Quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn

No matter what people are doing, they are much less happy when their minds are wandering than when their minds are focused

By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.

But waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves. When it comes down to it, wherever you go, there you are

To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment, accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things can only unfold in their own time.

as long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.

These qualities are beautifully encapsulated in the famous statement of Victor Frankl, himself a survivor of Auschwitz (and a neurologist and psychologist): "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." MBSR

When you begin to question the narrative of yourself and inquire as to who is even doing all of this talking inside your own head, you may come to realize that you have no idea!

Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind's endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It's the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it.

is that if you are aware of what is happening, you are "doing it right," no matter what is happening.

We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect [on our happiness]. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things….The small stuff matters.

Thinking seems to constitute our "default setting" rather than awareness.

seen or unseen, in sun or clouds, broiling or frigid, it just sits, being itself. At times visited by violent storms, buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude, through it all the mountain sits.