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Tony Robbins Quote on Caring For Your Mind, Emotions, and Spirit Like A Garden—The Ultimate Garden

    “Think of your mind, your emotions, and your spirit as the ultimate garden. The way to ensure a bountiful, nourishing harvest is to plant seeds like love, warmth, and appreciation, instead of seeds like disappointment, anger, and fear.”

    Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

    Beyond the Quote (78/365)

    What seeds are you planting today?  Are you planting seeds of love, warmth, and appreciation in the garden of your mind?  What about in the minds of those around you?  Seeds don’t just plant themselves.  They need you to produce them first.  Some are easier to produce and plant than others.  Some get planted and start growing without you even knowing it.  Some take a ton of careful attention and hard work to cultivate and nurture to maturity.  One thing is for sure though, the ultimate garden of the mind requires constant effort and refinement in order to flourish—and mindfulness is the tool we need to use in order to see what needs to be done.

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    Rob Dyer Quote on Staying Focused On The Right Things—Things That Bring Us Together

      “At the end of the day, you can either focus on what’s tearing you apart, or what’s holding you together.”

      Rob Dyer

      Beyond the Quote (74/365)

      There is a lot happening right now that can make us feel like we’re being torn apart.  With the threat and spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), there is more and more happening each day that is moving us further and further apart and into smaller and smaller groups (even into isolation).  Everything from the biggest organizational gatherings in the world to the most remote meetings in our own backyard are being postponed and cancelled to prevent the spread of the virus.  During this time when we are being forced apart physically, we need to find ways to continue to come together mentally and emotionally.

      Read More »Rob Dyer Quote on Staying Focused On The Right Things—Things That Bring Us Together

      Albert Camus Quote on The Invincible Summer Inside

        “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

        Albert Camus, via Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 5)

        Beyond the Quote (65/365)

        Our world can be cold, harsh, and barren—there’s no doubt about that.  Yet, even in the depth of winter when things feel like they’re at their worst there’s still one place that the outside world can’t touch—our inside world.  The people around us might be despicable, we might be in an incredibly harsh and barren situation, and we might even be without a clear way out, but unless we let it, our inner world is ours only for the making.  This is not to say that the outside world won’t have an influence over our inside world—because it certainly can—but the absolute most it can have is an influence. It has no direct access or authoritative power over our inner world.  And what a profound revelation that is.

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        Steve Carlton Quote on Getting Out Of Your Own Way

          “You’ve gotta find a way to get out of your own way, so you can progress in life.”

          Steve Carlton

          Beyond the Quote (63/365)

          The ideal way to go from thought to end destination is through appropriate action.  Simple enough, right?  That’s the way you bring entrepreneurial ventures from thoughts to life.  It’s how you incorporate healthy lifestyle habits into your daily routine.  It’s how go from grade school to high school to college to job to career to living your imagined lifestyle.  And it all happens through the appropriate actions that you take once the appropriate thoughts get confirmed in your head.  But, as I’m sure you’re aware, taking appropriate actions isn’t all that simple.  Before you can take an appropriate action, you have to have the appropriate thoughts in your head confirmed.  And THIS is where most everybody gets tripped up.

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          Pema Chodron Quote on Suffering and What We Should Do To Alleviate It

            “It’s not the things that happen to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening.”

            Pema Chodron, via Essential Zen Habits (Page 106)

            Beyond the Quote (59/365)

            Think about your mind like a movie theater. What you say to yourself is what directs and creates the movie that plays in your mind. You can direct and play whatever type of movie you want—action, comedy, romance, horror, adventure, thriller, etc.  What you don’t get to do, however, is choose how the events in your movie unfold.  So, if you can’t control how the events unfold, how can you control how the movie plays out?  It’s all in the director’s (your) creative interpretation and expression of how those events influence the main character to think, feel, speak, and act (also you).  You get to take the expression, “Everything happens for a reason” and you get to determine why everything happened and for what reason and see to it that the movie plays out in a direction of your choosing.

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            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 Moods

                “Beginning meditation practice is an excellent opportunity to contemplate how we spend our time.  How much of what we do is important and truly necessary?  One of the obstacles to meditation is being pulled in too many directions.  What drains us; what nourishes us?  Are there activities we can postpone or eliminate?  It will be helpful to ask questions like these at the outset.  Awareness lays the ground for a strong commitment to practice.  Taming our mind isn’t a hobby or an extracurricular activity—it’s the most important thing we could be doing.  It can even help streamline a pressured situation because it gives us clarity, peace, and fortitude.  So while we may need to simplify our life in order to meditate, a benefit of meditation is that it will make our life simpler.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 216)

                  “I’ve said before that our bewildered mind is like a wild horse.  I have a very high regard for horses.  When I was in high school, I spent some time working on a ranch in West Texas.  A stallion in the distance on the high plains is a powerful sight to behold.  We don’t tame such a strong majestic creature by beating the spirit out of it.  Instead, we work with its raw power and turn that energy in a certain direction.  Where do we want to take that horse?  Where do we want to go riding?  We want to make a real journey.  We want to ride in the meadows of compassion, the gardens of awakened heart, the fields of wisdom.  This is the essence of the practice of contemplation: we learn to direct the energy of our mind toward enlightenment.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 132)

                    “Obviously, meditation can sometimes be difficult.  We may want to run away from practice, run from the cushion, even run from the word ‘meditation.’  We can run as far as we like, but what we’ll discover is that there is no better environment than meditation in which to build the stability, clarity, and strength of our mind.  At the same time, the difficulty of making it to the cushion, the difficulty of staying with the technique, the difficulty of abandoning discursiveness, isn’t going to disappear.  In procrastinating, we’re avoiding the one thing that really is going to make a difference in our lives.  Meditation stabilizes us in our inherent power as humans.  It introduces the possibility of living our lives in a continually conscious, confident, and balanced state of mind.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 91)

                      “From a Buddhist point of view, human beings aren’t intrinsically aggressive; we are inherently peaceful.  This is sometimes hard to believe.  When we’re angry or upset, our untrained mind becomes belligerent and we routinely strike out at others.  We imagine that reacting aggressively to the object of our emotion will resolve our pain.  Throughout history we have used this approach over and over again.  Striking out when we’re in pain is clearly one way we perpetuate misery.  With a trained mind, a stable mind, a mind with a larger motivation than its own comfort, we find another way to work with difficulties of daily life.  When we’re in a difficult situation, we maintain our seat.  Instead of perpetuating misery by acting out aggression, we learn to use the rough spots to spark the courage to proceed on our journey.  Eventually we may actually be able to turn the mind of anger into the energy of love and compassion.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 26)

                        “It’s fine to take pleasure, to enjoy good food, and to listen to beautiful music.  Becoming curious about how we suffer doesn’t mean that we can no longer enjoy eating ice cream.  But once we begin to understand the bewilderment of our untrained mind, we won’t look to the ice cream and say, ‘That’s happiness.’ We’ll realize that the mind can be happy devoid of ice cream.  We’ll realize that the mind is content and happy by nature.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 23)

                          “If we want to undo our own bewilderment and suffering and be of benefit to others and the planet, we’re going to have to be responsible for learning what our own mind is and how it works, no matter what beliefs we hold.  Once we see how our mind works, we see how our life works, too.  That changes us.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 5)

                          Turning The Mind Into An Ally [Book]

                            Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham

                            By: Sakyong Mipham

                            From this Book: 25 Quotes

                            Book Overview:  Strengthening, calming, and stabilizing the mind is the essential first step in accomplishing nearly any goal. Growing up American with a Tibetan twist, Sakyong Mipham talks to Westerners as no one can: in idiomatic English with stories and wisdom from American culture and the great Buddhist teachers. Turning the Mind Into an Ally makes it possible for anyone to achieve peace and clarity in their lives.  “Our own mind is our worst enemy.  We try to focus, and our mind wanders off.  We try to keep stress at bay, but anxiety keeps us awake at night… We can create an alliance that allows us to actually use our mind, rather than be used by it.  This is a practice anyone can do.” ~ Sakyong Mipham

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                            Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

                            1. 20 Sakyong Mipham Quotes on How To Turn the Mind Into An Ally
                            2. Penor Rinpoche Quote on Dealing With Life Now Rather Than Waiting (and Worrying) About It Later (Beyond the Quote 134/365)
                            3. Sakyong Mipham Quote on Living Our Days At The Mercy Of Our Moods (Beyond the Quotes 29/365)

                              “You may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems.  You believe that they are caused by specific situations in your life, and seen from a conventional viewpoint, this is true.  But until you have dealt with the basic problem-making dysfunction of the mind—its attachment to past and future and denial of the Now—problems are actually interchangeable.  If all your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go.  Ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.”

                              Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 61)

                                “If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life.  How to stop creating time?  Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.  Make the Now the primary focus of your life.  Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.  Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment.  What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say ‘yes’ to life—and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 35)

                                  “Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought.  For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered ‘speechless,’ sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger.  Suddenly, there is inner stillness.  And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 29)

                                    “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly.  Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.  To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don’t use it at all.  It uses you.  This is the disease.  You believe that you are your mind.  This is the delusion.  The instrument has taken you over.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 16)

                                      “Problems [are] only problems if you [think] about them that way.  Otherwise they [are] life—and yours for the living.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 113)