“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves.”
Karl Ove Knausgard, Autumn
“The reason creativity wilts inside of us like a vase full of snipped wildflowers is the very same reason love fades. Somewhere along the line, we stop noticing. We can never stop noticing. The moment we stop noticing, we might as well be dead. We’re alive and breathing but we feel nothing at all. Creativity and love dies when we feel nothing at all. And so we notice so we we can feel because, in the words of Klinkenborg, noticing means thinking with all your senses.”
Cole Schafer
“Ambition is tying your well-being to what other people do and say… sanity is tying it to your own actions.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“There is no perfect formula for healing. No precise amount of time that it takes to mend the heart and mind. With healing, time is not even the major factor. What matters most is that you are putting energy into unpacking, understanding, and unbinding the heavy conditioning and hurt that you carry. Through meditation, journaling, therapy, or intentional living, you will find a process that helps you feel renewed and lighter. Make sure that rushing or forcing is not part of your plan; quickness is not a sign of healing or strength. Let the ups and downs be a natural part of your journey, don’t fight the fact that every day will not be a great day. Let yourself breathe into each moment, keep directing your life with the magic of your intention, this will help you find your way…”
Yung Pueblo
“Life is not going to go your way. You have to go your way and take life with you.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 275)
“Love knows only one experience that is satisfying, and that is to go to the very peak, to the ultimate peak, even once. Then there is a great change in energy. To know love once at the climax is enough; then there is no need to go into it again and again.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 105)
“When we’re in service, we’re an instrument of grace and compassion. We feel this, and sometimes it goes to our heads. But remember that whatever you are giving was given to you. When you pass it on, you can’t take credit for it.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 265)
“The problems that some of us face are mental—anxiety, depression, loneliness—whereas for many of the people in need of service the greatest challenges are more basic—food, clothing, shelter. We can heal our mental challenges by helping them with their physical needs. Service, therefore, is a reciprocal exchange. You’re not saving anyone by helping them—you need help as much as they do.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 265)
“Our misery is that we have forgotten the language of love. The reason we have forgotten the language of love is that we have become too identified with reason. Nothing is wrong with reason, but it has a tendency to monopolize. It clings to the whole of your being. Then feeling suffers—feeling is starved—and by and by you forget about feeling completely. So it goes on shrinking and shrinking, and that dead feeling becomes a dead weight; that feeling becomes a dead heart. Then one can go on pulling oneself along somehow—it will always be ‘somehow.’ There will be no charm, no magic, because without love there is no magic in life. And there will be no poetry either; life will be all prose, flat. Yes, it will have grammar, but it will not have a song in it. It will have a structure, but it will not have substance.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 102)
“Find me someone who has gone to the darkest parts of their own character where they were so close to their own self-destruction and found a way to get up and out of it, and I will bow on my knees to you… You’re my teacher.”
Seane Corn, via Think Like A Monk (Page 259)
“It’s hard to think about selflessness when we are struggling. And yet that is exactly what I learned as a monk. Selflessness is the surest route to inner peace and a meaningful life. Selflessness heals the self.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 256)
“If you’ve lost yourself in the relationship, find yourself in the heartbreak.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 252)
“In every relationship you have the opportunity to set the level of joy you expect and the level of pain you’ll accept. No relationship is perfect, but if joy never reaches a certain height, or holds to a low average, that won’t change unless you both put in a lot of work. The same is true for how much disappointment you’re willing to bear. Your connection may get a slow start—it can take a while to know each other—but if it never reaches a satisfying level, you need to decide whether to accept it or move on.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 251)
“Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 246)
“Nobody wants to sit with you at dinner while you’re on the phone. This is where we confuse time and energy. You can spend a whole hour with someone, but only give them ten minutes of energy. I’m not able to spend much time with my family, but when I’m with them I’m 100 percent there. I’d rather spend two hours with them, focused and engaged, than give them partial, distracted energy for a whole weekend.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 240)
“Do not ask your children
William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
“Exerting more effort doesn’t help if you’re on the wrong trajectory.
– Working harder on the wrong thing just wastes more time.
– Learning more from a biased source will lead you further from the truth.
– Doubling down on a toxic relationship only sets you up for more headaches.
Before you try harder, make sure you are walking a path that leads where you want to go.”
James Clear