Gina Greenlee Quotes - Page 2

Large bodies of goal achievement research encourage written goals for good reason. When we write down our goals, we transform what we imagine into reality.
Gina Greenlee
Sometimes our dreams are affirmed in the most unlikely ways by the mostunlikely people. That’s why we need to speak our commitment out loud.
Gina Greenlee
Don’t wait for a genie to grant your wishes. That power is yours.
Gina Greenlee
As you consider your next move, practice this definition of trust: the willingness to take steps while simultaneously waiting for “instructions.
Gina Greenlee
Sharing our story is one way we create intimacy. And like a good novel, it’s more engaging – and lasting – when we allow it to gradually unfold.
Gina Greenlee
The help we give to others creates the ripple of good feeling we give to ourselves.
Gina Greenlee
What we seek when we wander usually leads us back home.
Gina Greenlee
Distinguish between getting lost and losing your way. The first is a shift in direction. The second is the absence of perspective. Cultivate perspective and you will be able to steer home.
Gina Greenlee
Life lessons are not journeys traveled in straight lines but are crossroadsformed years and miles apart.
Gina Greenlee
The next time someone tries to make you feel bad about feeling good,respond by continuing to live well.
Gina Greenlee
At times, productivity means doing nothing at all.
Gina Greenlee
If you can’t remember when you last basked in your own glow, it means you’re overdue.
Gina Greenlee
Few experiences are more satisfying than becoming someone we always imagined we could be.
Gina Greenlee
Experience is a master teacher, even when it’s not our own.
Gina Greenlee
Adventure, opportunity and reward extend beyond our field of vision, and are made known to us only when we test our wings.
Gina Greenlee
Is there a place you can go to break away for a little while? If you haven't yet built your tree house, it's never too late to start.
Gina Greenlee
When your safety is in question follow your intuition. It will help you balance along the precipice between vulnerability and adventure.
Gina Greenlee
Call it walking meditation or a neighborhood stroll; by whatever namesuits you, rediscover the art of meandering.
Gina Greenlee
Let your body move. It will give voice to a language that can heal.
Gina Greenlee
Take time for yourself. If you feel guilty eating lunch away from yourdesk or lingering in a bath, let the deprogramming begin.
Gina Greenlee
Embrace those parts of yourself that you've skillfully avoided until now. That's your true adventure.
Gina Greenlee
No matter. I was single, no children, a handful of plants and at 39, young enough to regroup. If I hit ground before I finished building my wings, I would not take anyone with me.
Gina Greenlee
I knew I could always earn money from a job. What I didn’t know was could I extend the dream of writing beyond my trip?
Gina Greenlee
Putting the dream in motion involved significant personal downsizing, moving three times to trim housing expenses and continuing to freelance. I sold one piece to The New York Times Magazine, many more to The Courant, and another to The St. Petersburg Times.
Gina Greenlee
Ten years ago I wondered, “How does one travel around the world? How does one step out of a well-established life to follow the dream?” I’ve answered those questions. But now new ones emerge.
Gina Greenlee
In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States – that included chaotic overall of airline security – and the exploding tensions in Nepal, friends thought it ill-advised for me to board a flight to Kathmandu. Yet my existence at home felt so tenuous and unpredictable that political unrest in Asia barely registered. Also, it seemed more important than ever for me to keep going, not only overseas but also in the direction of a more satisfying life. Somehow the two felt connected.
Gina Greenlee
The trip changed all that. Stirring the murk of a life ill-fitting, Something More was perceptible though without name or form. Something More was the genesis of a map, not one handed to me but rendered with each step taken, a skill seasoned by a cruise gone bad.
Gina Greenlee
In 2006 I had begun the discernment process for locating my rightful geographic home. By the time my corporate pink slip arrived I had spent two years researching and taking recon trips to five different cities in southern California. Having crossed them off my list, in February 2008 I visited Sarasota, Florida, at the urging of a friend who winters in a neighboring town. Though Florida had never been on my radar, only minutes in Sarasota I knew I’d found home.
Gina Greenlee
The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow.com, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. “How do you find the courage to travel on your own?” they wondered. “How do you keep from getting lonely? Don’t you feel self-conscious eating out alone?” After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There’s a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise.
Gina Greenlee
My post-cruise sabbatical would spark the idea for my first book, Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life’s Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones – The Lesson of the Paper Clips. How? In my data entry job all I did for 20 hours a week was paper clip printouts of computer screens. For three years. I loved it.
Gina Greenlee
Wandering is not limited to geography. Also an altered state of consciousness, it allows a disembodied self to drift on currents of collective awareness with minimal attachment to the physical world. This state of wander tapped imaginative faculties that opened me to a freedom of being only previously experienced through travel.
Gina Greenlee
During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control.
Gina Greenlee
Then I’d go home, return to a pattern of worry, unable to tap the surrender core to travel’s inspiration. What was different?
Gina Greenlee
What would happen if, once back home, I stayed open to possibilities rather than attach to specific outcomes? What if I dreaded no potential storms? Ruminated over no past transgression? I knew how. For decades the reflex kicked in with each plane ride. The more I pondered these questions – How could I cultivate the habit of taking life as it comes? How can I immerse myself in living, like I’m on vacation on all the time, without boarding a plane or crossing a border? – the more I recognized the arbitrariness of the dichotomy between life and travel.
Gina Greenlee
Once back home I would adjust my lens to the resolution through which I perceived the people and provinces of the globe. My daily commute, the supermarket check out line, neighborhood walks, pedestrian tasks of any job would inspire me as much as the stir of white linen canopies in Venice’s Piazza San Marco; the velvety dunes of the eastern Sahara; Bali’s kaleidoscope of color; my Vietnamese sisters.
Gina Greenlee
The answer is neither job, nor paycheck; it is authentic, holistic work born from states of awareness and being. Through the coalescence of joy, wonder, enthusiasm, appreciation, experimentation, perpetual curiosity, exploring new avenues, welcoming surprise and wandering, I have begun the next leg of my journey; I have brought the spirit of the traveler home.
Gina Greenlee
In these pages, traveling “solo” does not necessarily mean “alone.” The absence of other people often suggests regretful isolation. “Solo” by contrast, is a willful decision to be the architect of our own experience.
Gina Greenlee
The gift of solo moments is that they are wholly ours. On or off the road, solo moments connect us inward to ourselves with heightened clarity and insight. They also direct our energies out into the world, magnetizing us to new people and experiences we may not have encountered under any other circumstance.
Gina Greenlee
Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life’s good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey deepened as I traveled life’s roads with increasing independence and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night while working during the day, buying my first house or changing careers.
Gina Greenlee
Because travel was an area of my life where I felt most vital, I wanted to continue to invest in that, too. I had quit a full time job, drained my retirement account to invest in a long-held dream, and used the realization of that dream to enter a void with no guarantees. I didn’t want financial struggle to be the sole outgrowth of the risks I had taken. More than money, I had put my belief systems on the line.
Gina Greenlee
To commune with your heart and soul, be willing to go out of your mind.
Gina Greenlee
Much of our lives consists of a series of choices over which we have absolute control.
Gina Greenlee
One of the best kinds of thrill is defining, honoring, and achieving our goals.
Gina Greenlee
The best way to teach is how you live your life.
Gina Greenlee
Forgive someone today. Especially if that someone is you.
Gina Greenlee
It's tempting to believe that a break from life's routine will only cause chaos. But regimen does not ensure security. The only constant we can count on is change.
Gina Greenlee
Cultivate the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities.
Gina Greenlee
Feeling lonely? Wish you had a special someone to help fill the void? Reconsider your definition of romance, reconnect to your passions and be swept away.
Gina Greenlee
The notion of the perfect time is more than myth. It's the ultimate self-delusion.
Gina Greenlee
The study book for life’s tests is the whole of our experience. Though we mayfeel unprepared, tests appear only when we are truly ready to ace them.
Gina Greenlee
What would happen if you gave yourself permission to do somethingyou’ve never done before? There’s only one way to find out.
Gina Greenlee
What do you resist examining up close?How can you ground yourself so you feel safe enough to try?
Gina Greenlee
Mistakes help to sharpen your next steps. They don’t prove that you shouldn’t try again.
Gina Greenlee
Each of us has our definition of adventure: ending an unsatisfyingrelationship, returning to school, parachute jumping or training for amarathon. Go ahead. Get your thrill on.
Gina Greenlee
Stand up for yourself by not standing yourself up.
Gina Greenlee
We can talk about it, dream about it and dissect the fine print.In the end, only action satisfies our longing.
Gina Greenlee
To believe that we can have what we want is an act of trust – not only of others but also, ourselves.
Gina Greenlee
If companionship is a mandate for all of our experiences, then we will miss out on many of life’s blessings.
Gina Greenlee
Showing up begins long before you stand at the start. Prove yourself an exception in a world where people talk more than act. Intent without follow-through is hollow. Disappoint yourself enough times and empty is how you feel. Make yourself proud. Fill yourself up. Show up.
Gina Greenlee
Taking risks to create the life you want is an act of trust. It means believing in your ability to create a new reality while you are in the process of creating it.
Gina Greenlee