A Quote by Augusten Burroughs

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping. — © Augusten Burroughs
Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.
As a father, you find yourself telling this to your kids a lot. My son, when he didn't want to play baseball, I was like, "Buddy, try it. Try playing baseball and if you don't like it, that's fine. But I want you to try it. I want you to try as hard as you can at it. And then we'll talk about it." You kind of have to give yourself the same pep talk. As a 43-year-old, you're like, "You know what? Just, try it. Try as hard as you can, give it everything you got and then accept the results."
We talk a lot about the importance of physical exercise to wake us up out of the half sleep in which so many of us walk around. But we need, even more, some spiritual and mental exercises every morning to stir us into action. Give yourself a pep talk every day.
The trouble with giving yourself a pep talk is, that deep down you know it's all bullshit.
I call myself the hardware shelf. There's a lot of awards and honors there. And I have earned that. I didn't ask for it, I didn't beg for it, I didn't pay for it. I earned that. People see the accomplishments - but it's good to remind people that so much strife and labor and tears and heartbreak came before that, that it really is earned.
We talk about the vulnerability involved in sharing our work publicly. I don't think we talk enough about the real vulnerability involved in making art; if we truly engage the process we are changed by it.
I give myself a pep talk and visualize the routine. I tell myself: "I can do this, let's go!"
You cannot compare Pep to any Brazilian coach. If you put all Brazilian coaches together, you would get Pep. One has motivational skills, another is tactically strong. But Pep has it all.
What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents, and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else.
I go from locker to locker, pretending the guys are here. You know, give them a little bit of a pep talk. It must be working, because we haven't lost a game yet.
Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk--or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.
Being involved in competition is a privilege and an opportunity. Seek to make the most of that opportunity by pushing yourself to the limit of your abilities. When it is over, you will have earned the respect of your opponents, your coaches, and yourself.
The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.
I felt I'd earned the Good Housekeeping Seal when I designed an oval-shaped spaghetti pot, because spaghetti is long.
I handle my emotional pain by changing my mind-set. Exercising can exorcise emotional pain. Prayer and meditation. Visualization. Being able to talk about it by opening yourself to loved ones or a professional.
My thing is "You don't need anyone else to empower you; you can empower yourself." Whether it's a pep talk or putting on a good shade of lipstick, whatever you need to do, do it, but be yourself. You absolutely don't need someone else to tell you that you're good enough.
It's an ego issue. You can bruise my ego but all bruises are healed now. Ego is through the roof again, confidence level is through the roof again. Gotta keep my attitude and positive mindset. I don't even remember the last fight. I hate to say it... I know I was emotional. I'm a real emotional person. If you put everything you have into one basket and it doesn't work, it's emotional to me. When I lose, it takes a piece of my heart away. I'm not a competitor that deals with loss well.
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