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“You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply—though all the while that very day… may be your last.” ~ Seneca, via Essential Zen Habits (Page 22)
“Remember the truth about the mind when it comes to change: it’s a little child. Imagine that your brain is a child that wants pleasure and wants to get what it wants, and it really wants to get out of discomfort. This Childish Mind will do everything it can to get out of discomfort. It will make you run from exercise, from doing difficult tasks, from new and confusing things. The Childish Mind will make excuses, rationalizations, beg to quit. It’s very, very good at what it does, and it’s constantly working against our best intentions. I learned how to overcome this Childish Mind Syndrome: I made my running habit ridiculously easy. I told myself all I had to do was go out and run for a few minutes. My Childish Mind couldn’t object to that, because it was so easy! And when you make your habit change easy, I’ve learned, the Childish Mind actually doesn’t work against you in the beginning.” ~ Leo Babauta, Essential Zen Habits (Page 18)
“Imagine that your life and your attention are a small room, and in this room you wanted to put a meditation cushion, a weight set for exercise, a kitchen for healthy eating, a couch for reading, a writing desk for creating a novel, a yoga mat for doing some yoga, and a tea table for mindfully drinking tea. The tiny room would be cramped, and none of these things would have any space, and we’d not really be able to do any of them. This is what happens when we try to do multiple habits at once: we overfill the small space of our lives and our attention so that we have no room for anything. Instead, imagine that we only had one thing in that room—let’s say the writing desk. That’s all that’s in the room for the moment. This desk would have space, and the writing would get our full attention. Create space for your habit change, by doing one habit at a time, and you’ll do your best job on that habit.” ~ Leo Babauta, Essential Zen Habits (Page 16)
Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly [Book]
![Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly by Leo Babauta [Book]](https://www.movemequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IMG_4400.jpg "Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly by Leo Babauta [Book]")
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- 16 Leo Babauta Quotes from Essential Zen Habits and How To Master the Art of Change
- Leo Babauta Quote on Expectations and Our Attachment To Ideals (Beyond the Quote 175/365)
- Pema Chodron Quote on Suffering and What We Should Do To Alleviate It (Beyond the Quote 59/365)
- Leo Babauta Quote on Using Mistakes As Feedback (Beyond the Quote 39/365)
- Leo Babauta Quote on How Self-Reflection Changed His Life (Beyond the Quote 37/365)
The Minimalists’ Quote on Changing The People Around You
“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
The Minimalists, Everything That Remains
Beyond the Quote (34/365)
Sure we might influence or inspire the people around us to change, but we certainly can’t force them to change. Change is an inside-out job. It’s something that a person has to want themselves and something they have to manifest from within. The outside-in approach simply doesn’t work. You can yell and scream and shout and argue with a person until the veins in your neck pop out—a person won’t change until they decide they’re ready, willing, and capable of change.
Read More »The Minimalists’ Quote on Changing The People Around You12 Iain Thomas Quotes from Every Word You Cannot Say To Help When Life Is Hard
Excerpt: Life can be hard. Words can help. Read our 12 empowering Iain Thomas quotes from Every Word You Cannot Say for help finding the right ones.
Read More »12 Iain Thomas Quotes from Every Word You Cannot Say To Help When Life Is Hard
Quote About Being Patient and Not Chasing Anything Or Anyone
“I no longer chase anything or anyone. I work for what I want and I remain patient while going after it. So called friends who want to go, can go. Lovers who have forgotten how to love me, can go. I do not have energy to chase what is not for me. Life is too short for me to run miles for people who don’t take steps for me.”
Unknown, Relationship Rules
Beyond the Quote (32/365)
Anything forced is ugly. This is an expression that I find myself referencing often in my life. Relationships of all kinds should be a metaphorical (and sometimes literal) joining of the hands and a shared walking forward of the same path, with excitement, grace, and love. Relationships should never be a “tugging” of one person from one path to another. And relationships certainly should never be “forced” or a “dragging” of one person who is trying to walk on a path of their own down a path of your own. Forced relationships are ugly.
Read More »Quote About Being Patient and Not Chasing Anything Or Anyone“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent, when they are not.”
Thich Nhat Hanh | Read Matt’s Blog on this Quote ➜
Sakyong Mipham Quote on Living Our Days At The Mercy Of Our Moods
“With an untrained mind, we’ll live most days of our lives at the mercy of our moods. Waking up in the morning is like gambling: ‘What mind did I end up with today? Is it the irritated mind, the happy mind, the anxious mind, the angry mind, the compassionate mind, or the loving mind?’ Most of the time we believe that the mind-set we have is who we are and we live our day from it.”
Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 20)
Beyond the Quote (29/365)
Gambling is not a good strategy for long-term success. Heck, it’s not even a good strategy for short-term success. It’s not a good strategy for success at all. The odds are against you and the factor that holds most of the control over your destiny is blind-luck. What’s better than blind-luck? Well, just about any other strategy, to be honest.
Read More »Sakyong Mipham Quote on Living Our Days At The Mercy Of Our MoodsMark Divine Quote on The Art Of Positive Thinking
“The art of positive self-talk is simply paying attention to your inner dialogue and directing it toward positive, performance-based language. Most people don’t take the time to sit back and witness their own thoughts, which is an essential step toward realizing that our thoughts are not who we are. They don’t control us. They’re just thoughts. The only power they have is what we give them—what we feed them. Once you create that mental distance between you and your thoughts, you can start to tame and manage them.”
Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal
Beyond the Quote (28/365)
The difference between false-positivity and performance-based positivity is in the types of actions each inspire you to take. In the first, you put a happy face on, you mask your emotions, and you distract yourself from the real problems with positive thinking—it’s a diversion and is nothing more than an avoidance strategy that leads to inaction. In the second, positivity is looked at as a strategy that can be deployed and used to best deal with tough situations or emotions that are at hand. Because if we’re going to deal with the situation(s) regardless (given that you’re not going to bury your head in the sand) we might as well do it from a place where we are mentally at our best.
Read More »Mark Divine Quote on The Art Of Positive ThinkingSusan David Quote on False Positivity and Why We Shouldn’t Push Aside Difficult Emotions
“When we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful
Beyond the Quote (27/365)
This is the problem with positive thinking from a superficial standpoint. If something sad happens and you try to cover it up with happy thoughts, like a kind of mask, you get an un-dealt-with-sadness that lies suppressed inside. When something really upsets you and you try to distract your mind from confronting that “upset-ness,” those feelings will get pushed down and will continue to broil from deep within.
Read More »Susan David Quote on False Positivity and Why We Shouldn’t Push Aside Difficult Emotions24 Motivating Kobe Bryant Quotes from The Mamba Mentality on Work Ethic, Mindset, and Greatness
Excerpt: Peer into the mind of one of basketball’s all-time greats: Kobe Bryant. These 24 Quotes from The Mamba Mentality highlight Kobe’s insane work ethic, unmatched mindset, and his commitment to greatness.
Read More »24 Motivating Kobe Bryant Quotes from The Mamba Mentality on Work Ethic, Mindset, and Greatness
