Tag: Melody Beattie

Wisdom

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I was racing back home from the computer store, busily doing my errands, trying to get things done. I noticed a restaurant and shopping center to my right, on the freeway. I’d been curious about this place for almost a year. Today, instead of driving by, I turned off the highway and pulled into the parking lot. I spent the next three hours browsing through the stores filled with antiques, trinkets, and gourmet foods. Then I enjoyed a leisurely dinner—a juicy hamburger and a chocolate malt—at the restaurant before returning home. The stores had always been there; I’d always driven past. Today I stopped, satisfied my curiosity, and enjoyed myself.

It’s easy to spend our lives working toward a goal, convinced that if we could only get there, we’d be truly happy then. Today is the only moment we have. If we wait until tomorrow to be happy, we’ll miss out on the beauty of today.

Have your plans. Set goals.

Let yourself be happy now.

~ Melody Beattie, from “Be Happy Now” & More Language of Letting Go

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Then one day, something happens

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“We work on feelings. On beliefs. On behaviors. Letting go of the old, acquiring the new. We work and work and work. We practice. We struggle through. We go from one extreme to the other, and sometimes back through the course again. We make a little progress, go backward, and then go forward again. It may all seem disconnected. It may not sound like a harmonious, beautiful piece of music—just isolated notes. Then one day, something happens. We become ready to play with both hands, to put the music together.”

~ Melody Beattie, from Achieving Harmony (October 1, 2017)

Notes:

  • Image via Mennyfox55.
  • Inspired by a share by Beth @ Alive on All Channels: “At 7 a.m. all my voices start talking inside my head, and when it reaches a certain pitch I jump out and trap them before they’re gone. Or I shower and then the voices talk. You solve problems not by thinking directly of them but allowing them to ferment in their own time. You feed yourself. Make sure you have all the information, whether it’s aesthetic, scientific, mathematical, I don’t care what it is. Then you walk away from it and let it ferment. You ignore it and pretend you don’t care. Next thing you know, the answer comes.” –Ray Bradbury, Learning is solitary pursuit for Bradbury by Luaine Lee

It may take God

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Alejandro García Restrepo

Today, God, help me focus on a peaceful pace rather than a harried one.

I will keep moving forward gently, not frantically.

Help me let go of my need to be anxious, upset, and harried.

Help me replace it with a need to be at peace and in harmony.

~ Melody Beattie, from “Going Easy” in The Language of Letting Go

Photo: Alejandro García Restrepo via I Hear It in the Deep Heart’s Core

Lightly child, Lightly

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bubble

The matter at hand is serious. It’s grave. We need to get serious about the relationship. We need to get serious about the task. Maybe what we really need to do is learn to lighten up. Nations rise and fall, heroes are born and die, the sun rises and sets, and you want me to take seriously the notion that arriving to church wearing the right clothes is going to make any difference at all? What matters is what’s in our hearts. “The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly,” G. K. Chesterton once wrote. Once you stop taking yourself so seriously and let go of the gravity of all that you do, you can learn to fly, too. God, help me lighten up.

~ Melody Beattie, Lighten Up

Notes:

  • Image Source: distantpassion.
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Do you see it? Look more closely.

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man-portrait-black and white

“Do you see it? Do you see what a special, precious oppor­tunity each day of your life is?

Look more closely…

You can feel. You can touch. You can agonize in despair and giggle with glee. You can make jokes. You can cry at movies. You can weep in bed at night. Then get up the next day, refreshed.

You can taste an orange, a lemon, a mango—and describe in detail the difference in each of those tastes. You can smell a forest of pine trees. You can hold your friend’s hand and feel how he trembles because he’s afraid.

You can stumble and fall and feel abandoned, then get up and suddenly, in one moment, understand that lesson you’ve been trying to learn. You can jump out of airplanes, feel the smoothness of your lover’s back, and hold your child to your breast…

…help me to use this opportunity, this life that I have been given to the best of my ability every day.”

~ Melody Beattie

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