Inspirational Quotes

Below I have compiled inspirational quotes for mindfulness and happiness that resonate with me. When dealing with life’s inevitable challenges and events I find inspiration from others through a variety of sources, including quotes. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful when you are in need of a boost.

Living in the Now / Presence

People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

Eckhart Tolle

Yesterday is already gone. Tomorrow is not yet here. Today is the only day available to us; it is the most important day of our lives.

Thich Nhat Hanh

While you are walking, smile and be in the here and now, and you will transform that place into paradise.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The past has no power over the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle

The more you live in and enjoy the present moment, the happier you will be. 

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore
Self-Awareness

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

Eckhart Tolle

When the ego dies, the soul awakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.

Eckhart Tolle

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.

Lao Tzu

You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.

Sophia Bush
Mindfulness/Meditation

We’re sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we’re not getting any sunshine!

Ram Dass

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.

Eckhart Tolle

We try many ways to be awake, but our society still keeps us forgetful.  Meditation is to help us remember.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Self-care is so much more than a beauty regimen or an external thing you do. It has to start within your heart to know what you need to navigate your life. A pedicure doesn’t last, but meditating every day does.

Carrie-Anne Moss
Happiness

There is no way to happiness;  happiness is the way.  

Thich Nhat Hanh

Many people think excitement is happiness…. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.

C.S. Lewis

I’ve come to believe that seeking happiness is not a frivolous pursuit. It’s honorable and necessary. And most people forget even to think about it.

Goldie Hawn

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

Deepak Chopra
Gratitude

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.

Eckhart Tolle

It’s not happiness that brings us gratitude. It’s gratitude that brings us happiness.

Rhonda Byrne

Gratitude turns what we have into enough.

Aesop

The struggle ends when gratitude begins.

Neale Donald Walsch

Gratitude will shift you to a higher frequency, and you will attract much better things.

Rhonda Byrne

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius
Love

To love is to recognize yourself in another.

Eckhart Tolle

Love is a state of being. Your love is not outside, it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.

Eckhart Tolle

Love is the bridge between you and everything.

Rumi

Treat yourself with love and respect and you will attract people who show you love and respect.

Rhonda Byrne

Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.

Byron Katie
Acceptance / Letting Go

Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you’ve been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.

Eckhart Tolle

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.

Eckhart Tolle

In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. “That’s dangerous,” says the ego. “You’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable.” What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

Eckhart Tolle

How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.

Eckhart Tolle

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Tara Brach

We have the control over our own inner peace and happiness – ironically, the way to get there is to let go of the desire to control.

Barbara Demone

Knowledge is learning something every day, wisdom is letting go of something every day.

Zen Proverb

What if trees refused to let go of their dying leaves? Letting go let’s us grow.

Laurie Wallin
Learn/Grow

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.

Stephen Covey

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

John C. Maxwell

The important thing is to never stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

Life will give you whatever experience is the most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.

Eckhart Tolle

Through judging, we separate. Through understanding, we grow.

Doe Zantamata

No failure, just learning and growing.

David James Lees

Change

Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.

Eckhart Tolle

Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.

Robin S. Sharma

It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.

Roy T. Bennett

The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.

C. JoyBell C.
Challenge

Every challenge, every adversity contains within it the seeds of opportunity and growth. 

Roy Bennett

No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges.  That fact may not be obvious because most people don’t advertise their woes and heartaches.  But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars.

Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

Sometimes the darkest challenges, the most difficult lessons, hold the greatest gems of light.

Barbara Marciniak, Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

Sometimes you have to lose all you have to find out who you truly are.

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Challenge and adversity are meant to help you know who you are. Storms hit your weakness, but unlock your true strength.

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.

Bernard Williams
Dealing with Others

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.

Eckhart Tolle

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.

Eckhart Tolle

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.

Thich Nhat Hanh

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words. 

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

To know another human being in their essence, you don’t really need to know anything about them — their past, their history, their story.

Eckhart Tolle

Don’t compare yourselves to others – there is no purpose. You are on your own path.

Barbara Demone