Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life QUOTES

21 " Treat cultural messages about sex and your body like a salad bar. Take only the things that appeal to you and ignore the rest. We’ll all end up with a different collection of stuff on our plates, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. It goes wrong only when you try to apply what you picked as right for your sexuality to someone else’s sexuality. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

22 " Here’s the short version of how to practice mindfuless: 1. Start with two minutes. For two minutes a day, direct your attention to your breath: the way the air comes into your body and your chest and belly expand, and the way the breath leaves your body and your chest and belly deflate. 2. The first thing that will happen is your mind will wander to something else. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s actually the point. Notice that your mind wandered, let those extraneous thoughts go—you can return to them as soon as the two minutes are up—and allow your attention to return to your breath. 3. Noticing that your mind wandered and then returning your attention to your breath is the real work of mindfulness. It’s not so much about paying attention to your breath as it is about noticing what you’re paying attention to without judgment, and making a choice about whether you want to pay attention to it. What you’re “mindful” of is both your breath and your attention to your breath. By practicing this skill of noticing what you’re paying attention to, you are teaching yourself to be in control of your brain, so that your brain is not in control of you. This regular two-minute practice will gradually result in periodic moments throughout the day when you notice what you’re paying attention to and then decide if that’s what you want to pay attention to right now, or if you want to pay attention to something else. What you pay attention to matters less than how you pay attention. This is a sideways strategy for weeding trauma out of your garden. It’s a way of simply noticing a weed and then deciding if you want to water it or not, pull it or not, fertilize it or not. The weed of trauma will gradually disappear as long as at least half the time you choose not to nurture it. And the more you choose to withdraw your protection from the trauma, the faster it will wither and die. Mindfulness is good for everyone and everything. It is to your mind what exercise and green vegetables are to your body. If you change only one thing in your life as a result of reading this book, make it this daily two-minute practice. The practice grants the opportunity to “cultivate deep respect for emotions,” differentiating their causes from their effects and granting you choice over how you manage them. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

23 " Remind yourself that the day you were born, your body was a cause for celebration, for love without condition, and that’s just as true today as it was then. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

24 " If you’re anxious or depressed, you are less curious about novelty and are more interested in being in a comfortable, familiar environment. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

25 " We know by now that there’s no such thing as normal—or rather, that we’re all normal. We’re all made of the same parts as everyone else, organized in a unique way. No two alike. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

26 " Medieval anatomists called women’s external genitals the “pudendum,” a word derived from the Latin pudere, meaning “to make ashamed.” Our genitalia were thus named “from the shamefacedness that is in women to have them seen.”1 "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

27 " Because you’ve dealt with the stressor,” I said, “but not the stress. Your bodies still think you’re being chased by the lion. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

28 " And even though I’d love you to find meaning in every page, every paragraph of this book, cherry-pick from here, too. We’re all different, so what’s relevant for you is definitely, absolutely not the same as what’s relevant for me or for any of the many hundreds of women I’ve taught. Take what’s relevant. Ignore what isn’t; it’s there for somebody else who needs it. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

29 " What you pay attention to matters less than how you pay attention. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

30 " Should” is all about what you’re “doing wrong. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

31 " And the answer is, of course, “Ugh, patriarchy. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

32 " It’s like one day I just decided that it was all bullshit. Who are they to tell me I’m not amazing exactly as I am? "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

33 " a woman’s body and her pleasure belong to her and no one else; that it’s possible to say no to intercourse without saying no to all the other things that come with it—the love and the affection and the pleasure and the play; and that my own internal experience was a legitimate guide for whether or not I wanted to try something "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

34 " Allow yourself to feel those old feelings, but now, instead of engaging in the habitual self-defensive patterns, begin practicing new patterns. In the process of changing the patterns, the residual trauma will emerge. Know that you can feel all your Feels and still be safe. Know that you did everything you could in that moment to protect yourself; grant yourself forgiveness for the things you may still blame yourself for, recognizing that the trauma is the fault of the perpetrator alone. And imagine yourself as you are now, safe and whole. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

35 " Sexual violence often doesn't look like what we think of as "violence" - only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn't even "aggression" as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person's choice about what will happen next. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

36 " I wrote it because I am done living in a world where women are lied to about their bodies; where women are objects of sexual desire but not subjects of sexual pleasure; where sex is used as a weapon against women; and where women believe their bodies are broken, simply because those bodies are not male. And I am done living in a world where women are trained from birth to treat their bodies as the enemy. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

37 " This means intentionally adding distance that creates an edgy instability or uncertainty, a slight and enjoyable dissatisfaction. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

38 " When you were born, you were deeply, gloriously satisfied with each and every part of your body. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

39 " the best meta-emotion predictor of wellbeing is a variable known as “nonjudge. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life

40 " (Daniel Kahneman wrote of his own Nobel Prize–winning research in economics, “You know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious. "

― Emily Nagoski , Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life