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The secret of life is to face it head-on instead of cowering from it

• Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken. Neil Gaiman
• Often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave. James Clemens
• Courage,  Fear,  Problem solving,  Challenge,  Obstacles

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Don’t be tempted to avoid the messiness of life

• You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short- circuits the cultivation of wisdom.  Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Avoid life and you’ll never find peace

• You cannot find peace by avoiding life.   Virginia Woolf
• Inner peace

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Avoid life and you block learning and self-discovery

• We avoid the things that we’re afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover. Shakti Gawain
• Learning,  Discovery

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Facing challenges is an essential part of life

• In breaking away from the familiar and the expected, you’ll be forced and privileged to face greater challenges, learn harder lessons, and really get to know yourself. Kelly Cutrone
• Face new challenges, seize new opportunities, test your resources against the unknown and in the process, discover your own unique potential. John Amatt
• Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves. Carol Pearson

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Whether you choose to face challenges or try to escape from them will define your life

• At times you have to fight. No way around it. At some point, every one of us is confronted with danger or injustice. How we choose to combat that challenge is often life-defining. You can face difficulties head-on, or run from them, or ignore them until they consume you. But no one escapes conflict. No one. Bill O’Reilly
• We spend more time developing means of escaping our troubles than we do solving the troubles we’re trying to escape from. David Lloyd

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Facing your challenges head-on often makes them vanish …

• When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. Brendan Francis
• Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear, and obstacles vanish into air. John Quincy Adams
• Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can.  If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. Orison Swett Marden

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… for the best way out of trouble and fear is to go straight through it

• Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.  Orison Swett Marden
• There are four ways you can handle fear. You can go over it, under it, or around it. But if you are ever to put fear behind you, you must walk straight through it. Once you put fear behind you, leave it there.  Donna Favors
• The best way out is always through. Robert Frost
• Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. Brendan Francis
• The continued and complete avoidance of something gives away the very urgent necessity for -at some point – that very same thing to be discovered, delved deeply into, and actually utilised in your life. As such, the only way out of something is often to go into it…confront it, face it, and overcome. Jacquelene Close Moore

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Not facing challenges blocks your progress

• There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. Christopher Hitchens
• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin
• Progress

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Not facing challenges robs you of your aliveness

• Whatever you’re avoiding is robbing you of your aliveness. Michael Nitti
• Vitality,  Being fully alive

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Running away rarely achieves anything and usually makes things worse …

• I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot. Nadia Comaneci
• To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one’s faith in man and God, even one’s own self. It is better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith. Mahatma Gandhi
• You can face difficulties head-on, or run from them, or ignore them until they consume you. But no one escapes conflict. No one. Bill O’Reilly
• Danger — if you meet it promptly and without flinching — you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!  Winston Churchill
• Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution.

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… for what you refuse to face today often comes back later, in a scarier form

• The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was. Eleanor Roosevelt

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The secret is to face what is difficult while it is still easy

• Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts. Lao Tzu
• Deal with difficulties while they are still easy. Handle the great while it is still small. Lao Tzu
• There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve. Mike Leavitt

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Pray not for your life to be free of challenges, but for the strength to confront and deal with them

• Many people pray to be kept out of unexpected problems. Some people pray to be able to confront and overcome them. Toba Beta
• Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. Bruce Lee
• Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks. Phillips Brooks
• It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal. Helen Keller
• The wise man in the storm prays God not for safety from danger but for deliverance from fear. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Strength

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Face your problems

• The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. Alan Saporta
• Problem solving

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Running away from a problem won’t solve it …

• Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them. Henry Ford
• You won’t find a solution by saying there is no problem. William Rotsler
• Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution.

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… or make it disappear …

• Problem is, the bathroom pass can’t help you escape life. It’s still there when you come out. Problems and crap don’t go away hiding in the can. Simone Elkeles
• Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough. Earl Wilson

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… and often creates a bigger problem

• It’s not a problem that we have a problem. It’s a problem if we don’t deal with the problem. Mary Kay Utech

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An unsolved problem creates stress and stilts growth of the spirit …

• Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit. M. Scott Peck
• Much of the stress you experience may be created by recognizing a problem and doing nothing about it. Wess Roberts
• Avoidance of problems exacerbates anxiety about them. By contrast, facing the problem head- on, frightening as that may seem, enables you to pursue solutions to the dilemma. Solving problems cuts anxiety off at its source.   Susan Heitler, Ph.D.
• Growth

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… while confronting a problem brings peace of mind

• Self-acceptance comes from meeting life’s challenges vigorously. Don’t numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.   Donald Walters
• Peace of mind is attained not by ignoring problems, but by solving them. Raymond Hull
• Inner peace

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If you face your problem head on, often it will disappear

• If you can stare hard at your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don’t face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it. After seeing how effectively facing reality – especially your problems, mistakes and weaknesses – works, you will become comfortable with it and won’t want to operate any other way. Ray Dalio

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The only time to avoid a problem is when you can prevent it altogether

• We think a wise person is someone who solves problems. Truth is, a wise person is someone who avoids problems. Prem Rawat
• Intellectuals solve problems…. geniuses prevent them. Albert Einstein
• Be the lighthouse…. not the rescue boat. Lauren Zimmerman
• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. Albert Einstein
• The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small. Witter Bynner
• A danger foreseen is half avoided.  Thomas Fuller
• It is well known that “problem avoidance” is an important part of problem solving. Instead of solving the problem you go upstream and alter the system so that the problem does not occur in the first place. Edward de Bono
• Every big problem was at one time a wee disturbance.
• It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. Howard Ruff
• Dig the well before you are thirsty. Chinese Proverb
• It’s much easier to stay out of trouble now than to get out of trouble later. Warren Buffett

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Face the obstacles on your path

• Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.  Orison Swett Marden
• Spirit seeks expression through you.  The very nature of being alive is participation, expansion, change, and progress. You were put here not to cower before obstacles, limitations, or dangers but to reach beyond your comfort horizon and dare to embrace your fears as opportunities for learning.  Cash Peters
• Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear, and obstacles vanish into air. John Quincy Adams
• Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards, but they will bluff you if they can.  If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. Orison Swett Marden
• Obstacles

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Face danger head-on

• The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny. Napoleon Bonaparte
• At times you have to fight. No way around it. At some point, every one of us is confronted with danger or injustice. How we choose to combat that challenge is often life-defining. You can face difficulties head-on, or run from them, or ignore them until they consume you. But no one escapes conflict. No one. Bill O’Reilly
• Danger

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Avoiding danger is impossible and no safer than outright exposure

• Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.  Helen Keller
• You can’t prepare for everything life’s going to throw at you. And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll out on all the adventure. Jeannette Walls

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Running from danger is often more dangerous than facing it

• The person who runs away exposes himself to that very danger more than a person who sits quietly. Jawaharlal Nehru
• To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one’s faith in man and God, even one’s own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith. Mahatma Gandhi

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It is better to meet danger than wait for it

• It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck. Charles Caleb Colton
• When danger approaches, sing to it. Arabic Proverb
• Danger — if you meet it promptly and without flinching — you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!  Winston Churchill
• Danger can only be overcome by more danger. Greek proverb

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Face the challenges of change

• Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to avoid changing it. Elaine St. James
• Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.  Martin Luther King Jr.
• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin
• Change

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Face your feelings and emotions

• Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it. Fred Rogers
• Emotions

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By avoiding your feelings, you pay a price later

• Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain. … This energy field of old but still very- much- alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body. Eckhart Tolle
• So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings—but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create. Dr Russ Harris
• While we ignore, deny, suppress, or avoid our feelings, we allow them free reign over our minds and our lives. By refusing to confront and examine the anxiety we feel, and the roots of the problem, we will only find that we become more anxious. Amanda Harvey
• If we try to deny and suppress our darker emotions, we will only succeed in numbing ourselves emotionally. If you anesthetize yourself against pain, how will you feel joy? Amanda Harvey

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Face your fears …

• …I started to realize how many great things could happen by confronting the things that scare you most. David Archuleta
• Best way to deal with fear is to confront it. Pittacus Lore
• Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead. Jerry Gille
• Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you. Robert Kiyosaki
• Face your fears or they will climb over your back.  Frank Herbert
• Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Frank Herbert
• I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot. Nadia Comaneci
• Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism…confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person. David M. Burns
• There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it. George R.R. Martin
• Your fears stand between you and what you want. They’re worth facing!  Stephen C. Paul
• Fear

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… both real and imagined …

• I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears. Max Brooks

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… while the fear is still an emotion, not a behaviour

• We want to notice fear and meet it directly while it’s still an emotion, not a behavior. We want to confront or comfort, diffuse and transform it before it seeps into our actions and starts running the show. Danielle LaPorte

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Facing fear weakens it

• Fears are just fears. They are created by your imagination to make reality seem scarier than it is. When you take action and face your fears, they become weaker, because you realize that reality isn’t nearly as bad as your imagination. Henri Junttila
• Find what you are afraid of, face it, and then you won’t be afraid of it anymore. Marilyn Manson

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Facing fear creates courage

• All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared; it means acting as you know you must even though you are undeniably afraid.  Desmond Tutu
• You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt
• Courage

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Walking right through fear puts it behind you

• There are four ways you can handle fear. You can go over it, under it, or around it. But if you are ever to put fear behind you, you must walk straight through it. Once you put fear behind you, leave it there.  Donna Favors
• The best way out is always through. Robert Frost
• Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. Brendan Francis

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Your ability to face your fear determines your potential and your limits

• Your major battles with fear are not outside you; they lurk inside, in the caverns of the psyche, in the arena of psychological survival and dark imaginings, where fear shape- shifts into subtle guises such as self- doubt, insecurity, lack of confidence, shyness, inhibition, timidity—a reluctance to assert, express, or even be yourself. Whatever form fear takes, your willingness to face it squarely will determine your fate in the high country of human potential. Dan Millman
• Your fears unfaced become your limits. Robin Sharma
• Potential,  Limitation

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Face your pain

• Our culture teaches us how to numb and distract ourselves but not how to listen to our pain and learn from our difficulties. Think what we learn about pain from television.  We learn that pain is to be avoided at all costs and that there are a variety of pain relievers for every conceivable pain.  I would like to see a commercial that says, “Your pain is a great teacher.  Learn from it and be healed.”  Bernie Siegel
• In a way, forgiving is only for the brave. It is for those people who are willing to confront their pain, accept themselves as permanently changed, and make difficult choices.  Beverly Flanigan
• Pain

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By avoiding pain, you avoid life …

• To avoid all pain, unhappiness and fear… avoid birth.   Ian Gardner
• To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life. Osho
• The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.  Leo Buscaglia

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… for life is inherently painful

• There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. D. Laing
• You can hold back from the suffering of the world. This is something you are free to do. But perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid. Franz Kafka

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Avoiding all pain stops you from fully experiencing joy, love and laughter

• Pain is a by-product of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for. Jim Butcher
• Joy,  Love, Laughter

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Avoiding all pain blocks your creative flow

• Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold.  The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are.  Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives.  Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometime for many years, gathering the courage to experience them.  Rachel Naomi Remen
• Creative expression

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Avoiding all pain leaves you without intimacy or compassion

• Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. Rachel Remen
• Intimacy,  Compassion

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Trying to avoid pain often leads to addictive behaviour

• Get emotionally honest. Let of go of numbing your feelings. Shopping, eating, and drinking are examples of avoiding discomfort, sadness, and pain. Mindfully breathe your way through your feelings and emotions. Tess Marshall
• There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Sherman Alexie
• That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self- medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial. Chuck Palahniuk
• Addiction

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Avoid your pain and it will find you later

• You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things. Ann Brashares

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Face your past …

• But this was what happened when you didn’t want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you. Bret Easton Ellis
• A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute. Tobsha Learner
• The past

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… especially your painful memories

• All that is left to bring you pain, are the memories. If you face those, you’ll be free. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding from yourself; always afraid that your memories will incapacitate you, and they will if you continue to bury them. J.D. Stroube
• Memory

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Face your doubts and question them

• If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an ‘I’ without shame. Emile Cioran
• In my experience, most people have to face internal obstacles of self- doubt and fear as much as any external obstacles of circumstance and opportunity. Sir Ken Robinson
• Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you. Robert Kiyosaki
• Doubt

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Face the unknown

• It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. Pema Chodron
• Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known. Antoine De Saint- Exupery
• There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.  Elias Canetti
• The unknown

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Face facts

• Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. Malcolm X
• The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them. H. Lawrence
• Facts

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Face the truth …

• Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it. George R.R. Martin
• Truth

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… for denial, though very human, won’t get you anywhere

• Denial: A condition in which someone will not admit that something sad, painful, etc., is true or real. (Merriam Webster)
• There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened. Douglas Adams
• Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it. George R.R. Martin
• The human mind isn’t a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn’t make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people. Jim Butcher
• Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification. Christopher Hitchens
• Delay is the deadliest form of denial. Northcote Parkinson
• Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes. Criss Jami
• The thing about denial is that it doesn’t feel like denial when it’s going on. Georgina Kleege
• It takes a lot of courage to face up to things you can’t do because we feed ourselves so much denial. Zoe Saldana
• We live in a world of denial, and we don’t know what the truth is anymore. Javier Bardem
• The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we’re afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy. Richard Bach
• A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow

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Stop avoiding decisions

• Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions. Brendan Francis
• We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision. Gary Collins
• Decision making

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Stop trying to avoid criticism

• Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. Aristotle
• Don’t change the way you act or the things you say simply to avoid criticism. Remember, criticism is usually inevitable. And it may just be an indication that you have taken a risk and chosen to tackle something which is a challenge to you. Peter Clemens
• You can’t operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing. Steve Ross
• Criticism

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Stop trying to avoid mistakes and failure …

• The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas. Albert Einstein
• Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. Robert Kiyosaki
• With a fixed mindset our self-worth is on the line with everything we do and failure is something to avoid at all costs. Carol S. Dweck
• Mistakes,  Failure

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… unless you can avoid it by learning from the mistakes of others

• Those who can avoid mistakes by observing the mistakes of others are most apt to keep free from sorrow. In a world full of uncertainties, the record of what has gone before–human experience–is as sure and reliable as anything of which we know.  Ray Lyman Wilbur
• Learning

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Stop avoiding your real self …

• Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own? Sogyal Rinpoche
• You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. Ernest Hemingway
• I protect myself by refusing to know myself. Floriano Martins
• Most of us will do anything to avoid facing ourselves. Lolly Daskal
• People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing there own soul. Carl Jung

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… but rather face the dark parts of yourself and integrate them

• Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength. August Wilson
• Jung first gave us the term ‘shadow’ to refer to those parts of our personality that have been rejected out of fear, ignorance, shame, or lack of love. His basic notion of the shadow was simple: ‘the shadow is the person you would rather not be.’ He believed that integrating the shadow would have a profound impact, enabling us to rediscover a deeper source of our own spiritual life. ‘To do this,’ Jung said, ‘we are obliged to confront the shadow, to integrate the devil. There is no other choice. Debbie Ford
• The shadow

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Stop avoiding uncomfortable actions and important issues

• Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. Timothy Ferriss
• Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues. Sogyal Rinpoche
• There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it. Alain de Botton
• A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues. Theodore Roosevelt
• Action,  Procrastination

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Stop avoiding this present moment, for that is a denial of life

• Direct your attention inward. Have a look inside yourself. What kind of thoughts is your mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into the body. Is there any tension? Once you detect that there is a low level of unease, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding, resisting, or denying life – by denying the Now. Eckhart Tolle
• Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable. Eckhart Tolle
• Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now. Eckhart Tolle
• Live in the present

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Stop avoiding responsibility

• The way to avoid responsibility is to say, ‘I’ve got responsibilities.’ Richard Bach
• Frozen in fear, you avoid responsibility because you think your experience is beyond your control. This stance keeps you from making decisions, solving problems, or going after what you want in life. David Emerald
• Responsibility,  Blaming,  Excuses

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Meditation is not avoidance

• What is meditation?… It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk. Hermann Hesse
• Meditation

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• A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. Mahatma Gandhi
• Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them. Jerome Groopman
• The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. Thomas Hardy
• I didn’t avoid my problems. I just didn’t feel as though I had to focus on them every minute of every day. And telling people about certain aspects of my life would only create trouble. If I was guilty of anything, it was of trying not to bring new problems into my life. That wasn’t avoidance. That was logical thinking. Mara Purnhagen
• There is no avoidance in delay. Aeschylus
• All work is the avoidance of harder work. James Richardson
• Business crises energize me. Personal crises devastate me. The doctors call it an avoidance tendency. J.D. Robb
• Avoidance: Refusing to deal with or encounter unpleasant objects or situations. Kendra Cherry
• I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go. Sheng Yen

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• What state do you live in?  Denial.  Bill Watterson, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes
• How ’bout a shot of truth in that denial cocktail. Jennifer Salaiz
• Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Mark Twain
• I love running. I’m not into marathons, but I am into avoiding problems at an accelerated rate. Jarod Kintz
• The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. John Maynard Keynes
• Avoidable: What a bullfighter tries to do.
• Avoid arguments about the toilet seat…use the sink…
• I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.  Mae West
• How ’bout a shot of truth in that denial cocktail. Jennifer Salaiz

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