89 Quotes by David Richo

Though most of us want to move on from our past, we tend to go through our lives simply casting new people into the roles of key people, such as our parents or any significant person with whom there is still unfinished business.

Once we make our relationship choices in an adult way, a prospective partner who is unavailable, nonreciprocal, or not open to processing feelings and issues, becomes, by those very facts, unappealing. Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.

Real love includes romantic fascination but then moves on through conflict to commitment. It is not always pleasurable, but it is reliably enduring. Infatuation craves exhilaration as well as safety and security; love provides them through sustained trustworthiness.

Spirituality is the intersection of three paths: letting go of ego, an unconditional yes to the conditions of human existence, and an immeasurable compassion.

True optimism is not the prospect of control over pain or elimination of it but survival through it.

The ability to hear someone is really about trust, not simply about communication. A trust issue always lurks beneath a communication difficulty.

We do not let go of control on our own. Usually, something has to happen that shows us incontrovertibly that we are not in control. From this condition of bankrupt ego, we finally let go. Great losses are thus necessary losses like the discarded sandbags that lighten a balloon so it can ascend higher.

Mindful grief means mourning and letting go of the past without expectation, fear, censure, blame, shame, control and so forth. Without such mindful grief, neither past nor person can be laid to rest.

We cannot attune if we assume certain feelings are right and others wrong. To attune to someone, we need neutrality toward all feelings, moods, and inner states and the fearless openness of mindfulness.