Quotes from J. Mark G. Williams

Get out of our heads and learn to experience the world directly, experientially, without the relentless commentary of our thoughts. We might just open ourselves up to the limitless possibilities for happiness that life has to offer us .

Being mindful means that we suspend judgment for a time, set aside our immediate goals for the future, and take in the present moment as it is rather than as we would like it to be.

We try so hard to be happy that we end up missing the most important parts of our lives and destroying the very peace that we were seeking

And when we make choices informed by a depressive state of mind, they're more than likely to keep us stuck in our unhappiness.

If we have been depressed before, a low mood can become easier and easier to trigger over time, because each time it returns, the thoughts, fe elings , body sensations, and behaviors that accompany it form stronger and stronger connections to each other. Eventually, any one element can trigger depression by itself.

Mindfulness cultivates our ability to do things knowing that we're doing them.

In this way, little by little , moment by moment, life can slip by without us being fully here for it. Always preoccupied with getting somewhere else, we are hardly ever where we actually are and attentive to what is actually unfolding in this moment.

Mindfulness meditation encourages us to become more patient and compassionate with ourselves and to cultivate open-mindedness and gentle persistence. These qualities help free us from the gravitational pull of anxiety, stress and unhappiness by reminding us what science has shown: that it's OK to stop treating sadness and other difficulties as problems that need to be solved.

Our reactions to unhappiness can transform what might otherwise be a brief, passing sadness into persistent dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

Expecta­tions can become goals, which only get in the way of the experience we are having in this moment.

Not clinging to goals, even worthy goals, may be the way out of unhappiness.

Ideas about our own self-worth are no more real than thoughts about an imaginary chair.

Mindfulness could also be described as "heartfulness" because it is really about a compassionate awareness.

Why, then, do depression and unhappiness outlast the situations that trigger them? Or why, sometimes, does a sense of malaise and dis-­satisfaction go on and on? The short answer is that these emotions per­sist because we have emotional reactions to our own emotions that ac­tually keep them going.

We simply have to learn how to skillfully get out of our own way. Getting out of our own way allows the deep reservoirs of peace and happiness within us to reveal themselves so we may gain more ready access to them.

When we stop trying to force pleasant feelings, they are freer to emerge on their own . When we stop trying to resist unpleasant feelings, we may find that they can drift away by themselves . When we stop trying to make something happen, a whole world of fresh and unanticipated experiences may become accessible to us.

until one is committed there is hesitancy

Every time you forced yourself not to think, your thoughts exploded into life with renewed strength.

And so we create a story—a "drama about me"—that may gradually wander far away from the here and now and far away from the way things actually are. Once the script we have concocted for ourselves has been set in the mind, we may unwittingly rely on it as a reference point for all present and future judgments—without ever checking back with the here and now. Without knowing it, our thoughts become words carved in stone rather than words written on water.

put yourself in the experienced hands of Mark Williams and Danny Penman, and give yourself over to their guidance and to the programme that they map out. The programme provides a coherent structure, an architecture if you will, within which you can observe your own mind and body and life unfolding, and a systematic and trustworthy approach for working with whatever arises.

You only ever have a moment to live, this moment, and yet we all tend to live in the past or in the future.

it's difficult to be curious and unhappy at the same time.

see thoughts as mental events—like clouds in the sky—and helping you to cultivate an attitude of acceptance, compassion and empathy toward yourself and others.

Our habitual efforts to extricate ourselves, far from freeing us, actually keep us locked in the pain we're trying to escape.