Sam Harris Quotes

Only allow yourself to think negative thoughts and/or complain about anything for three minutes, three times a day.

I let my personal feelings take care of themselves. I find that works better.

I don't torture myself.

Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.

Protect yourself......from your own thoughts.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

The constant monitoring of our emotional landscape and personal interactions is a bizarre concept. But it is one that could help many people.

Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

It's soothing to realize that my mind's processes are inherently uncontrollable.

I realized that if my thoughts immediately affect my body, I should be careful about what I think. Now if I get angry, I ask myself why I feel that way. If I can find the source of my anger, I can turn that negative energy into something positive.

I try to keep away exterior events that are going to make me do something negative internally to myself.

You might think that shifting your thoughts is as easy as setting your mind to it. But stressful thoughts aren't held in place through choice or will power. They're held in place through perceived truth value.

There have been many occasions when I found it helpful to talk out loud to my own thoughts, ordering the unwholesome ones to go off somewhere and jump into the river.

If you think negatively, it's hard to get out of tense moments.

Mindfulness can help people of any age. That's because we become what we think.

I try not to do too much self-analysis apart from when I'm actually paying $170 an hour for it. I try to keep it in the room.

I think the biggest thing is knowing that those thoughts of panic are probably going to go into your brain, and just accepting it... So that's been the biggest thing. Not fighting it and trying to think I'm going to have the perfect mentality the entire time. That's not going to happen.

I'm not the perfect person. I'm not the most happy person. I get angry, and I get mad sometimes, but I try my best to control my thoughts. Because that flows throughout your body.

I try to take my emotional pulse more now, to recognize when I need to go scream and cry for 20 minutes and then come back to center. Allowing yourself that time, it's a gift.

If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.

I have no control over what people think, and if I were to spend energy on that, I would be a lifeless, deadened human being.

The truth is that stress doesn't come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances.

It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one.

I've learned to take care of myself. You know, I try to stay conscious of whatever my energy is at all times, really. I mean, I come home from work, and, depending on the day or depending on what was going on, if I needed to adjust, I'd just meditate, or play guitar, or watch some 'Monty Python.'

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick.