Anger Punishes

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. Buddha

The Risk of Independence

All life itself represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take. Of the thousands, maybe even millions, of risks we can take in a lifetime the greatest is the risk of growing up. Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood. Actually it is more of a fearful leap than a step, and it is a leap that many people never really take in their lifetimes. Though they may outwardly appear to be adults, even successful adults, perhaps the majority of “grown-ups” remain until their death psychological children who have never truly separated themselves from their parents and the power that their parents have over them.

M. Scott Peck
The Road Less Traveled

Opportunity Arrives

You probably won’t hear opportunity knock if you the television set is always on.

Caught Between

It is not just the pace of change that leaves us disoriented. Many Americans have lost faith that the transitions they are going through are really getting somewhere. To feel as though everything is “up in the air,” as one so often does during times of personal transition, is endurable if it means something – if it is part of a movement toward a desired end. But if it is not related to some larger and beneficial pattern, it simply becomes distressing.

It is as if we launched out from a riverside dock to cross to a landing on the opposite shore – only to discover in midstream that the landing was no longer there. (And when we looked back at the other shore, we saw that the dock we had left from had broken loose and was heading downstream. Stuck in transition between situations, relationships, and identities that are also in transition, many Americans are caught in a semipremanent condition of transitionality.

William Bridges
Transitions

Universal Beliefs

The generic nature of human beings and the ordered nature of the world in which we live tend to evoke very similar beliefs in all of us, which we have called universal beliefs. They include adherence to a law of noncontratidiction, belief in a an external world of orderly processes, belief in the existence of other persons who share our world and with whom we communicate and live, and belief in also in some ultimate reality with which we must eventually reckon. Beliefs such as these are a practical necessity if we are to think and function at all.

Arthur Holmes
Contours of a World View

How to Lose

You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.

Authority Opinions

Einstein was a great man in science and a very great man in mathematics, but when he got out of his field of competence, which he often did, the result was pathetic. In an article written expressly for the New York Times magazine he said, “It is, therefore, easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.” The statement is thoroughly false. Indeed, modern science was nourished by the church and by the institutions founded by the church. This includes Princeton University, where Einstein was living when he wrote the article. What this shows is that a man need not be trusted in one field merely because of his competence in another.

D. Elton Trueblood
Philosophy of Religion

Creating God

You may safely assume that you have created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Pain

Pain humbles the proud. It softens the stubborn. It melts the hard. Silently and relentlessly, it wins battles deep within the lonely soul. The heart alone knows its own sorrow, and not another person can fully share in it. Pain operates along; it needs no assitance. It communicates its own message whether to statesman or servant, preacher or prodical, mother or child. By staying, it refuses to be ignored. By hurting, it reduces its victim to profound depths of anguish. And it is at that anguishing point that the sufferer either submits and learns, developing maturity and character; or resists and becomes embittered, swamped by self-pity, smothered by self-will.

I have tried and cannot find, either in Scripture or history, a strong-willed individual whom God used greatly until He allowed them to be hurt deeply.

Charles Swindoll
Killing Giants, Pulling Thorns

Fighting.. Again

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. Margaret Thatcher

Looking Forward by Looking Back

If the past isn’t the way you thought it was, then the present isn’t, either. Letting go of that present may make it easier to conceive of a new future. Things look different from the neutral zone, for one of the things you let of in the ending process is the need to see the past in a particular way, and in doing that you let go of the need to think of the future in the way you always have.

William Bridges
Transitions

Planning and Doing.. part 2

You can't plow a field by turning it over in your mind.

The Neutral Zone

Anyone who has ever remodeled a house knows a good deal about personal transitions because such an undertaking replicates the three-part transition process. It starts by making an ending and destroying what used to be. Then there is the time when it isn’t the old way any more, but not yet the new way, either. Some dismantling is still going on, but so is some new building. It is very confusing time, and it is a good idea to have made temporary arrangements for dealing with this interim (“neutral zone”) state of affairs- whether it is temporary housing or a time of modified activities and reduced espectations to make the old housing work. And as the contractors always warn you, remodeling always takes more time and money than new construction. Good advice in regard to transition, too.

William Bridges
Transitions

Holding People Back

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Booker T Washington

Welcome to the Future

The future will not be delivered like the morning paper; the future comes looking like something else. Don't be fooled. I think that even though you may not have told yourself yet in so many words, you know some very important things about the next chapter of your work life. Tell yourself whatever you know now.

William Bridges
Transitions