Quotes About Mindfulness

We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn't help anything. The problem, clearly, isn't that we have a shortage of time. It's more that we have an overload of everything else.

History was, is, a one-way street. You have to keep walking forwards, but you don't always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.

To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can't. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics. To be a proud and singular one. An indivisible prime.

That is the whole thing with the future. You don't know. At some point you have to accept that you don't know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.

It is not the length of life that matters. It's the depth. But while burrowing, keep the sun above you.

The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. They key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them. Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.

The rook is my favourite piece,' she said. 'It's the one that you think you don't have to watch out for. It is straightforward. You keep your eye on the queen, and the knights, and the bishop, because they are the sneaky ones. But it's the rook that often gets you. The straightforward is never quite what it seems.

In your mind, change the name of every day to Saturday. And change the name of work to play.

Don't compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don't drown in a sea of 'what ifs'. Don't clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes where you made different decisions.

Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Don't value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction.

The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.

Never underestimate the big importance of small things,' Mrs Elm said. 'You must always remember that.

Accept feelings and accept that they are just that: feelings.

The present is known. The future is unknown. The present is solid. The future is abstract. Ruining the present by worrying about the future is like burning your most treasured possession simply because you might one day lose other possessions that you don't own yet.

You don't have to be positive. You don't have to feel guilty about fear or sadness or anger. You don't stop the rain by telling it to stop. Sometimes you just have to let it pour, let it soak you to your skin. It never rains forever. And know that, however wet you get, you are not the rain. You are not the bad feelings in your head. You are the person experiencing the storm.

Aim not to get more stuff done. Aim to have less stuff to do. Be a work minimalist. Minimalism is about doing more with less. So much of working life seems to be about doing less with more. Activity isn't always the same as achievement.

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?

Don't worry about being angry. Worry when being angry becomes impossible. Because then you have been consumed.

Continually looking for the meaning of life is like looking for the meaning of toast. It is sometimes better just to eat the toast.

Sip, don't gulp.

There is no shame in not watching news. There is no shame in not going on Twitter. There is no shame in disconnecting.

Misery, like yoga, is not a competitive sport

Feeling you lack things doesn't make you less complete.

Illness has a lot to teach wellness. But when I am ill I forget these things. The trick is to keep hold of that knowledge. To turn recovery into prevention. To live how I live when I am ill, without being ill.