“Monks understand that routine frees your mind, but the biggest threat to that freedom is monotony. People complain about their poor memories, but I’ve heard it said that we don’t have a retention problem, we have an attention problem.”

Treat yourself with the same love and respect you want to show to others.

You can’t be anything you want. But you can be everything you are.

To walk down the same old path and find a new stone is to open your mind.

You are who you are when no one is watching.

Higher values propel and elevate us toward happiness, fulfillment, and meaning. Lower values demote us toward anxiety, depression, and suffering.

All things are temporary and that we can’t truly own or control anything.

We think that success equals happiness, but this idea is an illusion.

A monk mind practices detachment. We realize that everything—from our houses to our families—is borrowed.

Find me someone who has gone to the darkest parts of their own character where they were so close to their own self-destruction and found a way to get up and out of it, and I will bow on my knees to you. You’re my teacher.

Because the only thing that stays with you from the moment you’re born until the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, your family, the country you live in, all of that can change. The one thing that stays with you is your breath.

The more we define ourselves in relation to the people around us, the more lost we are.

If you follow your bliss, he said, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else

We say things to ourselves that we would never say to people we love

Too often we love people who don’t love us, but we fail to return the love of others who do.

What’s on your news feed is feeding your mind.

Everyone has a story, and sometimes our egos choose to ignore that. Don’t take everything personally—it is usually not about you.

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

You must all pay attention to your health first.

I’m trying to preach the idea that if we don’t pay attention to history we’re destined to repeat it.

If you have to talk to more than three people about the same problem, you don’t want help, you want attention.

Surprisingly few men are lacking in capacity, but they fail because. they are too indolent to apply themselves with the seriousness and the attention that is necessary to solve important problems.