Transformative Experiences Quotes

But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning — for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.

The worst loss you've ever experienced is the greatest gift you can have.

I have written a new book called 'The Golden Motorcycle Gang.' The premise of the book is taken from actual events in my life. My life has been dedicated to inspiring and motivating others to live their highest vision of their ideal life and offering transformational trainings that help people succeed in all aspects of their lives.

Fiery trials make golden Christians.

Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.

An existence transfigured by failure.

Sometimes the most difficult, horrific things can be the greatest spiritual teachers.

We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it's purposeful. Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. We could have been ourselves without our delights, but not without the misfortunes that drive our search for meaning. 'Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities,' St. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, 'for when I am weak, then I am strong.'

NPR changed my life; I don't even front.

I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and that's because they dissolve world views. And if you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from under you, if you think that's a thrill, you'll probably love psychedelics.

I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then

My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

My enemy is my greatest teacher.

Like the lotus flower that is born out of mud, we must honor the darkest parts of ourselves and the most painful of our life’s experiences, because they are what allow us to birth our most beautiful self.

The wisdom that comes from having experienced heartbreak cannot be bequeathed; it can only be gained through experience. And having truly felt it, we are far more likely to have compassion for others. Anything that takes us close to true compassion takes us closer to what will one day be an experience of even greater joy.

Healing opportunities can be disguised as people who really piss you off. Pay attention because they could be your greatest teachers.

Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.

I think what saved me, as a writer, is that there are really two breaking points in my life. One was when I was 19 and my mother died, and one was when I was 31 and my first child was born. And that sort of gave me a kind of rebirth that I think has been invaluable to me as a novelist, in terms of seeing the world anew.

I've grown so much as a person through playing Gabrielle, much less living in New Zealand and being with all of these people that I can't imagine my life being any different.

I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.

It's my mission to share this with the world and to let them know that there is life on the other side of those dark times that seem so hopeless and helpless. I want to show the world that there is life -- surprising, wonderful and unexpected life after diagnosis.

The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to the same failure something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom-as something they thought was almost a necessity. It's as if at that moment the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.

The best experiences and the biggest ideas don't fit into a category. They change it.

There's no one defining moment that kills you or makes you.