It’s not bragging if you can back it up,” I whisper to myself in the shower every morning. That is my favorite Muhammad Ali quote. If you ask me, Ali invented modern-day swagger.
Sometimes the toilet paper does not win. Sometimes a broke woman needs the red wine more.
Badassery, I’m discovering, is a new level of confidence – in both yourself and those around you.
Because no matter how hard a conversation is, I know that on the other side of that difficult conversation lies peace. Knowledge. An answer delivered. Character is revealed. Truces are formed. Misunderstandings are resolved. Freedom lies across the field of the difficult conversation. An the more difficult the conversation, the greater the freedom.
You know what happens when all of your dreams come true? Nothing. I realized a very simple truth: that success, fame, having all my dreams come true would not fix or improve me, it wasn’t an instant potion for personal growth.
Everything sounds like crap until you are in the right mind-set.
I decide that if it is so hard to own up to my own accomplishments, to take a compliment, to not duck my head and choose Door Number Two, then I’m going to say YES to accepting any and all acknowledgments of personal fabulous awesomeness with a clear, calm “Thank you” and a confident smile and nothing more.
Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.
There is victory in surrender.
People really do not like it when you decide to step off the road and climb the mountain instead. It seems to make even the people who mean well nervous.
I don’t even know who someone is until i’ve seen how they handle adversity.
This Yes is about giving yourself the permission to shift the focus of what is a priority from what’s good for you over to what makes you feel good.
Volunteer some hours. Focus on something outside yourself. Devote a slice of your energies toward making the world suck less every week.
Marriage is a financial partnership. Marriage has nothing to do with love. Love is a choice we can make every day.
Shonda, how do you do it all? The answer is this: I don’t. Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means that I am failing in another area of my life.
Standing around like Wonder Woman in the morning can make people think you are more amazing at lunchtime. Crazy. But true. How awesome is that?
I don’t think it ever occurred to me before how much and how often women are praised for displaying traits that basically render them invisible. When I really think about it, I realize the culprit is the language generally used to praise women.
The upside of culling people from my life is that my focus has become very clear. My vision has become razor sharp. I now work to see people, not as I’d rewrite them, but as they have written themselves. I see them for who they are. And for who I am with them. Because it’s not merely about surrounding myself with people who treat me well. It’s also about surrounding myself with people whose self-worth, self-respect and values inspire me to elevate my own behavior.
Wonder Woman is not faking it. Wonder Woman means it. Wonder Woman is all swagger and badassery. Compliment.
But we all have to acknowledge that our way is not the way.