“We don’t control the vileness of the world or of other people. We do control whether we contribute to it though, whether we choose to contrast it with our own splendor and goodness. We control what we look for also–as Marcus [Aurelius] did, filling Meditations not just with somber or depressing notes but also observations about the beauty and majesty of nature and life. Will you be splendid or vile? That’s the call you get to make, always and forever.”
Ryan Holiday
“Explore life from a position of power. When you believe, ‘Even if I stay single, I’ll still have a great life‘… then you are in a much better position to enter a relationship. When you believe, ‘Even if I don’t get into this school, I’ll still have a great life‘… then you are in a much better position to apply. When you believe, ‘Even if I don’t succeed with this business, I’ll still have a great life‘… then you are in a much better position to give it a try. Sure, you may want the relationship to work or the business to be a success—and you should give it your best effort—but also realize that if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be fine. There are many ways to live a great life.”
James Clear
“[Gratitude is when] you recognize that something is valuable to you, which has nothing to do with its monetary worth.”
David Steindl-Rast, via Think Like A Monk (Page 192)
“If you envision your hopes, dreams, and fears of the future, you can process feelings before they happen, strengthening yourself to take on new challenges. Before giving a speech, I often prepare by visualizing myself going on stage to deliver it. Anything you see in the man-made world—this book, a table, a clock—whatever it is, it existed in someone’s mind before it came to be. In order to create something we have to imagine it. This is why visualization is so important. Whatever we build internally can be built externally.”
Jay Shetty, via Think Like A Monk (Page 192)
“Your profession should only be one part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating, he is a doctor. While he is making love, he is a doctor. Then it is madness; it is insane. My suggestion is that you work for five or six hours. Use the remaining hours for other things: for sleep, for music, for poetry, for meditation, for love, or for just fooling around. That too is needed. If a person becomes too wise and cannot fool around, he becomes heavy, somber, serious. He misses life.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 87)
“Believe those who search for the truth; doubt those who have found it.”
André Gide, via Think Like A Monk (Page 196)
“When you ask for feedback, choose your advisors wisely. We commonly make one of two mistakes when we seek feedback: We either ask everyone for advice about one problem or we ask one person for advice about all of our problems. If you ask too broadly, you’ll get fifty-seven different options and will be overwhelmed, confused, and lost. On the other hand, if you drop all your dilemmas on one person, then they’ll be overwhelmed, unequipped, and at some point tired of carrying your baggage.”
Jay Shetty, via Think Like A Monk (Page 192)
“Humility comes from accepting where you are without seeing it as a reflection of who you are. Then you can use your imagination to find success.”
Jay Shetty, via Think Like A Monk (Page 188)
“What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow.”
Unknown, via Think Like A Monk (Page 185)
“We only notice salt when there is too much of it in our food, or not enough. Nobody ever says, ‘Wow, this meal has the perfect amount of salt.’ When salt is used in the best way possible, it goes unrecognized. Salt is so humble that when something goes wrong, it takes the blame, and when everything goes right, it doesn’t take credit.”
Radhanath Swami, via Think Like A Monk (Page 185)
“At the ashram, the most straightforward path to humility was through simple work, menial tasks that didn’t place any participant at the center of attention. We washed huge pots with hoses, pulled weeds in the vegetable garden, and washed down the squat toilets—the worst! The point wasn’t just to complete the work that needed to be done. It was to keep us from getting big-headed. Some tasks build competence, and some build character.”
Jay Shetty, via Think Like A Monk (Page 178)
“People are very absolutist. They think in terms of absolutes: This is truth and whatever is against it is wrong. This attitude has crippled the whole earth—Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all fighting because everybody claims the absolute truth. But nobody has any claim on it. It is nobody’s monopoly. Truth is vast. Infinite are its facets and infinite are the ways to know it. Whatever we know is limited; it is just one part.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 82)
“In the act of criticizing others for failing to live up to higher standards, we ourselves are failing to live up to the highest standards.”
Jay Shetty, via Think Like A Monk (Page 178)
“Detachment is not that you own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”
Alī, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammed, via Think Like A Monk (Page 165)
“Senses recklessly transport our minds away from where we want them to be. Don’t tease your own senses. Don’t set yourself up to fail. A monk doesn’t spend time in a strip club. We want to minimize the mind’s reactive tendencies, and the easiest way to do that is for the intellect to proactively steer the senses away from stimuli that could make the mind react in ways that are hard to control. It’s up to the intellect to know when you’re vulnerable and to tighten the reins, just as a charioteer does when going through a field of tasty grass.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 153)
“As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.”
Buddha, via Think Like A Monk (Page 147)
“Location has energy; time has memory. If you do something at the same time every day, it becomes easier and natural. If you do something in the same space every day, it becomes easier and natural.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 140)