25 Life-Altering Quotes On How Mindset Changes Everything

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Excerpt: What does the mindset of an extraordinary person look like? Ordinary? Probably not. Mindset changes everything. Read these quotes to see why.

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Introduction: What does the mindset of an extraordinary person look like?

Before you read all of the quotes below, or even continue reading this intro, take a quick glance at the authors for each of these 25 quotes listed below.  I’m sure you will agree that there are some pretty extraordinary people included in this list.  I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that these extraordinary people are grouped together in the same list on how mindset changes everything.  In fact, I happen to think that it’s because they were able to master their mindset that they have become the extraordinary people we know them to be today. 

It all starts with the mind.  Regardless of your circumstances or your given set of challenges, your mind holds within it the power to make any and all experiences painful, stressful, and depressing or pleasurable, opportunistic, and enlightening.  Your growth potential from each given circumstance and challenge is only limited by your imagination and mindset.  Consider the following list of examples:

• You were born with less to start.  Whether it be money, connections, or opportunities – you started off with less than others.  You can whine and complain about it and succumb to your circumstances.  Or, you can look at it as an opportunity to live your life as the underdog and make your rise to the top all the more inspiring!  How?  That’ll be for you to figure out and for you to share with the world.  Case and point?  Oprah Winfrey. [1]

• You break up with your significant other.  You may choose to look at it like your “other half is missing” and feel sorry for yourself and incomplete.  Or you can come to an understanding that a relationship shouldn’t be composed of two “halves” that come together to make one whole, but rather two “wholes” that compliment each other beautifully.  You can choose to ball up your emotions and distract your thinking with endless passive entertainment.  Or you can choose to reconnect with your inner self.  You can be dependent on another person before you can experience happiness and “wholeness” or you can choose to bring out the happiness and “wholeness” that is already waiting within you.

• You were born or diagnosed with a disease or disorder.  You have zero control over your genetics.  Who you are when you were born is who you are.  You do however, have 100% control over who you become.  Several extraordinary people come to mind that exemplify this to an amazing degree.  The “ugliest women in the world” is doing TED Talks.  Sean Stephenson was a motivational speaker, author, and life coach who was living an incredibly full life even though he was wheelchair bound with Brittle Bone Disorder (Osteogenesis Imperfecta) [2].  Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University Professor, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and in his last several months of life, left behind a legacy that influenced the lives of millions [3].

The bottom line is, as Gary Mack states in one of the quotes listed below, “While positive thinking doesn’t always work, negative thinking, unfortunately, almost always does.”  If you want to live in a happier world, think of ways you can make people smile more often – don’t be Mr. Frowny Face who complains about life.

If you want to live in a more peaceful world, think of ways you can become more peaceful in all of your actions – don’t be Mr. Hypocrite who yells, screams, and starts fights. And if you want to live in a world where the sun shines bright and the moon brings with it the stars, then make up your mind and resolve to start seeing things that way.  It could very well alter the course of your life.

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The List:  25 Life-Altering Quotes On How Mindset Changes Everything

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“There is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so.”

Hamlet

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

John Wooden

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”

Oprah Winfrey

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

Sun Tzu

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.”

Duke Ellington

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.”

Dale Carnegie

“While positive thinking doesn’t always work, negative thinking, unfortunately, almost always does.”

Gary Mack, Mind Gym

“Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.”

Alphonse Karr

“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”

Epictetus, The Art of Living

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

Nelson Mandela

“Fairness is an illusion. Fairness never existed and never will. No one in life gets less or more than anyone else. We just get different stuff. That’s right. No one is dealt a bad or a good hand in life; we’re just dealt cards. It’s up to us to stay in the game and play. Sure, some cards look “better,” but they’re really not. If you look closely, you’ll see that anything you feel has been taken from you – or never given to you at all – was replaced with other amazing opportunities and gifts. It’s up to you to find them.”

Sean Stephenson, Get Off Your “But”

“The art of thinking is the greatest art of all, for ‘as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ The thinker knows he is today where his thoughts have taken him and that he is building his future by the quality of the thoughts he thinks.”

Wilfred Peterson, The Art of Living

“For many years of my life I thought one came down with a mood just as one comes down with a cold. But slowly I learned that moods are a product of purposeful unconsciousness and can be rectified by the very consciousness one worked so hard to evade.”

Robert A. Johnson, He

“One of the finest beliefs I developed years ago that helped me to enjoy all of my life experience was the idea that there are no bad experiences, that no matter what I go through in life – whether it’s a challenging experience or a pleasurable one – every experience provides me something of value if I look for it.”

Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

“Our mind is the foundation of all our actions, whether they are actions of body, speech, or mind, i.e., thinking. Whatever we think, say, or do arises from our mind. What our consciousness consumes becomes the substance of our life, so we have to be very careful which nutriments we ingest.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Savor

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

Maya Angelou

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

John Milton

“Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“There is really no reason to suffer. The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer. If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find. The same is true for happiness. The only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering.”

don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

“True happiness comes not when we get rid of all of our problems,but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice, and to learn.”

Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

“I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.”

Og Mandino

“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world (though its operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.”

James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“We can’t escape pain; we can’t escape the essential nature of our lives. But we do have a choice. We can give in and relent, or we can fight, persevere, and create a life worth living, a noble life. Pain is a fact; our evaluation of it is a choice.”

Jacob Held

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… We cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is plan on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… We are in charge of our attitudes.”

Charles R. Swindoll

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