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
- Self-Awareness
- Mindfulness/Meditation
- Happiness
- Gratitude
- Love
- Acceptance / Letting Go
- Learn/Grow
- Change
- Challenge
- Dealing with Others
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
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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
