I’m a sucker for a good quote. There’s something about making connections between someone else’s words and my own life that makes me pause and think. Whether that pause is to soak in inspiration, wisdom, humor, motivation, an aha moment, or a sense of belonging, I jot down those quotes that speak to me in a running list I’ve had for years.
I recently finished reading Cheryl Strayed’s book, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” which is a collection of her “Dear Sugar” advice columns. As soon as I closed the book after the last page, I knew I needed to read it again. This woman is filled with wisdom about everything from love and relationships to family and loss, offering perspective that could benefit anyone. A beautiful writer with a true ability to dish out advice in a blunt yet kind way, Cheryl Strayed has quickly become one of the most frequently quoted people in my personal collection of favorites.
In need of some perspective? Here are 15 inspiring Cheryl Strayed quotes about life and living:
1. “It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.”
2. “Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.”
3. “Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do.”
4. “Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”
5. “I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
6. “This is how you get unstuck. You reach.”
7. “Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit?”
8. “Forgiveness doesn’t sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
9. “You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.”
10. “There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.”
11. “At a certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.”
12. “It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.”
13. “There are stories you’ll learn if you’re strong enough to travel there. One of them might cure you.”
14. “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.”
15. “Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.”
Going to the Library today to find her book. You are always full of good tips and inspiration. bp
I hope you like it! I loved her book "Wild" too. 🙂
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you penning this article and the
rest of the site is extremely good.