The Wisdom of Sundays

Have you heard about the new book, The Wisdom of Sundays, by Oprah, which shares excerpts and quotes from her Super Soul Sunday interviews over the years?  I received this book a few weeks ago, and it is really good.  Below I am sharing some of my favorite quotes from this book.

“We have this immense interior life inside of us.  We can call it the life of the soul.  Poets and mystics and people have been trying to figure out what two call this for a long time.  But there is an inner silence in it.  And there is an incredible mystery floating in it.  This is where the divine lives in us.”  — Sue Monk Kidd

“‘Am I living the life that I can admire?  Am I going to leave this earth a place where it’s a little more than just what it was?’  Those are my values.  And never giving up.  And finding a way through obstacles.  And finding grit and will.  Those are what I value.”  — Diana Nyad

“The best way to be in the present moment is to be aware that you’re not in the moment.  As soon as you’re aware that you’re not in the moment, you’re in the moment.”  — Deepak Chopra

“All you have to do is breathe mindfully and recognize the feeling.  You recognize the situation and help yourself not be overwhelmed by the negative feeling like fear and anxiety.”  — Thich Nhat Hanh

“You will forgive because you love yourself so much that you don’t want to keep hurting yourself for whatever happened.  Whatever happened is done and cannot be changed.  And we have to accept that and keep going with our life.”  — Don Miguel Ruiz

“In the depth of loss, I found out who I really was.  I began to trust who I was.  I began to find a genuine me that could withstand anything.  And if we fight those times and fight the bud opening, we live half a life.  But when we open into our brokenness. that’s when we blossom.”  — Elizabeth Lesser

“Sometimes when we wake up to spirituality, and you’ve seen it everywhere, the you-know-what hits the fan.  And everything falls apart.  Those are the moments when we get to work. These are not the moments when we drink.  Those are not the moments when we go back to the addiction.  Those are the moments that we get to work.  Because those moments are showing up to help you show up.  Pay attention to the assignments that are coming to you, and show up for them!  Everything comes up so it can be healed.”  — Gabrielle Bernstein

“Acceptance.  Accept the fact of the hour.  The fact of the mile.  The fact of the summer.  The facts of my life.  And over and over again, I found that if I could do that, everything else sort of gave way.  And it led me into the next step, the next thing that was going to reveal itself.  And I think that is such a powerful and important thing.”  — Cheryl Strayed

“Begin to notice what you have in your life that you are grateful for and what you look at life through the lens of gratitude, you don’t see as many obstacles and hindrances.  You see potential, you see possibilities.  Then you become an open vehicle for more inspiration, more wisdom, more guidance, coming from the spiritual part of your being.”  — Michael Bernard Beckwith

“Many of us think that in order to find our passion, we have to look outside of ourselves.  But I’ve learned that the secret, ironically, to finding your passion is to start by bringing passion to everything you do.  And I do mean everything.  So no matter what ask is in front of you, bring as much enthusiasm and energy to it as you possibly can.”  — Marie Forleo

“Everybody has a calling.  Your real job in life is to figure out why you are here and get about the business of doing it.”  — Oprah

“The soul is your mother ship.  So when you’re sailing in the same direction that it wants to go, your life fills with meaning and purpose.  And when you sail in another direction, it empties of meaning and purpose.”  — Gary Zukav

“The will is so undefinable and can push you so far beyond.  I’ve has sports scientists, the best of them, write me and say, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, this is humanity impossible.’  And I write back to them, ‘You have no idea then.  You’re just doing your little studies on what the heart can do, and what the lungs can do.  I’m talking to you about what the spirit can do, and that’s not measurable.’  The spirit is larger than the body.  Find a way.”  — Diana Nyad

“I believe we all have unlimited possibilities to become pretty much anything we want because I believe you’re not given a dream unless you have the capacity to fulfill it.”  — Jack Canfield

“We are busier than any other generation we have seen in the last three to four hundred years.  We are so busy.  And we think because we’re busy, we’re effective.  But I want you to challenge your schedule for a minute and ask yourself, are you really being effective, or is your life cluttered with all kinds of stuff that demands you, and drains you, and taxes you, and stops you from being are you substituting busyness and all the chaos that goes along with busyness for being effective?”  — Bishop T.D. Jakes

“Intelligence counts for only 25 percent of our job success; 75 percent of our successes in life — and not just about jobs but within the working world — 75 percent of what causes our kids to be successful, causes us to be successful, is not about our intelligence and technical skills.  It’s how we process the world.  It’s our optimism.  Like the belief that our behavior really matters.”  — Shawn Achor

“When I was a kid, my father used to say to me all the time, ‘The only limit to your success is your own imagination.’  And I took that as not just being financial success or work success.  I took that as being every kind of success — love and family and emotional and everything.  The only limit to your success is your own imagination.  Whatever your can imagine is possible.”  — Shondra Rhimes

“Nobody but nobody makes it out here alone.  What really matters now is love.  I mean, that condition in the human spirit that is so profound it allows us to rise.  Strength, love, courage, love, kindness, love, that is really what matters.  There has always been evil and there will always be evil.  But there has always been good, and there is good now.”  — Dr. Maya Angelou

“The secret to long marriage is she was the right person.  And we decided fairly early in our life to give each other plenty of space.  Rosalynn has her own ideas, her own ambitions, her own goals in life, which, in some ways, are different from mine.  I let her do her thing.  She lets me do my thing.  And we try to resolve our inevitable and fairly frequent differences before we go to bed at night.”  — President Jimmy Carter

“If you’re going to love somebody, you have to learn to be patient with their strengths and with their weaknesses.  Love is when you choose to be at your best when the other person is not at their best.”  — Pastor Wintley Phipps

“Whatever you do in life . . . remember . . . think higher, and feel deeper.  Life is not a fist.  Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it in friendship.  Ultimately, the answers are so simple.  Not simplistic, but so simple.”  — Elie Wiesel