“One person might enter your life as a welcome change. Like a new season, they are an exciting and enthralling shift of energy. But the season ends at some point, as all seasons do. Another person might come in with a reason. They help you learn and grow, or they support you through a difficult time. It almost feels like they’ve been deliberately sent to you to assist or guide you through a particular experience, after which their central role in your life decreases. And then there are lifetime people. They stand by your side through the best and worst of times, loving you even when you are giving nothing to them.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 230)
“It’s okay—necessary, in fact—to protect yourself from those in your family who aren’t good for you. We should have the same standards for our family as we do for everyone else, and if the relationship is fraught, we can love them and respect them from a distance while gathering the family we need from the wider world. This doesn’t mean we should neglect our families. But forgiveness and gratitude come more easily when we accept that we have friends and family, and we have friends that become family.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 229)
“If you tend to be intellectual, it will be difficult. Life is simple, nonintellectual. The whole problem of humanity is metaphysics. Life is as simple as a rose—there’s nothing complicated about it—and yet it is mysterious. Although there is nothing complicated about it, we are not able to comprehend it through the intellect. You can fall in love with a rose, you can smell it, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can even be it, but if you start dissecting it, you will only have something dead in your hands.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 98)
“There’s so much messaging today about how you always have to be yourself and trust your feelings. But I tell people, ‘be un-you.’ Like, what is the opposite of what you feel like doing right now? Or who is someone you really admire—what would they do in this moment? And I actually think that can get us closer to the versions of ourselves that we would like to be…Separating oneself from one’s impulse, taking a healthy step back and gaining some distance between what you feel like doing and what’s actually going to help you—you’ll make a better choice.”
Dr. Samantha Boardman
“Too often we love people who don’t love us, but we fail to return the love of others who do.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 224)
“Famously tall [Redwood trees], you’d think that they need deep roots to survive, but in fact their roots are shallow. What gives the trees resilience is that these roots spread widely. Redwoods best thrive in groves, interweaving their roots so the strong and weak together withstand the forces of nature.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 223)
“We can make our life just a restlessness or a dance. Rest is not in the nature of things, but we can have a very chaotic restlessness—that is misery, that is neurosis, that is madness. Or we can be creative with this energy; then restlessness is no longer restless. It becomes smooth, graceful—it starts taking the form of a dance and a song. And the paradox is that when the dancer is totally in dance, there is rest—the impossible happens, the center of the cyclone. But that rest is not possible in any other way. When the dance is total, only then does that rest happen.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 97)
“People always talk about ‘leaving money on the table’ like it’s a terrible thing. Why don’t you sell another digital product? Why don’t you do a mastermind? Why don’t you sell physical products? But no one ever speaks about the mental and emotional costs associated with managing all of that. I think we need to shift our perspectives.
April Perry, LearnDoBecome
– Why are you leaving ‘peace of mind’ on the table?
– Why are you leaving family time on the table?
– How about mental health and being ‘enough’ with what you already have and do?
– How is your connection with God?
– What’s the quality of your marriage?
– Can you sit and ‘just be’?
– Can you laugh and sing and truly relax with loved ones?
– Can you look at your relationships + natural + all God has given you, and sit in awe for a moment?
It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’ but out of all of that, if I have my family’s financial needs covered, the FIRST thing I’ll leave on the table is money.”
“We tend to think of gratitude as appreciation for what we have been given. Monks feel the same way. And if you ask a monk what he has been given, the answer is everything. The rich complexity of life is full of gifts and lessons that we can’t always see clearly for what they are, so why not choose to be grateful for what is, and what is possible? Embrace gratitude through daily practice, both internally—in how you look at your life and the world around you—and through action. Gratitude generates kindness, and this spirit will reverberate through our communities, bringing our highest intentions to those around us.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 221)
“There are imperfect people in our lives—ones toward whom we feel unresolved or mixed emotions and therefore have trouble summoning gratitude. And yet, gratitude is not black-and-white. We can be grateful for some, but not all, of a person’s behavior toward us. If your relationships are complicated, accept their complexity. Try to find forgiveness for their failures and gratitude for their efforts.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 220)
“Love has to be cherished, tasted very slowly, so that it suffuses your being and becomes such a possessing experience that you are no more. It is not that you are making love—you are love.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 96)
“Love is not just a form of care, it also carries essential wisdom, it teaches the liberating lesson that it if you seek to be truly free you have to enhance your perspective so that more beings are encompassed by your compassion. Having love for all beings does not mean you have to be friends or agree with everyone, it simply means that you are no longer interested in directly or indirectly harming others.”
Yung Pueblo
“When monks are praised, we detach, remembering that whatever we ere able to give was never ours to begin with. To receive gratitude with humility, start by thanking the person for noticing. Appreciate their attention and their intention. Look for a good quality in the other person and return the compliment. Then take the gratitude you are given as an opportunity to be grateful to your teachers.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 216)
“With meditation there is a deep necessity for love. They are both like wings, and you cannot fly with one wing. If meditation is going well, suddenly you will see that love is missing. If love is going very well, suddenly you will see that meditation is missing. If nothing is going well, then it is okay. One settles with one’s sadness, one’s closedness. But when one wing has started moving, the other wing is needed.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 95)
“Don’t judge the moment. As soon as you label something as bad, your mind starts to believe it. Instead, be grateful for setbacks. Allow the journey of life to progress at its own pace and in its own roundabout way. The universe may have other plans in store for you.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 212)
“When the monkey mind, which amplifies negativity, tries to convince us that we’re useless and worthless, the more reasonable monk mind counters by pointing out that others have given us their time, energy, and love. They have made efforts on our behalf. Gratitude for their kindness is entwined with self-esteem, because if we are worthless, then that would make their generosity toward us worthless too.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 207)