Build the Life You Want Quotes

“here are the main lessons to make each challenge into a source of growth. 1. Don’t avoid conflict, which is your family’s opportunity to learn and grow if you understand where it originates and manage it appropriately. 2. You naturally think compatibility is key to relationship success, and difference brings conflict. In truth, you need enough compatibility to function, but not all that much. What you really need is complementarity to complete you as a person. 3. The culture of a family can get sick from the virus of negativity. This is a basic emotional-management issue, but applied to a group instead of to you as an individual. 4. The secret weapon in all families is forgiveness. Almost all unresolved conflict comes down to unresolved resentment, so a practice of forgiving each other explicitly and implicitly is extremely important. 5. Explicit forgiveness and almost all difficult communication require a policy of honesty. When families withhold the truth, they cannot be close.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“One last point: If your relationship with your family is especially difficult, working to improve it might sometimes feel like a lost cause. It’s easy to throw up your hands. Almost every day, we hear from people all over the world who feel stuck in family problems that seem like they have no solution. Maybe you have said, “I just want to turn my back on those people and get on with my life.” Giving up is almost always a mistake, because “those people” are, in a mystical way, you. Your spouse is a completion of you as a person. Your kids provide a rare glimpse into your own past. Your parents are a vision of your future. Your siblings are a representation of how others see you. Giving that up means losing insight into yourself, which is a lost opportunity to gain self-knowledge and make progress as a person. Never give up on the relationships that you did not choose, if at all possible. But what about the relationships that you have chosen? These are your friendships, and that’s the next part of our lives to build.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“This means being good to others as selflessly as possible—as the preceding experiment suggests, of course—but more subtly, it means deflecting your own constant attention from yourself and your desires—by looking in the mirror less, disregarding your reflection on social media, paying less attention to what others think about you, and fighting your tendency to envy people for what they have but you don’t.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“In the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“In your journal, reserve a section for painful experiences, writing them down right afterward. Leave two lines below each entry. After one month, return to the journal and write in the first blank line what you learned from that bad experience in the intervening period. After six months, fill in the second line with the positives that ultimately came from it. You will be amazed at how this exercise changes your perspective on your past.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“she stopped waiting for the world to change and took control of her life.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“find peace in all things and play after every storm.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“That’s because happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a direction.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“Your emotions are only signals. And you get to decide how you’ll respond to them.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“The macronutrients of happiness are enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“She switched from wishing others were different to working on the one person she could control: herself. She felt negative emotions just like anyone else, but she set about making more conscious choices about how to react to them. The decisions she made—not her primal feelings—led her to try to transform less productive emotions into positive ones such as gratitude, hope, compassion, and humor.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“What accounts for family conflict? Generally, it is a misalignment between how family members view their relationships and the roles that they each play—in other words, mismatched expectations. For example, parents tend to see the benefit of family bonds primarily in terms of shared love; children generally view the benefit in terms of exchanges of assistance. According to research, fathers report higher levels of involvement in the relationship than their kids perceive.[5] Similarly, children tend to think that they are doing more to help than their parents think they are.[6] All of this creates resentment, which is only natural when people you love fail to meet your expectations; it is exacerbated when the other party doesn’t even seem to notice.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“In fact, happiness comes from the Old Norse happ, which means “luck.”[6] Meanwhile, in Latin-based languages, the term comes from felicitas, which referred in ancient Rome not just to good luck but also to growth, fertility, and prosperity.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“The Miracle of Mindfulness:”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“When you learn, teach.
When you get, give.”
― Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“Tomorrow, try a new tactic. During the day, take a few minutes every hour or so, and ask, “How am I feeling?” Jot it down. Then after work, journal your experiences and feelings over the course of the day. Also write down how you responded to these feelings, and which responses were more and less constructive.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“happiness is rooted in words related to fortune or positive fate.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“Epicurus (341–270 BCE) led a school of thought named after himself—Epicureanism—that argued that a happy life requires two things: ataraxia (freedom from mental disturbance) and aponia (the absence of physical pain).”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“technology that crowds out our real-life interaction with others will lower our well-being and thus must be managed with great care in our lives.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“I don’t know what this day will bring, but I will love others and allow myself to be loved.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“Learning your PANAS profile—your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings—can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend on your unhappiness.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“The lemonade-making, silver-linings-finding, bright-side-looking glass-half-fullers.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“But family, friends, work, and faith are the Big Four on which almost everything else rests.”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“I dedicate my work to lifting people up and bringing them together, in bonds of love and happiness,”
― Arthur C. Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“feel the feel, then take the wheel
pg30”
― Arthur C Brooks, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier