Question Your Thinking, Change the World by Byron Katie

All quotes from Byron's book

If you think that you have a problem, you’re confused.  Go inside and know what’s true for you.

Give yourself your own wisdom.  You create your own suffering, and you can end it. It’s as simple as that.

It’s not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. 

A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing…. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.

You see who you are by seeing who you think other people are.

Once you realize the difference between what is real and what is not, you naturally begin to act with clarity and efficiency and to live the life you always wanted to live. 

When you question your stressful thoughts, you come to see that everything that has been troubling you is just a misunderstanding. 

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you’re looking for.

People go to India to find a guru; but you don’t have to: you’re living with one.  Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom. 

Personalities don’t love; they want something.

When I hear people say that they love someone and want to be loved in return, I know they’re not talking about love.

Love doesn’t seek anything. It’s already complete. It doesn’t want, doesn’t need, has no shoulds (not even for the person’s own good). 

What could you say about me that I haven’t already thought? There are no new thoughts. 

The external is the internal projected.

Just feel humility, without the slightest urge to defend yourself.

My love is my business; it has nothing to do with you.  You love me, and that isn’t personal. You tell the story that I am this, or I am that, and you fall in love with your story. 

It’s not your job to love me – it’s mine. 

We don’t hear what you tell us; we hear what we think you’re telling us.

When you know that whatever you need is what you get, life becomes paradise.

When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet. 

The only possibility of being understood by someone else is to understand yourself.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

If you act from fear, there’s no way you can receive love, because you’re trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love. 

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

All the advice you ever gave your partner is for you to hear.

You’re living with God disguised as your husband, and he will show you all your unclear places; he will give you everything you need in order to get free.

There is nothing you wouldn’t give to anyone if you weren’t afraid. 

To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. 

Any time you find yourself wanting sympathy, you’re trying to get someone to join you in your mythology.

God spare me from the desire for love, approval or appreciation.

Defense is the first act of war. 

If you say one single thing that I have the urge to defend, that thing is the very pearl waiting inside me to be discovered. 

How do you know that you don’t need a romantic partner? You don’t have one.  How do you know that you need one? Here he is!

You can’t control someone else’s thinking. You can even control your own.  There’s no one thinking anyway. It’s a house of mirrors.

You can’t make yourself spiritual or loving. Just be honest and question your thinking.

Pleasure is an attempt to fill yourself. Joy is what you are. 

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you.  It does anyway.  You’re just telling the story about how it doesn’t. 

All the thoughts we attach to are about survival, then health, then comfort, then pleasure. 

We’re just waiting for one teacher, just one, to give us permission to be who we are now so that we can all come to know that that’s what is normal for us. 

Investigate the stressful thoughts you have about your condition until you see that it’s the perfect condition for you. 

Who would you be without the story of “I should feel better”?  You’d be free. 

Meet your concepts with understanding. 

The truth is that until we love cancer, we can’t love god.  It doesn’t matter what symbols we use – poverty, loneliness, loss – it’s the concepts of “good and bad” that we attach to them that make us suffer. 

My body can never be a problem if my thinking is healthy. 

Your medicine is whatever appears now. 

When the mind leaves a body, we throw it in the ground and walk away. 

There’s no sadness without a story. 

Reality – the way that it is, exactly as it is, in every moment – is always kind.  It’s the story about reality that blurs our vision, obscures what’s true, and leads us to believe that there is injustice in the world. 

A lover of what is looks forward to everything. 

Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven’t undone yet. 

Before a thought, there’s no one, nothing—only peace that doesn’t even recognize itself as peace. 

To come to that person in fear is to teach fear. 

Here’s what I’ve told my children: “You have the perfect mother. I’m responsible for all your problems, and you’re responsible for the solutions”. 

You should love you. It’s your job to love you.  “I don’t love myself, so you do it” – what’s wrong with this picture? 

If you think you’re supposed to love your children, you’re in big trouble. It just sets you up for shame and guilt. You’re not supposed to love your children until you do.

It’s the dream “I’m stuck” that makes you stuck. 

Who had the solution? Again, me. I realized that I could be right or I could be free. 

You are the mother you’ve been waiting for. 

Your family is a projected image of your thinking. They’re your story. 

Until you love your family without conditions, self-love is not a possibility. 

You don’t have any control over anything.  When you think you should and you see that you don’t, the effect is depression. 

The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. 

Love is a listener. 

Your parents are your projection--- nothing more. 

An open mind is the only way to peace. As long as you think that you know what should and shouldn’t happen, you’re trying to manipulate. 

If you think we should be there for you, you be there for you! It’s not our job. 

What you want money for is happiness. 

The job you do out there in the apparent world is secondary.  It’s only a place for you to judge, inquire, and know yourself. Your true job is to appreciate what is; your primary profession is to be clear. 

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories about them. 

You realize that the worst that can happen is a concept. 

Wealth and poverty are in your own mind.  … it’s your story about money that strikes terror in your heart. 

Can you really know that your highest good is to be an artist? How do you react when you believe that thought? You refuse to be content in a job less lofty than that, and when you get a job, you hate it because you think you’re just marking time until you can devote yourself to your art.  So you’re always living in the future, and are never present. 

Whenever you think that your needs are not being met, you’re telling the story of a future. 

The story “I need more money” is what keeps you from realizing your wealth. … Right now, you’re supposed to have exactly as much money as you have. This is not a theory; this is reality. 

A messy mind is a messy life. 

Confusion is the only suffering. Confusion is when you argue with what is. When you’re perfectly clear, what is is what you want. So when you want something that’s different from what is, you can know that you’re very confused. 

If you have a problem, you must already have the solution. The question is, Do you really want the solution, or do you want to perpetuate the problem? 

Fear only has two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.  In either case, the worst thing that can ever happen is a story. 

Need is a story you tell yourself. 

The world is your perception of it.  Inside and outside always match – they’re reflections of each other. 

The world is the mirror image of your mind. 

To think that you know what’s best for another person is to be out of your business. The result is worry, anxiety, and fear. 

You can’t make a wrong decision; you can only experience the story arising about how you made it. 

To meet people where they are, without any conditions, is to meet my own self without conditions. 

Every fear is the fear of love. 

Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t. 

I am always held.  Even in the walking, the earth holds me. 

Islands of Decolonial Love by Leanne Simpson

All quotes from Leanne's book

iv. it is with great regret that we are writing on behalf of the michi saagiig anishinaabeg to inform you that you will not be permitted to build your lift locks, canals and hydro dams because the fish, eels, birds, insects, plants, turtles, and reptiles do not consent to the damage your project will cause.

v. it is with great regret that we are writing on behalf of the michi saagiig anishinaabeg to inform you that you will not be permitted to build your lift locks, canals and hydro dams because the caribou, elk, deer, bison, lynxes, foxes, wolves, wolverines, martens, otters, muskrats, bears, skunks, raccoons, beavers, squirrels and chipmunks do not consent to the damage your project will cause.

vi. it is with great regret that we are writing on behalf of the michi saagiig anishinaabeg to inform you that you will not be permitted to build your lift locks, canals and hydro dams because of the damage it will cause our sugar bushes and minomiin beds, and our relatives the ducks and geese that depend on those beds for food.

Awakening the Sleeping Buddha by The 12th Tai Situpa

All quotes from The 12th Tai Situpa's book

Loving-kindness and compassion will allow our understanding and appreciation to be progressively more successful. If we don't have loving-kindness and compassion, our progress will stop.... We develop loving-kindness and compassion so that we will proceed forward rather than go backward.

Karma does not exist as an entity. Karma is a word that describes the relative causes and conditions that create our lives. 

If we don't see that others have the same potential as we do, we easily develop false pride in our small accomplishments. 

Suffering happily means realizing that the suffering is external and impermanent. 

Knowing and understanding truth and how to use it is intelligence.... Knowing and understanding ultimate truth is wisdom. 

Wanting to be enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings is dualistic thinking.  We fool ourselves if we think we are non-dual right now.  We are nondual for short periods of time at best. 

No matter what we do, learn, or think, we can only think from the level we are on. 

Death is relevant only to the body.  The mind does not die. 

If at the moment of death a person -- just an ordinary person -- has strong devotion, compassion, and clarity, this state of mind will have great and positive influence on his or her future rebirth. 

Beings at different levels of development have different perceptual capabilities. 

When each person incarnates, the lifetime is a manifestation of individual karma -- that is, causes and conditions -- created in past lifetimes.  That is the cause of whatever situation a person is experiencing now. 

Because we are ignorant of nonduality due to the power of "I", we become dualistic. 

Through ignorance, we develop the impulse to do something, to act -- positive action, negative action, or actions that are neutral, neither good or bad. As a result of this impulse, the next causes and conditions are created. 

The physical body develops according to the capability of the formless mind: according to its desire, its ignorance, its anger, its stinginess, and its pride and jealousy. 

Emptiness is described as the basis that makes anything possible.  Everything is a manifestation of interdependence, and everything is emptiness. 

There is no independent existence.  That is emptiness.  It may also be stated that there is nothing that is not interrelated, therefore there is nothing that is not emptiness. 

If your mind could enter another human being -- the person right next to you, for instance-- and relate to the environment through that person, you would find that the same environment of which you were previously aware becomes different, according to the perceptions of the other person. 

By accident, we can have some kind of pure encounter with our real ultimate potential, but that is not something we can keep up. 

Instant enlightenment happens after a lot of work.

When the insubstantiality of a phenomenon like pain is recognized, it is possible to go beyond it. 

A person is born at a particular moment, surrounded by particular influences, because of his or her karmic causes and conditions.  It is the field in which they must work in that lifetime. 

Likes and dislikes develop from duality and turn into attachment and aggression, desire and anger.  That naturally gives rise to jealousy and pride, hope and fear. 

Until enlightenment happens, everything is a process that leads toward it. 

Practitioners should not wait for conditions they do not have.  You should use whatever conditions  you have now. 

Mohawk Interruptus by Audra Simpson

All quotes from Audra’s book

Like many other Iroquois people, the Mohawks of Kahnawa:ke refuse...the "gifts" of American and Canadian citizenship; they insist upon the integrity of Haudenosaunee governance. 

How to proceed as a nation if the right to determine the terms of legal belonging, a crucial component of sovereignty, has been dictated by a foreign government. 

Sovereignty may exist within sovereignty.  One does not entirely negate the other, but they necessarily stand in terrific tension and pose serious jurisdictional and normative challenges to each other: Whose citizen are you? What authority do you answer to? One challenges the very legitimacy of the other. 

Like Indigenous bodies, Indigenous sovereignties and Indigenous political orders prevail within and apart from settler governance. 

Under the conditions of settler colonialism, multiple sovereignties cannot proliferate robustly or equally. 

In situations in which sovereignties are nested and embedded, one proliferates at the other's expense; the United States and Canada can only come into political being because of Indigenous dispossession. 

No matter how deeply Kahnawa'Kehro:non and other Indigenous nations understand themselves to be of their own philosophical systems and, simultaneously, no matter how deeply they understand the scene of their objectification as "Indians" or, even more ghastly, as "minoritized peoples", they are rarely seen or then treated in the eye of the settler as that which they are and wish to be recognized as: nationals with sovereign authority over their lives and over their membership and living within their own space, which has been "held for them" in the form of reservations. 

In refusing to go away, to cease to be, in asserting something beyond difference, lies the position that requires one to "coexist" with others, with settlers, with "arrivants"...meaning the formerly enslaved or the indentured who did not voluntarily come to North America - and to live tacitly and taciturnly in a "settled state".  In this there is acceptance of the dispossession of your lands, of internalizing and believing the things you have been taught about you to you: that you are a savage, that your language is incoherent, that you are less than white people, not quite up to par, that you are then "different", with a different culture that is defined by others and will be accorded a protected space of legal recognition if your group evidences that "difference" in terms that are sufficient to the settlers' legal eye. 

In settler societies such as the United States and Canada, citizenship is key to this process of rationalizing dispossession. 

The Indian Act had transferred matrilineal descent and property holding to the father's line -- an unambiguously raced and gendered injustice fought against by Indian women, disenfranchised from their Indian status across Canada. 

The Indian Act, a specific body of law that recognizes Indians in a wardship status in Canada -- not a nation-to-nation arrangement by any stretch -- created the categories of personhood and rights that severed Indian woman from their communities when they married white men.  It did the reverse to Indian men; white women gained Indian status upon their marriage into an Indian community. This created the conditions for the adoption of blood quantum. 

Settler colonialism requires an Indigenous elimination for territory. 

What Next? by Barbara Moses

All quotes from Barbara's book

Self-knowledge means being aware not only of what makes you feel good about yourself but also of what makes you unhappy. 

Throw away the old scripts.  Separate what you think you should want and be, and what others think.

Being purposeful means knowing what is important to you, and being focused on pursuing it. 

Differentiate between the urgent and the important.  

Lifestorming by Alan Weiss and Marshall Goldsmith

All quotes from Alan & Marshall’s book

Bombarded by external triggers and expectations, we can easily fall into roles and patterns established for us by other people. 

The evolving you is not a moving target, but pursues a moving target.

Victims have no inclination to create their own change initiatives.

Old friends and old habits tend to stick together. 

When it comes to our interactions with others -- how we treat each other -- "good enough" sets the bar too low. 

You create your legacy everyday, not at the end of your life. 

Money and time are not resources; they are priorities. 

The evolutionary journey from surviving to thriving requires a sort of global positioning system. You have to identify the next steps, recognize the next level, and understand how to seal the doors behind you. 

We are often slowed because we're expecting people to keep up with us rather than finding friends who force us to speed up. We take our time because we're comfortable. 

It's not sufficient to have aspirational ideals. We need focused, targeted behaviors to support the journey toward that moving target.

What we believe -- about the police, the system, coworkers, ourselves, or anything else -- creates the attitudes that inform our behavior. 

When we fear what is approaching, we tend to withdraw, procrastinate, and deny. 

Uncertainty undermines critical thought processes.  Instead of finding causes of problems, or creating outcomes for decisions, we take refuge in inaction. 

Confrontation does not have to be hostile.  It's merely the act of sorting the true from the false, the real from the unreal. 

Beliefs form attitudes that are manifest in behavior. 

Don't look for blame; find the causes of obstacles and then work to remove them.  

Failing is a learning experience.

You're responsible for creating your own support. 

Share credit, accept blame. 

We need people who can stretch us, provide new viewpoints, supply differing perspectives, and challenge our beliefs. 

Aim for evolutionary reinvention.  Your journey should be one of continually becoming a new, improved person. 

It's better to know why we're good than that we're good. 

Medical Medium Life-Changing Foods by Anthony William

All quotes from Anthony’s book

We have to be careful that perpetual positivity doesn’t give us an aversion to facing the truth. 

Of the seven billion people on the planet, six billion are lacking the help they need with their well-being. 

Rather than looking at stress as an invader, understand that stress is preparing you to be a master. 

Stress is just the name we give it in negative circumstances (or what we label as negative circumstances).  There are plenty of moments in our lives that we think of as leisure or play that have elements of stress involved. 

Before cutting into (or otherwise prepping and eating) a fruit, vegetable, herb, spice, or wild food, hold it in your hands for thirty seconds to give it the chance to attune to who you are and what you need. 

To deal with cravings, plan meals ahead and keep healthy snacks on hand as much as possible.  Each time an urge arises, act as its interpreter. What’s it really saying? 

Symptoms and conditions are communications from your body, telling you what it needs. 

Berries are selfless. You won’t find them high up, out of reach. Rather, they grow low to the ground, where they’re accessible to all varieties of animals, from bears, deer, humans, squirrels, and birds, to mice, voles, rabbits, and even snails.  Berries are all about sharing, about providing enough to go around for everyone.  When we bring berries into our lives, their kindness and generosity becomes a part of us. 

The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal

All quotes from Harold’s book

The history of Canada’s Indians is a shameful chronical of the white man’s disinterest, his deliberate trampling of Indian rights and his repeated betrayal of our trust. 

Generations of Indians have grown up behind a buckskin curtain of indifference, ignorance and, all too often, plain bigotry. 

Rumi’s Little Book of Love and Laughter by Coleman Barks

All quotes from Coleman’s book

May God cause you to change your life in the way you know you should.  

I am not contained by this Universe. If every tip of every hair on me could speak, I still couldn’t say my gratitude. In the middle of streets and gardens, I stand and say and say again, and it’s all I say, “I wish everyone could know what I know”. 

Fear is an attribute of those who think they serve God. 

Having the idea is not living the reality. 

These pains you feel are Messengers. Listen to them.  Turn them to sweetness. The night is almost over.  You were young once, and content, now you think about money all the time you used to be that money.  You were a healthy vine. 

Many demolitions are actually renovations. 

There is a way that leads from all---colors to colorlessness. Know that the magnificient variety of the clouds and the weather comes from the total simplicity of the sun and the moon. 

One way of seeing sees only a road. Another sees a home. It’s always home. 

Be patient. Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back toward disease and death. 

To be clearer: part of a True Person is inside Time, and part is beyond Time. The Time-part dies. The Other is the Good Friend of Forever. 

Parachuting Cats into Borneo and Other Lessons from the Change Café by Axel Klimek and Alan Atkisson

The quote from Axel & Alan's book

Belief systems work like a computer program in the background of our awareness…. Our belief systems structure not just how we see the world but also how we act and react.  

Play by Dr Stuart Brown

All quotes from Stuart’s book

The ability to play is critical not only to being happy, but also to sustaining social relationships and being a creative, innovative person.

Play is a very primal activity. It is preconscious and preverbal -- it arises out of ancient biological structures that existed before our consciousness or our ability to speak.

Play is a state of mind rather than an activity. 

People who had the most cognitive activity (doing puzzles, reading, engaging in mentally challenging work), the chances of getting Alzheimers disease were 63% lower than that of the general population. 

If we stop playing, we share the fate of all animals that grown out of play.  Our behavior becomes fixed.  We are not interested in new and different things.  We find fewer opportunities to take pleasure in the world around us. 

Play can become a doorway to a new self, one much more in tune with the world.  Because play is all about trying on new behaviors and thoughts, it frees us from established patterns. 

True mastery over a lifetime comes from one's internal play compass. 

For all of us, "entering the forest where there is no path" and discovering our own path is an essential part of the transformative experience. 

As with many things in life, often the problem is not the problem, the problem is how you react to the problem.  

People reach the highest levels of a discipline because they are driven by love, by fun, by play. 

The body remembers what the mind has forgotten. 

Play, by its very nature, is a little anarchic.  It is about stepping outside of normal life and breaking normal patterns.  It is about bending rules of thought, action, and behavior.

Following your bliss may be difficult, demanding, uncomfortable, [and] tedious at times. 

Your current feelings about people, things, and activities are rooted in the emotions you previously experienced and forgot in the natural amnesia of early life.

You can't be truly open to spontaneity if you don't feel comfortable testing novel ways of expressing yourself. 

The Questions and Answers of Vajrasattva by Pelyang

All quotes from Pelyang’s book

That which abides naturally as the sky, cannot be a cause for becoming the sky.  The sky of mind itself, the space of enlightenment, cannot be a cause for accomplishing enlightenment. 

The solitary root that is the evil cause of cyclic existence is a lack of awareness of one’s own mind, clinging to self.

If self-clinging has been thoroughly abandoned, there will be no clinging to phenomena. 

The Telomere Effect by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel

All quotes from Elizabeth and Elissa’s book

Your telomeres are listening to you.  The foods you eat, your response to challenges, the amount of exercise you get, and many other factors appear to influence your telomeres and can prevent premature aging at the cellular level. 

Scientists have learned that several thought patterns appear to be unhealthy for telomeres, and one of them is cynical hostility. Cynical hostility is defined by high anger and frequent thoughts that other people cannot be trusted. 

When you ruminate, stress sticks around in the body long after the reason for the stress is over.