Barbara Sher Quotes

In your fantasies you imagine that you'd love to have all the clutter gone so you could relax, but in fact, nobody really wants to relax. Not for very long, anyway. Everybody needs something to do.

Bitterness isn't as authentic as it looks. Believe it or not, one of the reasons we choose to feel bitter is because it's easier than feeling pain. It makes us feel tough. Being bitter gives the illusion that you're fighting, that you're not taking defeat lying down. But bitterness is a log jam. It won't let you get moving.

Let's end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did. You might want to give them away someday, perhaps to someone who needs an idea. Or your great-great-grandchildren might love knowing what a fascinating mind you had. Or your biographer might be very happy after you're gone.

Originality is genius. If you respect and care for it, it will take you on the ride of your life.

If you truly feared failure, you'd be very successful.

Remember that to yourself, you are and always will be the strongest element in your environment. That's why any job, right or wrong, will teach you important lessons about yourself. The truth is that personal development is the real reason you should be working in the first place.

The first step is to find out what you love - and don't be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible.

Your creativity is waiting for you like a dancing partner.

When you play it too safe, you're taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we're given.

Each destination you reach only opens out into wider horizons, new and undiscovered countries for you to explore.

Down deep we really know our worth, but we don't have easy access to that knowledge. We need to hear praise coming from outside ourselves or we won't remember that we deserve it.

Time is clay; make something.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

You don't have to get it right the first time.

There is always a realistic way to fulfill any dream. There has never been a dream that you can't have - at least, not the heart of it, not the part you love the most.

Real Dreams don't require you to abandon your family, quit your job, and move to Tahiti with your paintbrush. They just require that you search your soul for that deep dream you put aside-and go for it. And watch your life light up.

We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.

You can waste a perfectly good life trying to meet the standards of someone who thinks you're not good enough because they can't understand who you are.

Human beings are not comparable. You can't compare us any more than you can compare roses and oranges, or mountains and the sea. You might prefer living by the sea to living in the mountains. You certainly like some people better than you like others. Preferences are perfectly valid ... they're just your style asserting itself again. But you'd feel pretty silly saying 'The sea is better than the mountains.' It's every bit as silly to go around saying 'I'm better than Mary, but Joe is better than me.'

Action helps you think and raises your self-esteem. Good luck happens when you're in action. Ask yourself, "Does this go toward or away from what I want?" There's an animal in us, and it has great instincts. Scan for a desire and follow it. Set a goal, any goal, and start doing everything you can think of to achieve it.

Whatever your dreams are, start taking them very, very seriously.

What you are is a human being, sensitive and alive, with genius inside of you. Not only that, but you are one of a kind. There has never been anyone like you before. You see the world in a unique way because you have unique gifts. That's the way nature made you. And it will feel like nothing less than fulfilling your destiny to follow those gifts to a rich and exciting life, full of purpose and meaning and enjoyment.

Isolation is a dream killer.

The problem is that most of us have limited our imagination to what we have been told is possible - and usually we've been told by people without much experience.

When you start using senses you've neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes.

Since then I've come to believe you don't always have to use things you love, and it's not always so practical to be so practical. Now that I've grown up, I realize that all that delicious dilettantism pays its way as much as any degree in medicine or engineering, by making me remember every day - whenever I pick up a book or watch the Science Channel or try to read a map of Asia for no particular reason - that life is amazing and there is no end to the wonder of it.

What you're really supposed to be doing is whatever makes your heart sing.

The environment that creates winners is almost always made up of winners.

Change is not only likely, it's inevitable.

But who you are is not a concept in the sky, and it's not a record of you accomplishments either. The most original and creative side of you can re-emerge only when you get time of your own, free time, wide-open time, uncommitted time, time in which to go after dreams or do absolutely nothing if you choose. Without it you can't have a self.

Start small.
Start now.
Start everything.
And don't bother to finish any of it.

If you don't know how you feel, you won't know what you want.

Being judgmental about your own behavior is actually another cop-out because it makes you feel as though you're doing something virtuous.

You can wonder forever how many teeth a horse has - or you can find a horse, open its mouth, and count its teeth.

We weigh ourselves down with so many obstacles we can't even buy a goldfish bowl.

Happy people have two things in common. They know exactly what they want and they feel they're moving toward getting it.

Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.

And our dreams are who we are.

Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.

Doing your own thing is a generous act. Being gifted creates obligations, which means you owe the world your best effort at the work you love. You too are a natural resource.

I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. All you have to do is take care of your health and be lucky enough to live for a while. But you can't have it all at once and you can't have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day.

Whenever you do what you really love, your heart lifts, your mind opens, and everything changes. You wake up. That's what true adventure really is.

Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do - can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.

About things you merely like? Would you rather learn how to plant a garden, work with friends to paint a house, or just have a great day with

Every time you worry that you could get trapped in some kind of work you don't care about, you're dealing with the problem of meaningfulness. I guarantee that in the back of your mind is the thought that somehow you have to make a contribution to something, be acknowledged, do something that matters
or you're just fooling around.

You just have to forget whatever you were taught about "meaningful work" and start noticing whatever has meaning to you.

A goal is the basic unit of life design.

Resentment is weak and lowers your self-esteem.

In the rush of daily living it's easy to forget all the remarkable people, real or fictional, who have been a part of your life. But if you just imagine they are near for a moment, you will realize that anyone who ever touched your heart is always with you, patiently waiting to emanate warmth and support whenever you remember to think of them.

It's only too late if you don't start now.

DO IT RIGHT, DO IT WRONG, BUT DO IT. Squeeze your eyes shut and jump. Because a wonderful thing happens then. Your focus shifts from yourself, your nervousness, and your imagined inadequacies to the task at hand.

Life isn't supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isn't supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes it'comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. When your day's not perfect, it's not a failure or a terrible loss. It's just another day.

In the days before automobiles, people in horse-drawn wagons used to sleep if they were tired. They didn't worry about getting lost, because the horse knew the way home. Your heart knows the way to your gifts. You can trust it to take you to them.

Resistance is clear evidence of high self-esteem. It shows that on the deepest level, you intend to survive. And trust me, successful people know all about resistance, they've just developed ways to get around it (like hiring trainers and managers and secretaries and having deadlines to keep them moving).

Find what you love, because greatness is based on great gifts. If you love something, you can count on the fact that you are genetically gifted at it.

Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish.

A direct statement about yourself is considered objective only if it is negative. If it's positive, it is considered subjective. And 'objective' means it is accurate, and 'subjective' means it is conceited self-delusion.

Irreverence is a declaration of independence.