You don't need to shrink down to fit into someone else's life. The thing about love- friendship, family, partnered- is it's meant to make your life bigger. It's supposed to give you more of what's good. Love expands and multiplies and grows in the nurture of it. Anyone who can't embrace everything you bring, all the big that you are and are ready to give, can find less.
It's not your job to carver yourself into their size.
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Mallory Thomas (Somewhere Along The Line)
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He is a humble man who can afford to square his shoulders and celebrate his success. When others shrink, he expands. His celebration is not arrogance; it is a feast of development. This is a sensible man who aims to improve the quality of life on earth.
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Gift Gugu Mona (A Man of Valour: Idioms and Epigrams)
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He is a humble man who can afford to square his shoulders and celebrate his success. When others shrink, he expands. His celebration is not arrogance, it is a feast of development. This is a sensible man who aims to improve the quality of life on earth.
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Gift Gugu Mona (A Man of Valour: Idioms and Epigrams)