If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we’re healing.
BERNIE SIEGELDisease is surely one of the ways in which we are tried by life and offered the chance to be heroic. Though few of us will win Olympic gold medals or slay dragons, disease can be the spark or gift that allows many of us to live out our personal myths and become heroes.
More Bernie Siegel Quotes
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I love how Mother Theresa said she wouldn’t attend an anti-war rally but if there was a peace rally to call her. So I realized it’s not about waging a war against everybody’s disease and diagnosis but rather about helping them live.
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Do things to make your day precious.
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I had patients who didn’t die because they had too many pets to try to find homes for. It’s why women live longer than men with the same health problems.
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My view of addiction, whether it’s drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn’t a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you’re not loved.
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One’s attitude towards oneself is the single most important factor in healing and staying well.
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Thoughts are chemical. They can either kill us or cure us.
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If you are used to fending entirely for yourself, then when a catastrophe occurs you will expend a lot of energy looking for help at a time when you need your energy looking for help at a time when you need your energy for creative work.
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What a shame to be so afraid of failure that you stop living. My wife has a great one-liner about failure: “Never consider yourself a failure-you can always serve as a bad example.” She is right. Failure can be a better teacher than success.
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The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.
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Animal intuitives can diagnose an animal’s physical health problems by listening to the animals.
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There’s very little that shocks me because I consider life a miracle so I guess what shocks me is that life exists. How the hell did we get here? What shocks me is that bacteria alter their genes and resist antibiotics and viruses resist vaccines.
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I am not talking about selfishness or self-interest. When I ask, What will make you happy?, I mean, What way of loving others feels right for you? Choose a way of loving that makes you happy, and your efforts will be play rather than work.
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As one woman told me, “When I decided to come in to work happy, everybody around me became happy.” This woman had decided to quit a job she hated, and on the last day of her two weeks’ notice, she woke up happy.
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Anything that offers hope has the potential to heal.
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Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.
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