The really potent part of love is that it allows you to carry around beliefs about yourself that make you feel special, desirable, precious, innately good. Your lover couldn't have seen [these qualities] in you, even temporarily, if they weren't part of your essential being.
Martha BeckTo make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
Martha BeckMy deep belief is that all of us have the same lifelong work: to learn honesty, courage, and love. To learn, in other words, how to be our best selves.
Martha BeckExplorers depend on the North Star when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot.
Martha BeckNo one can give you anything-love, shame, self-esteem- until you give it to yourself. Today, give yourself good things.
Martha BeckYour body is free but your heart is in prison. To release your heart, you simply reverse the process which locked it up. First you begin to listen for messages from your heart-messages you may have been ignoring since childhood. Next you must take the daring, risky step of expressing your heart in the outside world. . . . As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become another way of telling your story. . . . It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you'll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along.
Martha Beck