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Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.

Pema Chodron

If you follow your heart, you’re going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
PEMA CHODRON

Heart Inspirational Yourself
Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.
PEMA CHODRON

Care Feeling Hope Irritation Listening Reminder
When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
PEMA CHODRON

Change Dynamic Enlightenment Ourselves Resistance Situation Struggle Suffering
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
Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
PEMA CHODRON

Change Experience Grasp Meditation Ourselves Pattern Thinking
Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Kind World Yourself
If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
PEMA CHODRON

Crazy Drive Heart Learning Open Ourselves People Teacher
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
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Medicine Personal Poison Suffering Yourself
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
The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
PEMA CHODRON

Connection Greatness Joy Obstacle Ourselves
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
PEMA CHODRON

Destruction Expose Ourselves
Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
PEMA CHODRON

Difficult Experience Need Run Transformation Yourself
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
PEMA CHODRON

Need Spiritual Teaching Wisdom
In meditation, you learn how to get out of your own way long enough for there to be room for your wisdom to manifest.
PEMA CHODRON

Enough Learning Manifestation Medication Way Wisdom Yourself
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
PEMA CHODRON

Arrive Need Problem Run Teaching
The second noble truth says that this resistance is the mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
PEMA CHODRON

Call Ego Life Noble Resistance Suffering Truth
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
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
PEMA CHODRON

Fall Hard Time Healing Kind Perspective
By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Creation Ourselves Thinking Way World
Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.
PEMA CHODRON

Joy Life Lose Pain Patience Perspective Reaction Yourself
Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
PEMA CHODRON

Fear Open Ourselves Resistance
Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
PEMA CHODRON

Certain Death Important Philosophy Time
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
PEMA CHODRON

Children Love Self Treat Yourself
One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.
PEMA CHODRON

Deep Enough Feeling Oneself Pattern
You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
PEMA CHODRON

Build Delight Difficult Experience Strength 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

Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.

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Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.

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