"Why meditate? As you suffer less, are more fulfilled, as you understand who you are, and as you have a handle on changing how you carry yourself, all of that sums up ultimately in how you contribute to making this world a better place." 

~ Shinzen Young

"Getting people to pause and wait and not act on their immediate desire is actually one way in which we can get them to be more patient in the long run."

Ayelet Fishbach

"We have this idea now in our society that are never supposed to feel bad. We’re never supposed to feel anxious. We’re never supposed to feel exhausted."

~ Alex Lickerman

"After you read a poem just knowing you can hold it, you can be in that space of the poem. And it can hold you in its space."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I've shared strategies for using movies to strengthen attention. Just as in ordinary life, what makes tending to the sensory components of a film so challenging is the pull of the narrative. But what would it be like to focus on the changing sights and sounds without having to resist the gravitational pull of story elements? 

Starting today, you can find out. 

"with shortness of breath, i’ll explain the infinite— 
how rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist."

~ Sleeping at Last

"I do know enough as a psychologist about learning and memory. And I know that we learn. How much of this I need to do in order to change, I cannot say. But I can say that there is a point at which this brain is not just elastic in moving to what is being suggested, but that it may be plastic in that it can be reset into a new mold."

~ Mahzarin Banaji

"We know that you're made up of trillions of little things made from more little things that are constantly changing. Together, all those little things are not static, but dynamic." 

"When I feel at home (or when someone else truly makes me feel at home), I feel comfortable, supported, safe, and relaxed, like I don’t need anything. At those times, my past ceases to be a neon marquee of regrets, and my future is no longer an unending to-do list, bullet-pointed by unrealistic expectations. Feeling at home is the feeling that I can just be myself."

~ Ethan Nichtern

"I have a very hard time with things, you know, just being quiet. Like, if I sit alone, you know, for ten minutes with nothing happening, you know, which I guess some people would call meditating, I just lose my mind. I'm, like — how does anyone deal with this horrible silence and awareness that everything's almost over?"

~ Marc Maron

"I began to realize that the only place where things were actually real was at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you." 

~ David Whyte

"You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I'll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action."

~ Barack Obama

"I believe that it’s really interesting and really fun and really informative, and the right thing to do to be able to look at things in different ways, and appreciate there are different ways of looking at things that each have their own validity."

~ Frank Wilczek 

"An inner voice always used to be an outer voice. We absorb the tone of others. A harassed or angry parent. The menacing threats of an elder sibling keen to put us down. The words of a schoolyard bully or teacher who seemed impossible to please. We internalize the unhelpful voices, because at certain key moments in the past, they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodge in our own way of thinking." 

~ The School of Life

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

~ Kilian McDonnell

An attention exercise on the theme of rest barely disguised as a poem. 

"Just this physical body right here, the energy in it, is equivalent to 30 hydrogen bombs I have right now. And that’s my only guarantee. I don’t know about tomorrow, but I have right now, and I’ve got this power. What am I going to do with it?"

~ Craig Minowa

"Half of what’s about to occur is unknown, both inside you and outside you."

~ David Whyte