Quotes by Martha Beck

About Martha Beck:

Martha Nibley Beck is an American sociologist, life coach, best-selling author, and speaker who specializes in helping individuals and groups achieve personal and professional goals. She holds a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and master's and Ph.D. degrees in sociology, both from Harvard University. Beck is the daughter of deceased LDS Church scholar and apologist, Hugh Nibley. She received national attention after publication in 2005 of her best-seller, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith in which she accuses her father of sexual abuse. In addition to authoring several books, Beck is a columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Focusing on one mildly disturbing, semi-controllable issue allows the mind to stuff much greater terrors in relatively tidy packages.

Martha Beck

The most common reason we stumble into the delusion of powerlessness is that we're afraid of what other people would do or say or feel if we were to act as we wanted.

Martha Beck

What happens when we're willing to feel bad is that, sure enough, we often feel bad - but without the stress of futile avoidance. Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests, and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes parts of us away an...

Martha Beck

If you're religious, it gives you a perspective.

Martha Beck

You get social pressure from your parents, who teach you to pay attention to certain things and not to others. You get it in school.

Martha Beck

Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that's basically genetic.

Martha Beck

Not everyone is equally good-looking.

Martha Beck

...Refusing to feel desire is the only thing more painful than failing to get what you want, and that learning not to yearn, far from preventing disappointment, ultimately guarantees it.

Martha Beck

As soon as you think you know someone else's truth better than they do, you are in deep water.

Martha Beck

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

Martha Beck

Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind cha...

Martha Beck

In one century, we've added 28 years to our average life span - a change so rapid that our brains couldn't possibly have evolved to accommodate it.

Martha Beck

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

Martha Beck

For the vast majority of world history, human life - both culture and biology - was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy.

Martha Beck

You have the freedom to live and let live, to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest, most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you.

Martha Beck

It takes about four days of virtuous living to create a little weight loss. That also happens to be the time required to get used to eating less. In other words, if you can get past day three of a fitness regimen, things improve.

Martha Beck

Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well. Success is built on failure.

Martha Beck

Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories, and after an evening of smacking one another, we'd ...

Martha Beck

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld.

Martha Beck

Something in the human psyche confuses beauty with the right to be loved. The briefest glance at human folly reveals that good looks and worthiness operate independently. Yet countless socializing forces, from Aunt Clara to the latest perfume ad, rei...

Martha Beck

Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

Martha Beck

Author Bio

  • NameMartha Beck
  • DescriptionAmerican sociologist
  • BornNovember 29, 1962
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionSociologist