Your Year for Change: 52 Reflections for Regret-Free Living by Bronnie Ware

It doesn't matter how difficult life can be at times.  Shifting the perspective can make all the difference.

This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide by Geneen Roth

Freedom from mental suffering is not a mystery, but a willingness to examine what keeps us from directly experiencing the deep-blue peace and quiet joy that are always accessible and forever unaffected by the passing show.

Attention is everything.  Without it, all else is a temporary fix and no long-lasting change is possible.

We live in a culture that worships more.  We are so brain washed into believing that more is better that we no longer question what it costs or whether it adds anything to our lives.

Instead of avoiding fear we can do what is counterintuitive: welcome it and notice that the part that allows the fear is much bigger than the fear itself.

The heart of any addiction -- drugs, alcohol, sex, money, food -- is the avoidance of pain coupled with the unwillingness to acknowledge that both the behavior and its consequences serve us even as they destroy our lives.

Because the body's sensations are immediate, noticing them cuts through the babble of the mind that is always lurching from the past to the future.

Our power is not in blaming or shaming, but in waking up from the collective trance in which we've been living.

During the November 2016 election, Kelly Oxford requested that women use Twitter to tell stories of their first sexual assaults.  Twenty-seven million women responded within twenty-four hours.

For power to be authentic, the obstacles to it must be named.

Being free takes first realizing we're in prison, and then questioning what imprisons us.

At some point (it looks like this is it), therapy meets spirituality and fixing ourselves meets the realization that there is nothing more to fix.

Whether we are sailing into the New Age or heading toward Armageddon, our work is exactly the same: to quiet the drums of fear, speak from a soft heart, and act from our shared humanity.

Climb out of your mind and back into your body, even if it feels uncomfortable.

Return of the Thunderbeings by Donn Le Vie Jr and Iron Thunderhorse

Evil is exploitation and mindlessness.

The Sound of Silence: The Selected Teachings of Ajahn Sumedho by Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Amaro

Awareness is your refuge: awareness of the changingness of feelings, of attitudes, of moods, of material change and emotional change: Stay with that, because it's a refuge that is indestructible.

Mindfulness is ordinary.  It's just being aware of the movements of your body -- sitting, standing, walking, lying down, breathing -- or being aware of your mood or mental state.

I can be aware when stupid thoughts enter consciousness, or intelligent ones.  There's a discerning that is not judging.

I have found it helpful just contemplating the difference between analytical thinking and intuitive awareness, because there is a huge difference between the use of the mind to think, to analyze, reason, criticize, to have ideas, perceptions, views and opinions, and intuitive awareness, which is non-critical.  Intuitive awareness is an inclusive awareness.

Consciousness is like a mirror; it reflects.  A mirror reflects -- not just the beautiful or the ugly but whatever is there: the space, the neutrality, everything that's in front of it. 

When you're identified on the level of "I am the body and I am my feelings, thoughts, and memories," you're always limiting, binding yourself to unsatisfactory conditions. 

We usually become our thoughts if we're not aware.

Personality is not something to get rid of but to know.

One of the problems with Westerners is that we're complicated because of our lack of faith.  Our identities get so complicated in so many ways, and we take everything personally.

If we feel stress or discomfort, just receive it rather than think you have to get rid of it.  It's like learning just to receive, noticing the way it is without reacting in a habitual way. 

By no longer wanting recipes or formulas or certainties for meditation, the more you meditate, you can understand right view as uncertainty, not knowing.  Uncertainty is no longer something resisted or rejected or a source of suffering; it is just the way it is. 

Ignorance means being caught in the habit, never questioning, never looking, never using awareness.  We become creatures of habit, programmed like a computer, we become fixed in our ways of looking at things.

Awareness includes emotional states, no matter what they are.

Intuition… is nonverbal and non-thinking.

Emotions are often ignored or rejected and not appreciated; we don't learn from them, because we're always rejecting or denying them.

A person is a creation of the mind, to which we remain bound if we don't awaken.  If we just operate within the emotional conditioning that we have, then we see it in terms of "This is happening to me," or "I am good…bad…" It is very important to recognize and to know that the world is the world.  It's a very strong experience, because having a human body is a continuous experience of being irritated. 

Don't trust in your views and opinions about anything -- about yourself, about Buddhism, about the world -- for these views are often very biased.  We get very biased views about each other: racial prejudices, class identities, ethnic biases, and feelings of social superiority.  These are not to be trusted.

Of course things come up because we aren't used to being that way, and then we feel restless. Repressed emotions can start rising up into consciousness; fears and resentments and things like that will come.  So don't feel discouraged by what comes up in your consciousness, because it is the way it is.

Non-suffering doesn't mean you don’t have any more physical pain or discomfort.  It means not attaching, not resenting, not wanting something else, but being mindful of the reality of now as it is happening.

You can't get more simple than mindfulness because it is not anything you can create.  It's a matter of paying attention and being present, it's not a complicated technique or a complexity.

The freedom from suffering that the Buddha talked about isn't in itself an end to pain and stress.  Instead, it's a matter of creating a choice.  If you're willing to learn from the suffering in life, you'll discover the unshakability of your own mind.

Archetypes: Who Are You? by Caroline Myss

Life brings us opportunities to see ourselves in action: in love, under fire, under stress, in childbirth, acting spontaneously, handling loss, being charitable. 

Life was never meant to be safe. It was meant to be lived right to the end.

One way archetypes communicate with us is by energizing or animating our myths and fantasies.

The David Suzuki Reader: A Lifetime of Ideas from a Leading Activist and Thinker by David Suzuki

Every person in the world is at least 60% water by weight.  We are basically blobs of water with enough organic thickener mixed in to prevent us from dribbling away on the floor. 

We need to love to realize our full human potential.

The alienation from the land is so great that we have no sense that it is sacred or that our ability to exploit it is a great privilege accompanied by responsibility. 

Each time the population doubles, the number of people alive is greater than the sum of all other people who have ever lived.

In the “household” of the living world, each system, each entity, has a part to play in the “economy” of the whole.  A standing tree performs numerous ecological “services” for the Earth, yet none of these services has economic worth according to the way our system does its accounts.

Soil is a living organism made up of tens of thousands of species of microorganisms – viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa – and larger nematodes, worms, insects and mites. 

Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism by David R Loy

The career of the bodhisattva is helping others, not because one ought to, for the bodhisattva is not bound by dogma or morality, but because one is the situation, and through oneself that situation draws forth a response to meet its needs.

Shamanic Healing & Ritual Drama: Health & Medicine in the Native North American Religious Traditions by Ake Hultkrantz

The health of the human being is thus not an isolated case; it is a matter of the whole universe.  By contributing to the upkeep of beauty, and by having it restored when it has become lost in individual cases, each man and woman work for the universe at large and its basic order.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L Friedman

We are living through one of the greatest inflection points in history…. The three largest forces on the planet -- technology, globalization, and climate change -- are all accelerating at once.  As a result, so many aspects of our societies, work places, and geopolitics are being reshaped and need to be reimagined. 

I needed permission to be alone with my thoughts -- without having to tweet about them, take a picture of them, or share them with anyone.

When you are a reporter, your focus is on digging up facts to explain the visible and the complex and to unearth and expose the impenetrable and the hidden -- wherever that takes you.  You are there to inform, without fear or favor.

It takes caring to ignite caring; it takes empathy to ignite empathy.

When the rate of change eventually exceeds the ability to adapt you get 'dislocation'.  'Disruption' is what happens when someone does something clever that makes you or your company look obsolete.  'Dislocation' is when the whole environment is being altered so quickly that everyone starts to feel they can't keep up.

If you lived in the twelfth century, your basic life was not all that different than if you lived in the eleventh century.

This is a real problem.  When fast gets really fast, being slower to adapt makes you really slow -- and disoriented. 

Traditional climate patterns that Greenland elders have known their whole lives have changed so quickly in some places that the accumulated wisdom and intuitions of older people are not as valuable as they once were.

Today, roughly 86 percent of Americans have air-conditioning in their homes and apartments.  Only 7 percent do in Brazil and less than that in India.

You can't just show up. You need a plan to succeed.

The global cost of diabetes is now $825 billion per year.

In a healthy community people are not only looking out for each other, they are getting out of Facebook and into each other's faces.  Healthy communities shame and mobilize against destructive and abusive behaviors.

Living an Inspired Life: Your Ultimate Calling by Wayne Dyer

Remind yourself “My life is bigger than I am.”

Becoming inspired requires our being curious about, and attentive to, feelings that emerge to help us reconnect with our original self.

If we can remember that we’re responsible for what we’re attracting, we can then eliminate the negative energy we wallow in.

Expect the best, expect guidance, expect your fortunes to change, expect a miracle.

The answer to how is yes.

The purpose of dancing – and of life – is to enjoy every moment and every step, regardless of where we are when the music ends.

If we want to move from disenchantment to inspiration, or from apathy and indifference to passion and enthusiasm, then it’s necessary to alter our awareness of ourselves.

If our daily activities are so overwhelming that we don’t make [joy, love & peace] our priority, then we’re disregarding the value of living a simple life.

Regardless of our current station in life, we have a spiritual contract to make joy our constant companion.

We must learn to make a conscious choice to say no to anything that takes us away from an inspired life.

We deserve to feel joy – it’s our spiritual calling.

If we organize our life around love – for god, for ourselves, for family and friend, for all human kind, and for the environment – we’ll remove a lot of the chaos and disorder that defines our life.

You get what you think about, whether you want it or not.

Each and every one of us represents God or Spirit revealing itself here on the planet.

When see things in our world that we label evil, what we’re really seeing are people moving away from their source.

To become inspired on a daily basis, we must be able to quickly identify any thoughts that are moving us way from our source, and then shift the direction.

We need to bring love to the presence of hatred.

Commit to at least one daily experience where you share something of yourself with no expectation of being acknowledge or thanked.

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

A well-designed life is a life that is generative-- it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise.  You get out of it more than you put in. 

Here's the big truth: there are many versions of you, and they are all "right".

Designers don't think their way forward.  Designers build their way forward.

A well-designed life is a marvelous portfolio of experiences, of adventures, of failures that taught you important lessons, of hardships that made you stronger and helped you know yourself better, and of achievements and satisfactions.

Our problems become our story, and we can all get stuck in our stories. 

If it's not actionable, it's not a problem.  It's a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. 

If you become openminded enough to accept reality, you'll be freed to reframe an actionable problem and design a way to participate in the world or things that matter to you and might even work.

This is where all good designers begin.  This is the "You Are Here" or "Accept" phase of design thinking.  Acceptance.  That's why you start where you are.  Not where you wish you were.  Not where you hope you are.  Not where you think you should be. 

You can't know where you are going until you know where you are.

Once you design something, it changes the future that is possible.

Worry, analysis, and speculation are not our best discovery tools, and most of us have, at one time or another, gotten incredibly lost and confused using them.

If you discover and are able to articulate your philosophy of work (what it's for and why you do it), you will be less likely to let others design your life for you.

A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between three things: who you are, what you believe, what you are doing.

Logging when you are and aren't energized will help you pay attention to what you're doing and discover what's working. 

Flow is play for grown-ups.

Prototyping the life design way is all about asking good questions, outing our hidden biases and assumptions, iterating rapidly, and creating momentum for a path we'd like to try out.

Being happy means you choose happiness.

Options only actually create value in your life when they are chosen and realized. 

Imagined choices don't actually exist, because they're not actionable.

Failure is just the raw material of success.

Life is not about winning and losing.  It's about learning and playing the infinite game.

Living in reality means looking at and accepting where you are right now.  Life design is really about being able to answer the question "How's it going?"

Unlearning things is often harder and more important than learning things.

The Journey Within: Exploring the Path of Bhakti by Swami Radhanath

The mind is responsible for thinking, feeling, and intention…. Like a computer’s hard drive, the mind is a repository of facts and memories.  It doesn’t necessarily understand the significance of the information it processes, but it places sensation into two broad categories, pleasure and pain, and responds accordingly.

Just as the height of an ocean’s wave is influenced by the weather, so the mind, according to how it has been influenced by the sensory experiences we’ve had, responds to new sensory input with either desire or repulsion, elation or depression, courage or fear, celebration or lamentation.

The software of the mind is constantly updated through daily experience.

The mind changes constantly based on the ever-shifting experiences.

If we identify with the mind, we subject ourselves to all these shifting emotional states.

We are separate from our thoughts.  If we weren’t, how could we direct the mind away from them?

Self-realization and humility are inseparable.

Lying doesn’t refer only to untruths but to rationalizations as well.  Lies, rationalizations, justifications, hypocrisy: all of them accustom us to duplicity, or falsity.

There are several reasons that people choose not to speak the truth.  One is selfishness, but another is fear.

Humility gives us access to the grace required to overcome obstacles, especially the most difficult one, the ego.

Think of dharma as thing’s inherent quality – the part of something that cannot be separated from it.

We see everything according to our own mental state.

It is not a spiritual quality to remain passive where action may be required.

When we can stop thinking of “me” and “mine” and instead think of “ours”, our roots will hold strong in the soil of love, trust, and grace, reminding us that in giving we receive.

If we understand the reality of death, we would treat each other differently.

Spiritual knowledge is not just about knowing but transforming.

Every time we give in to anger, greed, or the cravings of the mind and senses, we’re watering the roots of those behaviors.

We create our own destiny by the choices we make.  But while we are free to make choices, once we have acted on them, we are bound to live with their consequences.  That’s karma.

There may not be anything you can do about what’s happened but as difficult as it is, you still have the freedom to choose how to respond to it.  How you respond now will determine your future in this life and beyond.

Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy

Self-nudging allows you to be the architect and the building.

Your body shapes your mind.  Your mind shapes your behavior. And your behavior shapes your future.

Expanding your body causes you to think about yourself in a positive light and to trust in that self-concept.  It also clears your head, making space for creativity, cognitive persistence, and abstract thinking.

Movement, like posture, tells the brain how it feels and even manages what it remembers.

You already have the tools you need to become present.

Power reveals.

Presence manifests as resonant synchrony.

In order for you to feel truly present, the various elements of the self---emotions, thoughts, physical and facial expressions, behavior – must be in harmony.

Focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself.

Presence manifests as confidence without arrogance.

Power makes us approach.  Powerlessness makes us avoid.

When we feel powerlessness, we cannot be present.

How the lack of power distorts and disfigures us is important to understand.

Feeling powerlessness undermines our ability to trust ourselves.

A heightened sense of danger increases our social anxiety.

Powerlessness induces… goal neglect.… Powerlessness impairs planning…. Powerlessness makes us self-absorbed.

Power makes us fearless, independent, and less susceptible to outside pressures and expectations, allowing us to be more creative.

When we feel powerful, we’re less self-conscious about expressing our feelings and beliefs, and that frees us to think and do great things.

Feeling powerful gives us the freedom to decide, to act, to do.

It’s about being present in the moments that most challenge us.

By focusing on each new moment in front of you instead of the performance outcome, you slowly, incrementally nudge yourself toward becoming a bolder, more authentic, more effective version of yourself.

The paradox of listening is that by relinquishing power --- the temporary power of speaking, asserting, knowing – we become more powerful.

Presence with others is first about showing up.  Literally, physically, showing up.

At some point, you must stop preparing content and start preparing mind-set.

You can make your deepest self-accessible just by spending a little time reflecting on – and perhaps writing about – who you think you are.

It’s about reminding ourselves what matters most to us and, by extension, who we are.  In effect, it’s a way of grounding ourselves in the truth of our own stories.

The authentic self is an experience --- a state, not a trait.