Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics Quotes

“I cannot say this frequently enough: the goal is not to clear your mind but to focus your mind—for a few nanoseconds at a time—and whenever you become distracted, just start again. Getting lost and starting over is not failing at meditation, it is succeeding.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar. • It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.” • The voice is insatiable. The default mental condition for too many human beings is dissatisfaction. Under the sway of the ego, nothing is good enough. We’re always on the hunt for the next dopamine hit. We hurl ourselves headlong from one cookie, one promotion, one party to the next, and yet a great many of us are never fully sated. How many meals, movies, and vacations have you enjoyed? And are you done yet? Of course not. • The voice is unrelievedly self-involved. We are all the stars of our own movies, whether we cast ourselves as hero, victim, black hat, or all three. True, we can get temporarily sucked into other people’s stories, but often as a means of comparing ourselves to them. Everything ultimately gets subordinated to the one plotline that matters: the Story of Me.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Buddhism is not something to believe in, but rather something to do.”)”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Meditation forces you into a direct collision with a fundamental fact of life that is not often pointed out to us: we all have a voice in our heads.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Equanimity is the capacity to let your experience be what it is, without trying to fight it and negotiate with it. It’s like an inner smoothness or frictionlessness.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“5. Non-identification. Can you let the emotional feeling do its thing without taking it personally? Try to see your emotions like you see the weather: not as something to judge yourself for but, rather, as part of the natural atmospheric conditions of the moment. This is a deeper form of allowing. After you’ve let this happen for a while, go back to the breath or to your home or rest sensation for a bit. Before you open your eyes, take a few minutes to relax and do nothing.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“As Sharon Salzberg has said, “We don’t meditate to get better at meditating; we meditate to get better at life.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into meditation, which has been shown to: • Reduce blood pressure • Boost recovery after the release of the stress hormone cortisol • Improve immune system functioning and response • Slow age-related atrophy of the brain • Mitigate the symptoms of depression and anxiety”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“The untrained mind is stupid.” —AJAHN CHAH, meditation master”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“When you are unaware of this ceaseless inner talkfest, it can control and deceive you. The ego’s terrible suggestions often come to the party dressed up as common sense:”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar. • It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Studies show the more you meditate, the better you are at activating the regions of the brain associated with attention and deactivating the regions associated with mind-wandering.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“happiness is not just something that happens to you; it is a skill.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Everyone should meditate once a day. And if you don’t have time to meditate, then you should do it twice a day.”
― Jeff Warren, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“As you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out whatever worry or concern may have been spinning around in your head.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“equanimity”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Start by stopping, wherever you are: lying in your bedroom, parked in your car, standing in an elevator. Try it with your eyes open, but keep your gaze soft (it’s the perfect stealth meditation).”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“What you see clearly cannot drive you. Ignorance is not bliss.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“I have a friend, a fellow meditator, who jokes that when he considers the voice in his head, he feels like he's been kidnapped by the most boring person alive, who says the same baloney over and over, most of it negative, nearly all of it self-referential.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“You can age badly, and you can age well,” he said. “I know affable older folks who sit in the park and watch the kids play, and they’ve got that good-natured, easygoing quality. A serious practice just makes that happen sooner in your life, so you have it in the middle of your life, or even earlier. You get to have the best of being old while you’re still a little more sprightly.” Yes. That’s why we do this.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“of them because you need to change lanes, and they go ballistic. I mean, obviously it’s not just about you pulling in front of them. There’s got to be layers and layers and layers of stuff that happened that day, that week, that month, that year, that lifetime, that get expressed in that moment. When you stop and calm your mind down, you start seeing those things. You start to respond”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“The mind is constantly finding and making problems. As it settles, there are fewer problems. It’s that easy.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“equanimity,”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“One”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your head at any given moment, so that you don’t get carried away by it.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“I love New Orleans. Even after—perhaps especially after—having covered the horror of Hurricane Katrina. I adore everything about the place: the people, the architecture, the history, the life-altering music, and the life-shortening cuisine.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book