James R. Doty Quotes

“Compassion and kindness it turned out, was good for your health.”

“Sometimes it’s not that you’re not important, it’s just you’re not seen because the pain of those around you makes you invisible.”

“The brain, as busy as it can be, is actually very lazy... It sees what it expects to see.”

“Who we are today doesn't have to be who we are tomorrow...”

“Another mystery of the brain is that it will always choose what is familiar over what is unfamiliar. By visualizing my own future success, I was making this success familiar to my brain. Intention is a funny thing, and whatever the brain puts its intention on is what it sees.”

“Each of us chooses what is acceptable in our lives. As kids, we don't get a lot of choice. We are born into families and situations, and it's all really out of our control. But as we get older, we choose.

Consciously or unconsciously, we decide how we are going to allow ourselves to be treated. What will you accept? What won't you accept? You're going to have to choose, and you're going to have to stand up for yourself. No one else can do it for you.”

“Equanimity is to have an evenness of temperament even during difficult times.”

“Everyone has a story, and I have learned that, at the core of it, most of our stories are more similar than not.”

“Everything didn't have to be broken just because something was broken. I didn't have to be broken.”

“I also now know another secret of the brain, which is that it will always choose what is familiar to it and prefer it to what is unfamiliar.

I made my success as a doctor familiar to my mind by constantly imagining it. Intention is a strange matter, because the brain clearly sees what it intends, for example...

Have you ever thought about buying a car of a certain type and then started seeing it wherever you looked? Did your intention make that car appear everywhere or was it your brain's focused attention that allowed you to see what was always in front of you?

The simple idea behind this new era is: You only get what you expect. It is a positive idea and a powerful example of neuroprogramming and brain reprogramming.

Attention is also very important because it can transform our brains and create more gray matter in the areas of our brains for learning, intellectual performance, imagination, and ambition.

Ruth taught me how to pay attention to what I want from life. Did I ever expect to live in poverty? Did I expect my life to be meaningless because I was receiving government aid and growing up in a family destroyed by addiction?

All along before Ruth, had I expected that I would be a failure because of where I lived or who my parents were?”

“I am worthy. I am loved. I am cared for. I care for others. I choose only good for myself. I choose only good for others. I love myself. I love others. I open my heart. My heart is open.”

“I believe we learn what we are meant to learn, and some of us are simply meant to learn things the hard way.

There's no way I could have known then what I know now, because if I had, I would have truly opened my heart first. The head is powerful, but it can only get us what we really want if we open our heart first.”

“I cared because I had felt pain and humiliation a million times already and it hurt.”

“I could try to create a new reality for myself, but I could not change the people I loved, no matter how much I might have intended it.”

“I don't think there is a law of physics capable of fully describing the power and strength that is created when you use your mind and heart together.”

“I reach in blindly but knowing that there is more to this life than we can possibly see, and that each of us is capable of doing amazing things far beyond what we think is possible.”

“I spent many late nights during medical school using my brain to think about the brain and then using my mind to ponder the irony of it. How exactly do we separate and distinguish the mind from the brain?

I can operate on the brain but not on the mind, but operating on the brain can forever alter the mind. It's a dilemma of causality – a circular reference problem like the perennial question of what came first, the chicken or the egg.”

“I was living for the future that existed in my mind, and it was a far more enjoyable place to live.”

“If you can heal your own wounds, you don’t hurt anymore and you don’t hurt others.”

“In a way, it was easier for me to quiet my mind with my eyes open. It was when I closed my eyes and everything went dark that most of my worries came rushing out. In the dark there was no distraction, and every fear seemed to want to come out and play.”

“In the end, how well we love each other and how well we take care of each other will be what determines the survival of our planet and our species.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: Love and compassion are necessities; without them humanity cannot survive.”

“It is your thoughts that create reality. Others can create your reality only if you don't create it yourself.”

“It takes work, and some things will take longer to happen than others. And sometimes it won't happen exactly the way you expect. But I promise you, everything you put on your list, everything you feel in your heart, everything you think about and imagine with your mind, if you truly believe, if you work very hard, will happen.

You have to see it and then you have to go after it. You can't just wait in your room. You actually have to go get good grades, and go to medical school, and learn how to be a doctor.

But in some mysterious way you will also be drawing it to you, and you will become what you imagine. If you use your mind and your heart, it will happen.”

“It's funny how when you've been starved of such experiences you want to hold them and not let them go.”

“It's the same with the wound in our hearts. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick – they also serve an amazing purpose.

When our hearts are wounded that's when they open. We grow through pain. We grow through difficult situations. That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life.”

“One thing every human has in common is the first sound we hear. It’s the heartbeat of our mother. That steady rhythm is the first connection each of us knows, not with our minds, but the knowing is there in our hearts.

The heart is where we find our comfort and our safety in the darkest of places. It is what binds us together and what breaks when we are apart. The heart has its own kind of magic — love.”

“Others can create your reality only if you don't create it yourself.”

“People see only what they think is there rather than what's actually there.”

“Research has shown that the more connected we are socially, the longer we will live and the faster we will recover when we get ill. In truth, isolation and loneliness puts us at a greater risk for early disease and death than smoking.

Authentic social connection has a profound effect on your mental health — it even exceeds the value of exercise and ideal body weight on your physical health. It makes you feel good.

Social connection triggers the same reward centers in your brain that are triggered when people do drugs, or drink alcohol, or eat chocolate. In other words, we get sick alone, and we get well together.”

“She taught me the pointlessness of wishing for a different past and the futility of worrying about all of the frightening futures over which I had no control.”