Jennifer James Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

People who think in absolutes usually don't listen to anyone but themselves. They resist new ideas and try to preserve the status quo....

Jennifer James
Pain is a great teacher, but most of us would rather learn some other way.

Jennifer James
Anger is a response that can lead to harm if we don't evaluate what we are upset about. Ask yourself what you are afraid of, as anger is almost always fear in disguise. If we think something or someone threatens us, we feel fear-fear that we are inadequate, that our lives are out of control, that things won't go our way. Then we fight. Find out what you're upset about. We rarely are upset for the reason we think.

Jennifer James
The average person's short-term memory can hold only five to seven bits of data at any one moment. If you put more items in, others fall out. The older you are, the more you have crammed into those memory circuits. Twenty-five-year-olds can remember things because they still have empty space. Some of us take our children to the supermarket in the hope they will remember why we are there.

Jennifer James
The best revenge is, of course, a good life. Enjoy yourself, be happy, be successful. It'll drive them crazy-or you can imagine it does. You'll feel so good you won't care.

Jennifer James
People are beginning to realize that self-knowledge is not an end in itself. It's for the purpose of better relationships, so that we can give to our community. You can give from overflow. It's very hard to give from emptiness.... People who avoid self-knowledge cause a great deal of pain to themselves as well as to their families and friends.

Jennifer James
There are, of course, two kinds of suffering, that which has a reward and that which doesn't.

Jennifer James
Studies of people who report high well-being in their fifties and sixties indicate that they have lived lives that involved personal risks. They are not people whose lives have been calm and predictable. A life under tight control sometimes produces quiet desperation. High well-being is a life that has depth and quality. Risks, losses, problems, and tragedy add pain to a life. That pain becomes a teacher. We learn; the pain gives us no choice.

Jennifer James
There is no love that rewards with more consistency and provides lifelong passion as the love one has for the world.

Jennifer James
Passion doesn't come from business or books or even a connection with another person. It is a connection to your own life force, the world around you and the spirit that connects us all. You are the source. Books, work, music, people, sunsets all provide sparks, but only you can light the fire.

Jennifer James
Insight is 'mental vision,' one of the ways in which the mind escapes the limits of the obvious or the familiar.

Jennifer James
The impression is that love is something that happens to you like magic. That love is something others do for you, but that you cannot do for yourself. Love is not something you wait for. Love doesn't just happen. Love is something you do. When you want love, give love. Moment to moment, you make the choice whether to give love and be loved.

Jennifer James
Then you will be the one others envy, and you can remember the pain and reach out to them.

Jennifer James
Nostalgia is also a trait of the organizations that I call lodges - everything from corporate cultures to religious sects. Their bonding power often exceeds loyalty to family or country because they create intimacy through shared ideals and beliefs, ceremonies, stories, and legends, and depend on it for their survival. The message is clear: Don't question what we're doing. Just appreciate how long we've been doing it.

Jennifer James
If you had to choose only two qualities to get you through times of change, the first should be a sense of self-worth and the second a sense of humor.

Jennifer James
Success is every minute you live. It's the process of living. It's stopping for the moments of beauty, of pleasure; the moments of peace. Success is not a destination that you ever reach. Success is the quality of the journey.

Jennifer James
Enlightenment is being able to go to your own home and feel comfortable.

Jennifer James
It's a lot easier to get your way if you have more than one way.

Jennifer James
Learning how to respond to and master the process of change — and even to excel at it — is a critical leadership skill for the twenty-first century. Constant, rapid change will be a fact of life for all of us.

Jennifer James
Success is the quality of your journey, not a destination.

Jennifer James
People who think they know usually stopped thinking long ago.

Jennifer James
You can speed up your life if you want to — that's easy. Winding down is what's hard.

Jennifer James
The accumulation of small, optimistic acts produces quality in our culture and in your life. Our culture resonates in tense times to individual acts of grace.

Jennifer James