Pema Chodron Quotes

Sometimes you think the whole world is falling, and it's only yourself that's leaning.

It takes five years for a willing person's mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo.

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.

Travel is similar to therapy. You can go to the best psychologist in the world for ten years. If you don't feel like actively shifting anything in your life, there is nothing that person can do to change you.

The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you.

The world is a mirror for us – whatever you say about others is really how you feel about yourself.

Bitterness doesn't serve you any good. And it really tells you more about how you feel about yourself than anything you feel about your friends.

Nobody is going anywhere in 10 years.

Meditation can change the flavor of the season.

There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

I'm sure that being sober all these years accounts for my ill humor.

The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.

Have you ever done that? You feel really bad, and then it goes away, and you don’t know why.

Boredom is the beginning of all destruction and everything that is negative.

If you're not happy, you can become happy. Happiness is a choice.

I first foreswore motherhood when I was about eight years old. ... [Children] were annoying. We were loud and sneaky and broke things. As an eight-year-old, maybe I was simply mortified by the prospect of being saddled with myself.

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind.

Emotions are far more contagious than any disease. A smile or a panic will spread through a group of people far faster than any virus ever could. When you walk into the office or a negotiation, then, wash your bad mood away before you see us. Don't cough on us, don't sneeze on us, sure, but don't bring your grouchiness, your skepticism or your fear in here either. It might spread.

You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, and move on." Homer Simpson

Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.

I think one of the myths is that people don't change. A lot of people believe that. Their spouse has been an alcoholic for the first 10 years of the marriage, and they say they are never going to change.

You will become on the outside, what you believe on the inside.

The arts, it has been said, cannot change the world, but they may change human beings who might change the world.

Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.

Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person’s own mind, than on the externals in the world.