Diane Ackerman Quotes

I'm pretty much done with mindfulness. I'm just going to start paying attention.

You lose your habitual behavior, which allowed you to sort of zone out. You have to be here, you have to be now, you have to be present.

Attention is the key to transformation- and full attention also implies acceptance.

Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.

Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!

There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.

It's a nice way to put the focus back on this simple act... if someone creates you.

Be awake to the details around you, but don't be self-conscious.

A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.

I travel so much and am always living out of a suitcase, so my favorite saying is 'Wherever you go, there you are'. I love it because it's reassuring to me that you have to live in the moment wherever you happen to be.

I know if I'm lost in the moment or not.

We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation.

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.

I'm tough, I'm pushy, I'm really loud. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about it. But we only have so much brain capacity, so if I'm spending part of my brain thinking about how I'm acting, A, I'm not spending all of my brain doing, and B, I'm not actually in that moment.

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.

Presence is more than just being there.

I can enjoy what I'm engaged in and be fully present rather than planning my answers to questions while someone else is speaking or thinking about my next appointment while my current engagement is still in in progress.

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.

I pay attention to everything now - the taste of bread, the taste of water.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

If you're living strictly for the future or living in the past, it can make your partner feel neglected. Make yourself focus on the moment you're in.

Calvin is a constant reminder that I'm not always as present as I want to be. His go-to state of being is present. So I'm really grateful of that part of being his parent.

When we turn on our observation capabilities, we become much more in the moment and much more powerful. Psychic powers have been known to develop from consistent practice of paying attention. It's available to us all. It's all in what we choose to practice.