Notes & Quotes: The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos R.N.

The following are my favorite quotes from Hadley Vlahos's (R.N) The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments.

1. I made a note to myself that if I were in a position like this in the future, I would instead explain what I going to do and why, and assure the patient that I would finish as quickly as possible.
2. I reminded myself to live for today, not the fears of tomorrow--a promise I had made to myself when I started working in hospice.
3. The voice of one of my favorite nursing school instructors popped into my head: Meet them where they are.
4. "The surge of energy almost everyone gets before dying," he said, as if this was a well-known medical fact. I now know that the surge is a common occurrence. Often, loved ones who witness it think that the patient is somehow miraculously in the process of recovering. But to those in the know, it's a sign that death is imminent and will likely occur within the next few days.
5. Maybe sometimes people didn't need more--maybe, sometimes, they needed...less. Maybe sometimes all they needed was a bit of comfort.
6. I started thinking differently about patient care. I started to reframe my work with the understanding that something doing "nothing" (as I would have thought of it in nursing school and my previous jobs) was doing something. It was being there, offering comfort and solidarity--and that mattered. A lot.
7. While I was never trained for it in nursing school, I knew that watering Sue's plants, making her sandwiches, helping her use the internet, and mailing letters for her were just as important as any other work I've done.
8. When the time comes, we all want the same things: care, comfort, and connection.
9. I am continually amazed at how life just continues on as usual, despite the tragedy that exists all around us.
10. One of the more stunning and beautiful things I've witnessed as a hospice nurse is the way in which people choose their time of death. So many of us can't choose when we go to sleep at night, and yet we seem to have some control over when we die. I've had some patients intent on dying alone, stealing away in the matter of seconds they're left to themselves while a loved one goes to the bathroom, and others, like Sandra, who hang on until the moment when a loved one reaches their side.
11. Professor Lopez was one of those people who really saw me, who believed in my worth, and who made a difference. It's amazing how even those people who are in our life for just a short time can make a lasting impact.
12. Although it's hard to explain, this shift is one that every hospice nurse and person who has witnessed a death has experienced--the tangible shift in the air in that moment when a person leaves their body. It's not unlike when you walk into a room expecting someone to be there, only to discover you're alone. Sometimes that shift is more pronounced than others, and sometimes this moment occurs before their physical death, while other times it's after.
13. I'm often asked what I believe in. As you've read, it's been a journey. I have cared for enough end-of-life patients with varying religious backgrounds to believe that how you live your life is more important than what you believe in.

Notes & Quotes: Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life by Bob Proctor

The following are my favorite quotes from Bob Proctor's Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life:

1. A paradigm is a mental program situated in your subconscious that has almost exclusive control over all your habitual behavior--and almost all of your behavior is habitual.
2. There's no point in telling people to do something if you're not doing it yourself.
3. When you read a good book through the second time, you don't see something in that book that wasn't there before; you see something in yourself that wasn't there before.
4. So it is with the subconscious mind. Whatever you plant will grow. Like the earth, the subconscious doesn't determine good or bad; it just accepts and grows it.
5. The only prerequisite when you're making a decision is, do you want to?
6. We have to paint the picture of the good that we desire and write it down. When you have created an image in your conscious mind, you impress it on the subconscious mind through repetition, and you let yourself feel it. It's got to be real.
7. There's a basic law of life that says, create or disintegrate. If you're not going ahead, you're going backwards. When you violate the law, that's the sin. You go backwards, you're working against it; you're trying to force things. When you're working with the law, you go ahead. When you're doing it right, everything flows beautifully. If you have to really struggle, you're probably going against the law.
8. Science-fiction author Robert A Heinlein once observed, "In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until we ultimately become enslaved by it."
9. People that are continually studying are going to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. Actually, there is no such thing as a learned person. You're either learning or you're not.
10. What you think of yourself is very important. What other people think of you is not important.
11. Earl Nightingale's definition of success is the best I've ever heard: "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." An ideal is an idea that you've fallen in love with. You are progressively becoming aware as you're moving towards the good you desire.
12. The basic law of life is, create or disintegrate. If you're working toward a predetermined goal, you're creating; you're doing what God meant you to do.
13. Results are nothing but the manifestation of your actions.
14. If you have not found your purpose, I would recommend setting aside ten to fifteen minutes every morning. Put a pen and pad someplace where you can sit quietly. If you drink coffee, make yourself a cup, go to your spot, sit there, and ask, "What do I love doing?"
15. The income you earn is in direct ratio to the need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty of replacing you. There's got to be a tremendous need for what you're doing, so you're going to get really good at it, and you're going to be really difficult to replace.
16. When you're reacting, everything outside of you is in control of you; you're not in control of yourself at all.
17. Here are some basic, simple rules: if you follow them, you win; if you violate them, you lose. There are three things that a person absolutely must lock into if the really want to set a higher goal and go after it. The first is decision. The second is understanding visualization, and the third is discipline.
18. Take responsibility for how you feel and act. Energy is flowing through us, and it's up to us to direct it in any way we want.
19. I take what I do and work to get better at it every day. Get better at what you're good at, manage what you're not good at, and be accountable to someone. Make sure that when you say you're going to do something, it's going to get done.
20. Comfort is not a good place to be. If you're really comfortable with everything in your life, you're stuck, you're going sideways, you're not growing at all. You've got to be doing something that causes a respectable amount of discomfort and keep doing it until you're comfortable with it. When you are, then set another target that causes discomfort. That discomfort indicates that you're growing; you're going where you've never been.
21. Harvest the good. There's good in everything. The more you look for, the more you'll find.
22. You are the only problem you will ever have, and you are the only solution. When you understand that, you'll start to see the value in sitting down and becoming grateful every day when you're having a bit of a problem. It's such a phenomenal attitude, and it changes your life.
23. It's up to us to recognize what beliefs we are operating with that are false and get rid of them. That's really the trick of life.
24. I'm of the opinion that if you're struggling, you're doing it wrong. If you're working in harmony with the law, it's going to be a free flow.
25. Money is not going to make you a better person, but it will make you more of what you already are. If you're not a nice person, you're going to become despicable. If you are a nice person, you will become much nicer. Money's a magnifier. There's no limit to what you can earn, but to earn it, you have to provide service. That doesn't mean you have to work, but you have to provide service.
26. Never let anybody decide what you're going to earn. That's something you've got to decide. If you're letting somebody else decide, and you're not happy with it, you know what you have to do: you have to get out of there and go out on your own.
27. Anyone who wants anything they haven't got should write down what they want in the present tense. It doesn't matter if they think it's silly. They should start reading it and speaking it out loud over and over again. Something will start to happen first in their mind, and then in the outside world--inside out.
28. When you sit down and think of what you want, you let your imagination go. If you can see it, write it down. Don't talk to anybody else, but me about it. Because everybody else will laugh at you, and you don't need that happening. Don't mix with people who haven't got big goals.
29. Eight Principles for Living:
1. Develop an awareness of your infinite potential.
2. Act on what you want.
3. Make a decision.
4. Total commitment.
5. Accountability.
6. Focus.
7. Discipline.
8. Visioneering.
30. Earl Nightingale used to say that if you do something for ninety days, you'll probably do it for the rest of your life.

Notes & Quotes: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

The following are my favorite quotes from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans's Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life.

1. A well-designed life is a life that is generative--it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always a possibility of surprise.
2. Designers love questions, but what they really love is reframing questions.
3. Your life is not a thing, it's an experience; the fun comes from designing and enjoying the experience.
4. The reframe for the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is this: "Who or what do you want to grow into?"
5. Radical collaboration works on the principle that people with very different backgrounds will bring their idiosyncratic technical and human experiences to the team. This increases the chance that the team will have empathy for those who will use what they are designing, and that the collision of different backgrounds will generate truly unique solutions.
6. A well-designed life is not a life of drudgery. You weren't put on this earth to work eight hours a day at a job you hate until the time comes to die.
7. The five mind-sets you are going to learn in order to design your life are curiosity, bias to action, reframing, awareness, and radical collaboration. These are you design tools, and with them you can build anything, including a life you love.
8. Life design is a journey; let go of the end goal and focus on the process and see what happens next. 
9. Passion is the result of good life design, not the cause.
10. Problem Finding + Problem Sovling = Well-Designed Life.
11. Our problems become our story, and we can all get stuck in our stories.
12. In life design, if it's not actionable, it's not a problem.
13. Here's a little tidbit that is going to save you a lot of time--months, years, decades even. It has to do with reality. People fight reality. They fight it tooth and nail, with everything they've got. And anytime you are arguing or fighting with reality, reality will win. You can't outsmart it. You can't trick it. You can't bend it to your will. Not now. Not ever.
14. If you're beginning to think like a designer, you will recognize that life is never done. Work is never done. Play is never done. Love and health are never done. We are only done designing our lives when we die.
15. Our goal for your life is rather simple: coherency. A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between three things: Who you are. What you believe. What you are doing.
16. Living coherently doesn't mean everything is in perfect order all the time. It simply means you are living in alignment with your values and have not sacrificed your integrity along the way.
17. People in flow report the experience as having these sorts of attributes: Experiencing complete involvement in the activity. Feeling a sense of ecstasy or euphoria. Having great inner clarity--knowing just what to do and how to do it. Being totally calm and at peace. Feeling as if time were standing still--or disappearing in an instant.
18. Life design is about getting more out of your current life--and not only about redesigning a whole new life.
19. Drill down into the particulars of your day and catch yourself in the act of having a good time.
20. As a life designer, you need to embrace two philosophies:
1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from.
2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.
21. Don't make a doable problem into an anchor problem by wedding yourself irretrievably to a solution that just isn't working. Reframe the solution to some other possibilities, prototype those ideas (take some test hikes), and get yourself unstuck. Anchor problems keep us stuck because we can only see one solution--the one we already have that doesn't work.
22. If your mind starts with multiple ideas in parallel, it is not prematurely committed to one path and stays more open and able to receive and conceive more novel innovations. Designers have known this all along--you don't want to start with just one idea, or you're likely to get stuck with it.
23. Life is an odyssey--and adventurous journey into the future with hopes and goals, helpers, lovers and antagonists, unknowns and serendipities, all unfolding over time in a way we both intend at the start and weave together as we go.
24. We prototype to ask good questions, create experiences, reveal our assumptions, fail fast, fail forward, sneak up on the future, and build empathy for ourselves and others. Once you accept that this is really the only way to get the data you need, prototyping becomes an integral part of your life design process.
25. The Rules of Brainstorming
1. Go for quantity, not quality.
2. Defer judgment and do not censor ideas.
3. Build off the ideas of others.
4. Encourage wild ideas.
26. When you really get the hang of the design thinking approach, you end up thinking differently about everything.
27. Designing your life is actually what life is, because life is a process, not an outcome. If you can get that, you've got it all.
28. Everyone participating in your life design effort in one way or another should be thought of as being a part of your team, but there are different roles to be played, and it's useful to name them.
1. Supporters
2. Players
3. Intimates
4. The Team
29. What does a well-designed and balanced life look like? Imagine a day cut into perfectly equal pieces of pie--one slice for career, one slice for play and fun, one slice for family and friends, one slice for health. What is your perfect pie?