Nǐ hǎo, I'm Julia.

Here are some amazing quotes from Lori's book.

• We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.
• We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it.
• But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.
• Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
• Peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
• Above all, I didn't want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion - an apt phrase, given John's worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.
• You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one of them.
• The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking—people imagine that if they say no, they won’t be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn’t it safer to stay where I am?
• Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time.
• In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgment: Am I good or bad?).
• Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.
• In the best goodbyes, there’s always the feeling that there’s something more to say.
• Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way.
• What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction—a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person’s type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity. It’s no coincidence that people who had angry parents often end up choosing angry partners, that those with alcoholic parents are frequently drawn to partners who drink quite a bit, or that those who had withdrawn or critical parents find themselves married to spouses who are withdrawn or critical.
• People often mistake numbness for nothingness, but numbness isn’t the absence of feelings; it’s a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings.