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The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

Book by Michelle Obama · 4 quotes · Activism, Discernment, Friendship

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The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times Quotes

“Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in. It means that you have to be judicious with your energy and clear in your convictions. You push ahead in some instances and pull back in others, giving yourself opportunities to rest and restore. It helps to recognize that you are operating on a budget, as all of us are. When it comes to our attention, our time, our credibility, our goodwill toward and from others, we work with a limited but renewable set of resources.”

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“Going high is something you do rather than merely feel. It’s not some call to be complacent and wait around for change, or to sit on the sidelines as others struggle. It is not about accepting the conditions of oppression or letting cruelty and power go unchallenged. The notion of going high shouldn’t raise any questions about whether we are obligated to fight for more fairness, decency, and justice in this world; rather, it’s about how we fight, how we go about trying to solve the problems we encounter, and how we sustain ourselves long enough to be effective rather than burn out.”

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“Going high is work—often hard, often tedious, often inconvenient, and often bruising. You will need to disregard the haters and the doubters. You will need to build some walls between yourself and those who would prefer to see you fail. And you will need to keep working when others around you may have grown tired or cynical and given up.”

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“When it comes to wanting to make a difference in the world, I find that it can also be useful to break down those gigantic, all-or-nothing goals into their component parts. This way, you are less likely to get overwhelmed or exhausted, or crash into feelings of futility. None of this is defeat. What becomes defeating is when great becomes the enemy of good—when we get so caught up in the hugeness of everything that we stall out before we’ve even started, when the problems appear so big that we give up on taking the smaller steps, managing what is actually in our control.”

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