#choices

If you choose to not deal with an issue, then you give up your right of control over the issue and it will select the path of least resistance. ↗

— Susan Del Gatto

#problem-solving #procrastination #stress-management-maintenance #path

The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton's over to shoot guns in the field. 'Why you crying, girl?' Constantine asked me in the kitchen. I told her what the boy had called me, tears streaming down my face. 'Well? Is you?' I blinked, paused my crying. 'Is I what?' 'Now you look a here, Egenia'-because constantien was the only one who'd occasionally follow Mama's rule. 'Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?' 'I don't know. I don't think so,' I sobbed. Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, somthing we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me. 'Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.' Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. 'You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?' She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother's white child. All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe. ↗

— Kathryn Stockett

#life

Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#life #mistakes #life

The way you live your day is a sentence in the story of your life. Each day you make the choice whether the sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#day #inspirational #life #live #motivational

Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with. ↗

— Brodi Ashton

#heroes #paths #grace

When your entire brain is active, that means you are taking everything in through all sense perception. Your entire memory bank and your instincts are in play, so you make much quicker and more intelligent choices. ↗

— Martha Beck

#bank #brain #choices #entire #everything

Life is a matter of really tough choices. ↗

— Joe Biden

#life #life is a #matter #really #tough

No matter what your choices are, you truly have no control about what people think of you. ↗

— Neve Campbell

#choices #control #matter #people #think

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them ↗

— Denis Waitley

#life #change

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#choices-and-consequences #communication