Brianna Wiest Quotes

“A friend once told me that the secret to finding love was not to actually look for it, but to heal the things that were preventing you from seeing and receiving it. I think the biggest one of all is, “What will having this love fix?”

What will having this person next to me make me feel better about? What do I need them to tell me? What do I need them to prove? Who do I need them to look great in front of? What purpose do they serve for my ego?”

“Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.”

“An untamed mind is a minefield.”

“At the end of the day, all we really want are a few close people who know us (and love us) no matter what.”

“Being in love with somebody that you only used to know is like falling in love with a book (which sounds like a dumb example but people really do fall in love with them).

The point is: You can love it all you want, but it’s a story that runs parallel to yours. At the end of the day it’s static. It’s memory. It’s a sentence and you can’t change it. It ends how it ends. It says what it says.”

“Everything is hard in some way. It’s hard to be in the wrong relationship. It’s hard to be in the right one. It’s hard to be broke and miserable, it’s hard to achieve your dreams. It’s hard to be stuck in the middle, not really feeling anything at all.

Everything is hard, but you choose your hard. You choose what’s worth it. You don’t choose whether or not you’ll suffer, but you do choose what you want to suffer for.”

“Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them. More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways.”

“If we believe that we’re unworthy of love, we need the idea of a loving, doting partner who affirms how perfect we are to correct it. Without understanding that we want that love to fix something in us, we just think we desperately want love because we’re romantic, or because happy lives do not exist without it.

But the people who are conscious of why they desire something are able to choose wants that are not based in solving a problem, but in something more genuine and healthy.”

“Make a list of all the imperfect people you’ve known in your life who have had love. Who have had romantic partners and best friends and jobs you could only ever dream of.

Make a list of all the people who are conventionally unattractive and spiritually adrift and imperfect and all the things each one of them had despite being that way. Make it your own personal proof that you do not need to be perfect to be good enough.”

“Nobody cries at a funeral because the world will be missing out on another pretty face. They cry because the world is missing another heart, another soul, another person.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to focus on what will actually matter: creating something that lasts far beyond your body.”

“Stop thinking that being sad or broken makes you unlovable or 'bad'. Your honest moments don’t destroy relationships, they bond (as long as you’re being genuine).”

“The obsessive desire for a passionate relationship is usually a reflection of a lack of love for oneself. The manic need to pursue a passionate career is rooted in an intense unhappiness with present reality.

They are a series of soothing thoughts and deflection methods and escape routes: The monster everyone’s running from, of course, is themselves.”

“The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself.”

“The universe whispers until it screams, and happy people listen while the call is still quiet.”

“The worst happened, and then it passed. You lost the person you thought you couldn’t live without and then you kept living. You lost your job then found another one.

You began to realize that 'safety' isn’t in certainty — but in faith that you can simply keep going.”

“There are two mindsets people tend to have: explorer or settler.

Our society has a 'settler' mindset, our end goals are 'finalizing' (home, marriage, career, etc.) in a world that was made for evolution, in selves that do nothing but grow and expand and change.

People with 'explorer' mindsets are able to actually enjoy what they have and experience it fully because they are inherently unattached.”

“There is no such thing as letting go; there’s just accepting what’s already gone. There’s losing ourselves in the labyrinth of the illusion of control and finding joy in the chaos, even when it’s uncomfortable.

It’s not forever. It only remains as long as we hold on. As long as we fight. As long as we control. As long as we don’t accept what’s already gone.”

“Whatever you feel you are not receiving is a direct reflection of what you are not giving. Whatever you are angered by is what you aren’t willing to see in yourself.

So where you feel you are lacking, you must give. Where there is tension, you must unpack. If you want more recognition, recognize others. If you want love, be more loving. Give exactly what you want to get.”

“When you accuse someone of being wrong, you close them off to considering another perspective by heightening their defenses.”

“When you regulate your daily actions, you deactivate your 'fight or flight' instincts because you’re no longer confronting the unknown.”

“When you start considering things not as obligations but as opportunities, you start taking advantage of them rather than trying to avoid them.”

“Work on closing the gap between who the world thinks you are and who you know you are. Your mental health will change significantly.”

“You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you do.”

“You’re one of those people who tries to find comfort in overanalyzing old things to make more sense of them, when in reality, complexity is a product of insecurity, and insecurity a product of being unable to accept the simple reality of the situation.”

“Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter through which you experience your life.”

“Your impermanence is a thing you should meditate on every day: There is nothing more sobering, nor scary, nor a faster-way-to-cut-the-negative-bullsh*t than to remember that you do not have forever.

What defines your life, when it’s all said and done, is how much you influence other people’s lives, oftentimes just through your daily interactions and the courage with which you live your own.

That’s what people remember. That’s what you will be known for when you’re no longer around to define yourself.”