Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

It's funny, I get a little quieter with time. I don't want to chase my tail and one day repeat myself and repeat myself and one day have kids going to college and not have memories that I should, because I was too busy doing my thing.

The quality of one's life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life. There is no limit to the kinds of changes that awareness can produce.

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

My biggest sorrow, when looking back on my youth, is how much of it I somehow missed. Now, looking at my life today, I don't want to make the same mistake. I don't want to miss this. As Bonnie Raitt sang like she was singing it for all of us, "Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste."

Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets.

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out.

At some point, life starts to pass you by and becomes about avoidance. I want to stay clear from that situation, because I don't like that.

Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.

My whole life, I've wanted things before I was ready. I was always pushing for the next job, the next success. I was so focused on achieving and the path that I was missing some great point about life.

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

Pausing between stimulus and response allows you to show up in your life.

Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made.

Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front.

It is just living life intentionally - that is what I want instead of just existing.

When you talk to people who are old, some wish they had enjoyed themselves more, but not many wish they had wasted more time.

Getting a good grasp of your life and what's going on around you is so important.

I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, That I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.

In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances to shape our lives by default.

Focus on a specific intention... A goal is often fueled by fear... An intention is fueled by a sense of purpose.

Use your life to wake you up.

If you change your relationship with time, you will change your life. The most important time of your life is right now.

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

The real meditation is how you live your life.

I promised myself that no matter where I went, what I did, I'd never take anything for granted again.