30 Quotes to Center Your Week
The weekend is a wonderful, far-too-short event, and it’s easy to be one of those people dragging their feet back to the workplace and the rest of the week. It doesn’t need to be this way! Sometimes, the right words can mean all the difference between a great week and a week full of blah’s. Take inspiration from these incredible words and meditate on them and how they can apply to your life and situations directly. Then, see the difference how a centered, inspired heart can make in your week! Words of Positivity for Your Week:
- Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. -Robert Louis Stevenson
- We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone. -Ronald Reagan
- How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. -Anne Frank
- Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. -Booker T. Washington
- I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. -Martha Washington
- Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. -Denis Waitley
- Positive feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all; and, from belonging to a family that accepts you without question. -Willard Scott
- It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control. -Oprah Winfrey
- Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices – today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it. -Kevyn Aucoin
- Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. -Marcel Proust
- Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. -Swami Vivekananda
- Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill
- Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have. -Margaret Mead
- Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia
- I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy. -Og Mandino
- This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification. -Herman Hesse
- Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time. -Lyndon B. Johnson
- The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event. -Brian Tracy
- I do believe we’re all connected. I do believe in positive energy. I do believe in the power of prayer. I do believe in putting good out into the world. And I believe in taking care of each other. -Harvey Fierstein
- Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak. -Thomas Carlyle
- Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. –Buddha
- Change your thoughts and you change your world. -Norman Vincent Peale
- Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. -Rabindranath Tagore
- Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. -Thomas Merton
- The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering. -Ben Okri
- Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. -Khalil Gibran
- The only journey is the one within. -Rainer Maria Rilke
- A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself. -James Allen
- As knowledge increases, wonder deepens. -Charles Morgan
About the Author
The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell Now More Relevant Than Ever
Making sense of our consciousness can be difficult, and in our materialist, western world we try endlessly to objectify that experience. But over the course of the past century, there have been a number of intermediaries reminding us to reconnect with elements of the spiritual journey.
Names like Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Deepak Chopra have sparked a renaissance of interest in the nature of consciousness, meditation, and mindfulness. They remind us of stories and lessons learned over the course of our history, and within these, we find recurring themes of transcendent truth.
But there is one liaison between the old world and the new, who bridged these philosophies and connected the ancient esotericism of the east to the pragmatism of the scientific west, through archetypes and allegory.
Joseph Campbell defined this thirst for truth over a lifetime by examining artists, psychologists, writers, and philosophers. He referred to the lessons in their mythos as the Masks of God, and the protagonists within those stories as the Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Campbell consumed as much of their wisdom as possible, voraciously reading nine hours a day for years at a time. He absorbed the work of great western minds like Carl Jung, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Sinclair Lewis. Through these lessons, he connected the dots of contemporary consciousness with the timeless teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, Greek mythology, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
In those years of study, he found lessons that applied to man and society at large – overarching narratives that struck a universal chord, particularly the sense that at some point in our lives, we find there is a call unanswered, a void in the spirit that must be fulfilled.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
– Joseph Campbell
The Hero’s Journey
Campbell said you can never be at peace with yourself if you do not answer that call. The call to adventure that forces the hero to remove himself from the ordinary world and face whatever it is that threatens his safety, comfort, and way of life.
At first, the call is refused when fears and second thoughts arise, or the comforts of the home seem too difficult to abandon. But eventually, the hero finds a mentor who pushes them and provides the tools needed to confront their tribulation.
When one considers the “Hero’s Journey,” Luke Skywalker, Arjuna, or even Hamlet could fit the role, but these stereotypes are meant to convey a general truth about finding the fulfillment we all seek. The personal ordeals that confront us can be difficult to face, causing us to relinquish a part of ourselves and take solace in a place that feels safe, while we remain oblivious to what could be learned by challenging those fears.
For some, it may be a vice; an addiction that keeps us trapped in some behavior or lifestyle. Campbell looked to the Tibetan Book of the Dead to confront this type of ordeal, learning that the scripture taught one to strive for the opposing virtue of whatever your vice may be; to overcome what he called the “inmost cave.” By cultivating the antithesis of your vice, you will find the self-actualization that defines your being.
This sentiment has been echoed many times over the ages, and Campbell summed it up when he said, “Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.”
