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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

Pema Chodron

It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Suffering Truth Yourself
I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.
PEMA CHODRON

Acceptance Important Myself Right Thinking
Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.
PEMA CHODRON

Gratitude Ordinary Praise
We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
PEMA CHODRON

Help Order Ourselves Work
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Hold On Truth Yourself
So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
PEMA CHODRON

Global Heart Human Implication Peace Start War
If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.
PEMA CHODRON

Attention Fact Heart Person Shout Stand Yourself
We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
PEMA CHODRON

Choice Circumstance Hard Kind Life Open Scare
The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.
PEMA CHODRON

Best Curiosity Instruction Life Morning Spiritual Wonder Yourself
All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
PEMA CHODRON

Creation Future Inspirational Motivational Need Open Yourself
The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.
PEMA CHODRON

Avoid Certain Comfortable Question Training Warrior
All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.
PEMA CHODRON

Hate Ignorance Investment Opinion Ourselves War World
Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life … everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening.
PEMA CHODRON

Awake Life Limitation Person Stand Thinking Vehicle Yourself
When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.
PEMA CHODRON

Celebration Fall Identity Life World Yourself
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
PEMA CHODRON

Sky Yourself
Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.
PEMA CHODRON

Achievement Best Moments Perfection Worry Yourself

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.

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