Hugh Prather
Hugh Prather, Jr. was a writer, minister, and counselor, most famous for his first book, Notes to Myself. , which was first published in 1970 by Real People Press. It has sold over 5 million copies, and has been translated into ten languages.
Together with his second wife, Gayle Prather, whom he married in 1965, he wrote other books, including The Little Book of Letting Go; "I Touch the Earth, The Earth Touches Me"; How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy; I Will Never Leave You: How Couples Can Achieve The Power Of Lasting Love; Spiritual Notes to Myself: Essential Wisdom for the 21st Century; Shining Through: Switch on Your Life and Ground Yourself in Happiness; Spiritual Parenting: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing the Heart of Your Child; Standing on My Head: Life Lessons in Contradictions; A Book of Games: A Course in Spiritual Play; Love and Courage; Notes to Each Other; A Book for Couples; The Quiet Answer; and There is a Place Where You Are Not Alone.
Born in Dallas, the younger Hugh Prather earned a bachelor's degree at Southern Methodist University in 1966 after study at Principia College and Columbia University. He studied at the University of Texas at the graduate level without taking a degree. While he could be categorized as a New Age writer, he drew on Christian language and themes and seemed comfortable conceiving of God in personal terms. His work underscored the importance of gentleness, forgiveness, and loyalty; declined to endorse dramatic claims about the power of the individual mind to effect unilateral transformations of external material circumstances; and stressed the need for the mind to let go of destructive cognitions in a manner not unlike that encouraged by the cognitive-behavioral therapy of Aaron T. Beck and the rational emotive behavior therapy commended by Albert Ellis.
“It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.”
“Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser?”
“I don't need a "reason" to be happy. I don't have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now.”
“What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't.”
“All my life, I have made it complicated, but it is so simple. I love when I love. And when I love, I am myself.”
“It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.”
“Today I don't want to live for, I want to live.”
“Don't strive for love, be it.”
“We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don't -- and those feelings are probably realistic.”
“I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.”
“To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.”
“In order to see, I have to be willing to be seen.”
“No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves”
“Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.”
“If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write”
“perfectionism is a slow death. if everything were to turn out just like i would want it to, just like i would plan for it to, then i would never experience anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. when i make a mistake i experience something unexpected.... when i have listened to my mistakes i have grown.”
“By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it.”
“Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.”