Peter McWilliams Quotes

Let your intentions create your methods and not the other way around.

There are many misconceptions about depression-mostly negative. Unfortunately, because depressed people think negatively about depression and its treatment, they don't get help, which allows the depression to worsen, which leads to more negative thinking, which produces a vicious cycle of suffering.

You're asking the government to control individual morality. This is a government that can't buy a toilet seat for under $600.

The only difference between fear and excitement is what we label it. The two are pretty much the same physiological/emotional reaction. With fear, we put a negative spin on it: "Oh no!" With excitement, we give it some positive english: "Oh, boy!"

Learn to ask for what you want. The worst people can do is not give you what you ask for which is precisely where you were before you asked.

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now.

You have to follow the old rule for a while. In fact, once you master the old rule, you are then the master-and masters get to change things.

That's what depression had wrought inside me: one, vast, barren rock garden-without the garden

Do we indulge our heart, or cater to our fear?

Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear ...

You can change anything you want. You just can't change everything you want.

There is nothing to be done. only accept it ... and hurt.

The amount of power freed by telling yourself you no longer choose to put energy into something can be remarkable. Be prepared for extra energy.

Write 10 times: 'Fear is my friend. Fear is the energy to do my best in a new situation.' You don't have to believe it; just write it.

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.

If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger how much happier we would all be.

Avoid People and Situations That Upset You. Those things, people, situations, and experiences you dont like
avoid them. Stay away. Walk away. Do something else. Some might call this cowardly. I call it smart. The world is brimming with things, people, and experiences. We will never experience all of them if we live to be 10,000. So why not associate with the ones that naturally please you?

If you're not actively involved in getting what you want, you don't really want it.

When people don't understand that being uncomfortable is part of the process of achievement, they use the discomfort as a reason not to do. They don't get what they want. We must learn to tolerate discomfort in order to grow.

By pursuing any one of our dreams, we can find fulfillment. We don't need to pursue them all.

There is no answer to any of these questions. It's a matter of time and timing, of seas and seasons, of breathing in and breathing out. It's a matter of balance.

Worrying is the interest paid on a debt you may not owe.

You can't afford the luxury of a negative thought

Learn to forgive fully and completely. If you want health, wealth, and happiness, you can't afford the luxury of lugging around all those unforgiven, unforgotten past events. Let them go.

When you start noticing even a small portion of all there is to be grateful for, you'll find there is no room for lack, hurt, or want. The attitude of gratitude: the great, full feeling.

Heroes became heroes flaws and all. You don't have to be perfect to fulfill your dream.

As with most consensual crimes, this prohibition of hemp is both silly and sinister.

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.

If you were arrested for being kind to yourself..would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle, and enjoy the journey.

It's your life. Live it with people who are alive. It tends to be contagious.

Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.

In order to truly master the comfort zone, you have to learn to love it.

While goals are chosen, a purpose is discovered. Our purpose is something we have been doing all along, and will continue to do, regardless of circumstances, until the day we die.

When thought and action are combined, the results are powerful-among the most powerful forces on earth. The combination of successful communication-the sharing of thoughts-and physical action can, literally, move mountains.

Most of what's around us we take for granted. We ignore it. Appreciation-spending time looking for the good-helps us overcome one of the primary limitations to enjoying the wealth we already have: ignoreance.

We are not responsible for every thought that goes wandering through our mind. We are, however, responsible for the ones we hold there. We're especially responsible for the one's we put there.

You are powerful. Sorry. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. You are. You can continue arm wrestling with yourself, or you can use both arms, your whole heart, and all your strength to wrestle with greatness. The choice is yours.

You need only look at what's in front of you and find something there to appreciate.

If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier.

In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts.

Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from.

I am the representative of all the sick people and what they are doing to me is only the worst case right now, but there will be others. I am living on borrowed time anyway. I owe this part of my life to luck and modern medical science. But I can't imagine what the rest of it will be like if they won't let me use medical marijuana.

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook ... and use it to list all the good in your life.

This is a lifetime of good-byes. In our time, we will say good-bye to cherished people, things, and ideas. Eventually, we say good-bye to life itself with our death. Learn to say a good good-bye. Allow yourself to mourn each loss. As with a physical wound, the body has its own schedule for healing. It will tell you when it has healed.

Anger begins as an inner twinge. We sense something long before it blossoms (explodes?) into an emotional tirade. If we listen to this twinge
and follow its advice
the emotional outburst (or in burst) is not needed.

Depression is an illness that robs one of the meaning of life. Heal the illness. As the depression heals, enthusiasm, well-being, and a sense of life's purpose will return.

Marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about this consistently. [Arresting people for] medical marijuana is the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives of individuals. It's an outrage within an outrage within an outrage.

Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are the Big Three underground 'moneymakers' in consensual crime. There would be, however, significant boosts to the economy if the stigma attached to the other consensual crimes were eliminated through legalization.

The willingness to do creates the ability to do.

The reason we feel hurt and anger when things and people outside us let us down is because we believe those things and people shouldn't. Well, sorry, that's not life here on earth.

When we put things off until some future-probably mythical-Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday's incompletions is a heavy load to carry. Don't carry it.

You can have anything in life you really want - but you can't have everything in life you really want. Decide.

All the good, fine, noble, and creative acts of humanity were conceived as a spark in a single human consciousness.

I'm a confirmed negaholic. I don't just see a glass that's half full and call it half-empty; I see a glass that's completely full and worry that someone's going to tip it over.

Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort.

To affirm is to make firm.

As the world gets dumber and dumber, I feel more and more at home.

No matter what you do, no matter how stupid, dumb or damaging you judge it to be, there is a lesson to be learned from it. No matter what happens to you, no matter how unfair, inequitable or wrong, there's something you can take from the situation and use for your advancement.

Positive thoughts: joy, happiness, fulfillment, achievement, worthiness, have positive results: enthusiasm, calm, well-being, ease, energy, love ...

If we're not enjoying what we've got ... and even if we do get 'more,' we won't enjoy that, either.

The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people.

Choosing what you want to do, and when to do it, is an act of creation.

First, all relationships are with yourself-and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life-the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die-is with yourself.

Ear is the energy to do your best in a new situation. The feeling of fear (anxiety, nervousness, shyness, or any of its other aliases) is really "preparation energy". It's getting you ready to excel, to succeed, to do your best and to learn the most.

I'd have a nervous breakdown except that I've been through this too many times to be nervous.

To visualize is to see what is not there, what is not real - a dream. To visualize is, in fact, to make visual lies. Visual lies, however, have a way of coming true.

The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire.

Although a lot can be learned from adversity, most of the same lessons can be learned through laughter and joy.

If we want the freedom to take part in our bit of differentness, then we must allow others their rights to take part in theirs, as long as they do not harm the person or property of a non-consenting other, of course. IT'S JUST common sense. It's also constitutional and it forms the cornerstone of the American ideal: free individual expression, tolerance and compassion.

For the most part, most people most often choose comfort - the familiar, the time-honored, the well-worn but well-known. After a lifetime of choosing between comfort and risk, we are left with the life we currently have ...

The most recent studies, ... both behavioral and biological, indicate one's sexual orientation is genetic, something one is born with.

Mistakes show us what we need to learn.

Fill your life with people who applaud your positive thoughts, feelings, and actions; who encourage you toward more and better; who know how to praise the good and beautiful.

We are all, right now, living the life we choose.

Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that's true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes.

The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste.

What's more important-your goal, or others' opinions of your goal?

Desire happiness, aspire to gratitude, long for health, crave compassion, seek satisfaction, lust after God, however & whatever you perceive God to be, want to love yourself, others & everything around you more and more each day

Find your horse. Discover the direction the horse is going. Ride the horse in that direction.

We have a problem with drugs? Let's declare war on drugs! We have a problem with crime? Let's declare war on crime! We have a problem with violence? Let's declare war on violence! The deeply ingrained American attitude that we can solve any problem w/enough force creates, feeds, & rewards the epidemic of violence we are currently experiencing.

Do what you love and the necessary resources will follow.

Every time we give our word, it counts. For the most part, most people give it entirely too often. Our word is a precious commodity and should be treated as such ...

Pain (any pain
emotional, physical, mental) has a message.
The information it has about our life can be remarkably
specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: We
would be more alive if we did more of this and Life would be
more lovely if we did less of that. Once we get the pain's
message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away.

When we realize one Dream, sometimes a deeper Dream reveals itself. At other times a parallel Dream appears. The one that scares the hell out of you is probably it.

Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?

Ecause when medical marijuana is fully accepted for what it is, we will see a phenomenon that makes Viagra's phenomenon seem limp.

What would the masters do?
when people arn't successful, they sometimes wonder, why not? they get answers, then they wonder why those answers don't seem to meet their needs. they get the wrong answers, and they get upset about it. perhaps they're really getting the right answers, but answering the wrong questions.
too many people ask nothing but "Why" questions.
they analyze and analyse problems - but no solution. "you can analyse a glass of water and you're left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink".
"Why?" questions can drive us crazy. "What?" questions drive us sane.
What questions lead us to practical solutions.

That the religious right completely took over the word Christian is a given. At one time, phrases such as Christian charity and Christian tolerance were used to denote kindness and compassion. To perform a "Christian" act meant an act of giving, of acceptance, of toleration. Now, Christian is invariably linked to right-wing conservative political thought
Christian nation, Christian morality, Christian values, Christian family.

Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat-usually not elected-decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong.

The Bible, taken as a whole, can be used to praise or condemn practically any human activity, thought, belief, or practice.

People who want to appear clever rely on memory. People who want to get things done make lists.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

Be easier on yourself, on everyone, on everything. Suspend your judgments on the way things should be, must be, and ought to be. Suspending judgments gives you greater ease. Consider ease the antidote for disease.

One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, gets shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways.

To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.

The more severe the pain or illness, the more severe will be the necessary changes. These may involve breaking bad habits, or acquiring some new and better ones.

We can consciously end our life almost anytime we choose. This ability is an endowment, like laughing and blushing, given to no other animal ... in any given moment, by not exercising the option of suicide, we are choosing to live.

Negative thinking is always expensive
dragging us down mentally, emotionally, and physically
hence I refer to any indulgence in it as a luxury.

Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it's a small price to pay for living a dream.