49 Incredible Present Over Perfect Quotes For Booklovers

Last Updated on February 4, 2021 by Scott M. Thomas

Below you’ll see the impressive present over perfect quotes from the book ‘ Present Over Perfect’ by Shauna Niequist. An American and New York Times bestselling author. 

In this book, the author has tried to give a vision for her readers in light of her own life. Life is not a goal, but a journey. We have to adapt to it. It is wise to go to work without overthinking. 

If you keep thinking about the past, you will get frustrated, and if you think about the future, you will get anxious. So according to the author, we have to live in the present. If we can do the work of today or this moment properly then peace will come down in our life.

“Stop. Right now. Remake your life from the inside out.” – Shauna Niequist

“Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.” – Shauna Niequist

shauna niequist present over perfect quotes

“The present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale.” – Shauna Niequist

”I tried all the outside ways first—I imagined the changes I needed to make were about time management or perhaps having the cleaners come more often. I quickly found it was not about managing time or housekeeping. It was not about to-do lists or scheduling or minutes and hours. This journey has been about love, about worth, about God, about what it means to know him and be loved by him in a way that grounds and reorders everything.” – Shauna Niequist

”Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. The present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness.” – Shauna Niequist

”Present over perfect living is real over the image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on its own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be jazzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful.” – Shauna Niequist

”The skills that take you through the first half of your life are entirely unhelpful for the second half. To press the point a little bit: those skills I developed that supposedly served me well for the first half, as I inspect them a little more closely, didn’t actually serve me at all. They made me responsible and capable and really, really tired. They made me productive and practical, and inch by inch, year by year, they moved me further and further from the warm, whimsical person I used to be . . . and I missed her.” – Shauna Niequist

”It astounds me to realize that the groundedness is within me and that maybe it was there all along.” – Shauna Niequist

”Leave behind the heavyweight of comparison, competition, and exhaustion, and to recraft a life marked by meaning, connection, and unconditional love.” – Shauna Niequist

present over perfect lessons

”No more pushing and rushing. No more cold pizza at midnight, no more flights, no more books, no more houseguests, no more of all these things, even things I love, things I long for, things that make me happy. No more. Only less.Less of everything. Less stress. Less crying. Less noise. Less TV. Less wine.Less online shopping. Less one more thing, whether that one more thing is a trip or a movie or a boat ride or a playdate. Less cramming 36—or 56 or 106—hours into a day that has only ever held 24.” – Shauna Niequist

”Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you.” – Shauna Niequist

”I knew that I needed to work less. That’s absolutely true. That’s the first step. But it’s trickier than that: the internal voice that tells me to hustle can find a to-do list in my living room as easily as it can in an office. It’s not about paid employment. It’s about trusting that the hustle will never make you feel the way you want to feel. In that way, it’s a drug, and I fall for the initial rush every time: if I push enough, I will feel whole. I will feel proud, I will feel happy. What I feel, though, is exhausted and resentful, but with well-organized closets.” – Shauna Niequist

”I’ve been working all my life. Work has been a through-line, one that I’m very thankful for, one that has taught me so much about the benefits of structure, discipline, skill, communication, and responsibility. But at some point, good clean work became something else: an impossible standard to meet, a frantic way of living, a practice of ignoring my body and my spirit in order to prove myself as the hardest of hard workers.” – Shauna Niequist

”As I unravel the many things that brought me to this crisis point, one is undeniably my own belief that hard work can solve anything, that pushing through is always the right thing, that rest and slowness are for weak people, not for high-capacity people like me.” – Shauna Niequist

”Productivity became my idol, the thing I loved and valued above all else. We all have these complicated tangles of belief and identity and narrative, and one of the early stories I told about myself is that my ability to get-it-done is what kept me around. I wasn’t beautiful. I didn’t have a special or delicate skill. But I could get stuff done, and it seemed to me that ability was my entrance into the rooms into which I wanted to be invited. I couldn’t imagine a world of unconditional love or grace, where people simply enter into rooms because the door is open to everyone.” – Shauna Niequist

”I believed that work would save me, make me happy, solve my problems; that if I absolutely wore myself out, happiness would be waiting for me on the other side of all that work. But it wasn’t. On the other side was just more work. More expectations, more responsibility.” – Shauna Niequist

best quotes from present over perfect

”There we were, women in our thirties. Educated, married, mothers, women who have careers, who manage homes and oversee companies. And there we were, utterly resigned to lives that feel overly busy and pressurized, disconnected and exhausted. But that’s shifting the blame, right? Who’s the boss, if not us? Who’s forcing us to live this way? Or, possibly, do we not want to face the answer to that question, preferring to believe we can’t possibly be held responsible for what we’ve done?” – Shauna Niequist

”And many of us continue to pretend we don’t have a choice—the success just happened, and we’re along for the ride. The opportunities kept coming, and anyone in our position would have jumped to meet them. But we’re the ones who keep putting up the chairs. If I work in such a way that I don’t have enough energy to give to my marriage, I need to take down some chairs. If I say yes to so many work things that my kids only get to see tired mommy, I need to take down some chairs.” – Shauna Niequist

”The word that changed everything, of course, is no. I’d been saying yes and yes and yes, indiscriminately, haphazardly, resentfully for years. And I realized all at once that I’d spent all my yeses, and in order to find peace and health in my life, I needed to learn to say no.” – Shauna Niequist

“My mentor’s words rang in my ears: Stop. Right now. Remake your life from the inside out. I don’t know a way to remake anything without first taking down the existing structures, and that’s what no does—it puts the brakes on your screaming-fast life and gives you a chance to stop and inspect just exactly what you’ve created for yourself, as difficult as that might be.” – Shauna Niequist

”What kills a soul? Exhaustion, secret-keeping, image management. And what brings a soul back from the dead? Honesty, connection, grace.” – Shauna Niequist

”Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of disappointing anyone. They think that if you are kind, you’ll never disappoint anyone. They think that if you try hard enough if you manage your time well enough if you’re selfless enough, prayerful enough, godly enough, you’ll never disappoint anyone. I fear these people are headed for a rude awakening.” – Shauna Niequist

“The world will tell you how to live if you let it. Don’t let it. Take up your space. Raise your voice. Sing your song. This is your chance to make or remake a life that thrills you.” – Shauna Niequist

”We disappoint people because we’re limited. We have to accept the idea of our own limitations in order to accept the idea that we’ll disappoint people. I have this much time. I have this much energy. I have this much relational capacity. And it does get easier. The first few times I had to say no was excruciating. But as you regularly tell the truth about what you can and can’t do, who you are and who you’re not, you’ll be surprised at how some people will cheer you on. And, frankly, how much less you’ll care when other people don’t.” – Shauna Niequist

”What makes sense to me: pushing. Lists. Responsibility. Action, action, action. What’s changing my life: silence. Rest. Letting myself be fragile. Asking for help.” – Shauna Niequist

present over perfect quotes by shauna niequist

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and realize that the best thing about me as I was organized.” – Shauna Niequist

“What people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself.” – Shauna Niequist

”But as I learn to dwell in the silence of my own heart, I’m finding myself drawn to the silence of nature—of water, land, expanse. As I learn to trust the stillness I’ve been running from for so long, I’m finding that I crave more and more silence. I’m drawn back to the water, to the sound of the waves instead of the sounds of traffic and the blare of action and excitement.” – Shauna Niequist

”What’s changing everything for me is a new understanding that we get to decide how we want to live. We get to shape our days and our weeks, and if we don’t, they’ll get shaped by the wide catch-all of “normal” and “typical,” and who wants that?” – Shauna Niequist

”In seasons of deep transformation, silence will be your greatest guide. Even if it’s scary, especially if it’s scary, let silence be your anchor, your sacred space, your dwelling place. It’s where you will become used to your own voice, your agency, your authority. It’s where you will nurture that fledgling sense of authority, like a newborn deer on spindly fragile legs. Silence will become the incubator for your newfound spirit, keeping it safe, growing it steadily.” – Shauna Niequist

”It’s when I’m alone and quiet that I feel my strength. I need more and more of it than I ever have, like a vitamin, like a safe house.” – Shauna Niequist

present over perfect quotes images

”It is better to be loved than admired. It is better to be truly known and seen and taken care of by a small tribe than adored by strangers who think they know you in a meaningful way. We know that’s true. But many of us, functionally, have gotten that math wrong in one season or another.” – Shauna Niequist

”It’s easier to be impressive to strangers than it is to be consistently kind behind the scenes. It’s easier to show up and be a hit for an hour than it is to get down on the floor with your kids when you’re so tired your eyes are screaming and bone-dry. It’s easier to be charming on a conference call than it is to traverse the distance between you and your spouse, the distance you created.” – Shauna Niequist

”Sometimes being brave is being quiet. Being brave is getting off the drug of performance. For me, being brave is trusting that what my God is asking of me, what my family and community are asking from me, is totally different than what our culture says I should do. Sometimes, bravely looks boring, and that’s totally, absolutely, okay.” – Shauna Niequist

”I chose to be present over perfect, and that’s still what I choose today….It’s about learning to show up and let ourselves be seen just as we are, massively imperfect and weak and wild and flawed in a thousand ways, but still worth loving. It’s about realizing that what makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish, but how deeply and honestly we connect with the people in our lives, how wholly we give ourselves to the making of a better world, through kindness and courage.” – Shauna Niequist

”In the silence, I have found love. I have found love and peace, and stillness, and gratitude. I used to overwork in order to feel important. What I’m learning now is that feeling important to someone else isn’t valuable to me the way I thought it was. Feeling connected is very valuable. But feeling helpful to strangers doesn’t do it for me anymore.” – Shauna Niequist

”Hold close to your essential self. Get to know it, the way you get to know everything in the world about someone you’re in love with, the way you know your child, their every freckle and preference, and which cry means what.” – Shauna Niequist

“The best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.” – Shauna Niequist

best quotes from present over perfect for you

”You cannot be a mystic when you’re hustling all the time. You can’t be a poet when you start to speak in certainties. You can’t stay tender and connected when you hurl yourself through life like being shot out of a cannon, your very speed a weapon you wield to keep yourself safe. The natural world is so breathtakingly beautiful. People are so weird and awesome and loving and life-giving. Why, then, did I try so hard for so long to get away without feeling or living deeply?” – Shauna Niequist

”That’s how it is when you leave these things behind—busyness, exhaustion, codependence, compulsive anything—you can see the cracks and brokenness in your relationships for what they really are, and you realize that you can’t move forward the way you have been, that you have to either fix the cracks or let the connection break—those are the only two honest ways.” – Shauna Niequist

”When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the pen back. Not easily anyway.” – Shauna Niequist

”Do you know the sweetness of working hard and then stopping the working hard, realizing that your body and your spirit have carried you far enough and now they need to be tended to? I feel like a newborn in all this, blissful and delighted each time I take care of myself, like a new skill or a present.” – Shauna Niequist

”What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?” – Shauna Niequist

”It’s been said a million times that the most important things aren’t things. But if we’re not careful, it seems, many of us find ourselves overwhelmed by all the stuff we have to manage, instead of focusing on what we’re most passionate about—writing or making or painting or connecting with people.” – Shauna Niequist

”Whatever you’ve achieved, wherever you’ve arrived—a dollar amount in the bank, a number on the scale, that award or promotion or perfect house—whatever it is, if in order to get there, you laid your soul down, believing it was unnecessary baggage or an acceptable sacrifice, I’m here to tell you, with great love and tenderness, that you’re wrong; and that I’d love to take you by the hand, and walk back as far as we need to, down the road of your past, to find it, like a sweater you dropped walking to class, like a scarf that slipped off your shoulders unnoticed.” – Shauna Niequist

”Here it is. Here’s love. Here’s the love: it’s in marriage and parenting. It’s in family and friends. It’s in sacrifice and forgiveness. It’s in dinner around the coffee table and long walks. It’s in the hands and faces of the people we see every day, in the whispers of our prayers and hymns and songs. It’s in our neighborhoods and churches, our classrooms and living rooms, on the water, and in the stories, we tell. And let me tell you where it’s not: it’s not in numbers—numbers in bank accounts, numbers on scales, numbers on report cards or credit scores.” – Shauna Niequist

”How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life, whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.” – Shauna Niequist

present over perfect quotes inspirational

”The love you’re looking for is never something you can calculate. It’s not something you can buy or earn or hustle for. It’s something you discover in the silence, in the groundedness, in the sacred risky act of being exactly who you are—nothing more, nothing less. In that still, holy space, the love you’ve been frantically hunting for all along will bloom within your ribs. And you will know, at that moment, that it has been there all along, like a whisper, the very Spirit of God himself.” – Shauna Niequist

There are more interesting posts like this one. Don’t forget to check them – Phantom Of The Opera Quotes, 44 Best Throne Of Glass Quotes

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