In a contemporary world where instant gratification is the norm, taking a moment to simply be present has become a rare indulgence. The relentless pace of our lives often leads us to lose touch with both ourselves and those around us.
In light of this, the practice of mindfulness emerges as an essential pursuit in our modern era. Mindfulness, as defined in the dictionary, involves attaining a mental state characterized by a focused awareness of the present moment, accompanied by a calm acknowledgment and acceptance of our feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.
Engaging in mindfulness is not merely a means to calm the mind; it serves as a conduit for introspection, allowing you to engage with your inner self and confront the thoughts and emotions that may have been relegated to the sidelines. Through this process, a sense of inner peace is cultivated, fostering gratitude for the myriad aspects of our lives.
By centering our attention on the present, we can release the persistent worries and anxieties that linger in the recesses of our minds. In therapeutic contexts, mindfulness proves to be a valuable tool, aiding in stress reduction, anxiety alleviation, depression mitigation, cognitive enhancement, and the cultivation of healthier relationships.
For these reasons, we have lined up the 100 best mindfulness quotes that will make you feel at peace and will help you as you embark on your mindfulness journey.
- “When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do.” Shunryu Suzuki
- “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” Eckhart Tolle
- “Gifted leadership occurs where heart and head—feeling and thought—meet. These are the two wings that allow a leader to soar.” Daniel Goleman
- “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” Pema Chödrön
- “Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.” Sharon Salzberg
- “The kind of perspective that brings focus and clarity comes from space. And while we may not always have a choice about clearing our calendars, we can choose to clear our minds of the habitual momentum that blocks creativity and compassion.” Janice Marturano
- “Emotional Self-Awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions and their effects on your performance.” Daniel Goleman
- “We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity.” Sharon Salzberg
- “Being mindful means that we suspend judgment for a time, set aside our immediate goals for the future, and take in the present moment as it is rather than as we would like it to be.” J. Mark G. Williams
10.“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki
11.“If it’s out of your hands, it deserves freedom from your mind too.” Ivan Nuru
12.“Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.” Mingyur Rinpoche
13.“Now is the future that you promised yourself last year, last month, last week. Now is the only moment you’ll ever really have. Mindfulness is about waking up to this.” Mark Williams
14.”The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Socrates
15.“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” Eckhart Tolle
16.“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” Aristotle
17.“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” Thich Nhat Hanh
18.“This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.” Maya Angelou
19.“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” Sharon Salzberg
20.“Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.” Jon Kabat-Zinn
21.“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” Thich Nhat Hanh
22.“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” A. A. Milne
23.“Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.” Amit Ray
24. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama
25.“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” Thich Nhat Hanh
26.“We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.” Walter Savage Landor
27.“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It takes guts.” Pema Chödrön
28.”Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your actions.” Dalai Lama
29.“In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just Being.” Eckhart Tolle
30.“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” Henry Miller
31.“Mindfulness gives birth to joy and happiness.” Thich Nhat Hanh
32.“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” Thich Nhat Hanh
33.“The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” Jack Kornfield
34.“Mindfulness is a pause – the space between stimulus and response: that’s where the choice lies.” Tara Brach
35.“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.” Jack Kornfield
36.“The greatest communication is usually how we are rather than what we say.” Joseph Goldstein
37.”Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” Dalai Lama
38.“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” Jack Kornfield
39.“Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.” Jon Kabat-Zinn
40.“To listen entails a fundamental letting go of self-centeredness. We have to be willing to put down our thoughts, views, and feelings temporarily to truly listen.” Oren Jay Sofer
41. Don’t let life harden your heart.” Pema Chödrön
42.“There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.” Tara Brach
43.“If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation, and loneliness.” Sharon Salzberg
44.”You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn
45.“The answer to having a better life is not about getting a better life, it’s just about changing how we see the one we have right now.” Angel Kyodo Williams
46.”Amid movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” Deepak Chopra
47.”The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source.” Thich Nhat Hanh
48.“We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.” Sharon Salzberg
49.“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” Pema Chödrön
50.“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” Anne Lamott
51.“Stress is wanting something to be the way it isn’t.” Eckhart Tolle
52.“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” Kahlil Gibran
53.“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.” Vandana Shiva
54.“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.” Jack Kornfield
55.“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” Wayne Dyer
56.“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” Amit Ray
57.“We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.” Thich Nhat Hanh
58. “When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, “Darling, I care about your suffering,” a deep healing begins.” Tara Brach
59.“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” Pema Chödrön
60.“The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you.” David Lynch
61.”Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor Frankl
62.“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” Caroline Myss
63.“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer
64.“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.” Rachel Naomi Remen
65.“The words of kindness are more healing to a drooping heart than balm or honey.” Sarah Fielding
66.“Every step taken in mindfulness brings us one step closer to healing ourselves and the planet.” Thich Nhat Hanh
67.“Every time we become aware of a thought, as opposed to being lost in a thought, we experience that opening of the mind.” Joseph Goldstein
68.“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Lao Tzu
69.“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” Hermann Hesse
70.“Listen to silence. It has so much to say.” Rumi
71.“Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth simply opens up to the rain and soaks it all in.” Thich Nhat Hanh
72.“To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.” Jack Kornfield
73.“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
74.“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” Marcus Aurelius
75.“Our true home is not in the past. Our true home is not in the future. Our true home is in the here and the now.” Thich Nhat Hanh
76. “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.” Melody Beattie
77.”Surrender is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from no to yes.” Eckhart Tolle
78.“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Alan Watts
79.“Give love and unconditional acceptance to those you encounter, and notice what happens.” Wayne Dyer
80.“What you long for is a deep intimacy with your own experience—the deepest acceptance of every thought, every sensation, every feeling. And that cannot come from outside of yourself.” Jeff Foster
81.“If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time.” Thich Nhat Hanh
82.“See if you can allow gentle self-acceptance to coexist with the active drive for self-improvement.” Kristin Neff
83.“Acceptance is not about liking a situation. It is about acknowledging all that has been lost and learning to live with that loss.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
84.“What would it be like if I could accept life – accept this moment – exactly as it is?” Tara Brach
85. “I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
86.“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melody Beattie
87.“No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.” Jack Kornfield
88.“I need to take a sacred pause as if I were a sun-warmed rock in the center of a rushing river.” Dawna Markova
89.“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -– that we will begin to live each day to the fullest as if it was the only one we had.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
90.“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu
91.“May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.” John O’Donohue
92.“The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful and good and catches our attention – the sound of rain, the look of the night sky – the glow in a child’s eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause… then totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.” Tara Brach
93.“Wherever you are, be there totally.” Eckhart Tolle
94. “If we want to feel satisfied as we eat, the mind has to be aware of what is occurring in the mouth. In other words, if you want to have a party in the mouth, the mind has to be invited.” Jan Chozen Bays
95.“Mindful eating means simply eating or drinking while being aware of each bite or sip.” Thich Nhat Hanh
96.“At its most essential, the apple you hold is a manifestation of the wonderful presence of life. It is interconnected with all that is. It contains the whole universe, it is an ambassador of the cosmos coming to nourish our existence. It feeds our body, and if we eat it mindfully, it also feeds our soul and recharges our spirit.” Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Lilian Cheung
97.“We have created a culture of constant snacking, drinking, and eating.” Thich Nhat Hanh
98.“Mindful eating is a way to become reacquainted with the guidance of our internal nutritionist.” Jan Chozen Bays
99.“Mindful eating is about awareness. When you eat mindfully, you slow down, pay attention to the food you’re eating, and savor every bite.” Susan Albers
100. “Understanding our relationship to eating cultivates a lot of insights and helps us start living our highest potential.” Natasha Pantovic Nuit
Conclusion
At any point along your mindfulness journey, drawing inspiration from mindfulness quotes can significantly enhance your practice. Whether you’re just starting or have advanced in your meditative pursuits, the profound wisdom encapsulated in these quotes has a universal resonance. They not only function as motivational tools but also reaffirm the enduring truths embedded deep within you.
It’s essential to explore diverse ways of integrating these quotes into your routine. Commit them to memory, jot them down, or strategically place them in your daily living spaces for constant reflection. Allow your preferred mindfulness quote to reside in the recesses of your heart, acting as a poignant reminder. Embrace the entirety of your cherished quotes as guiding beacons, gently steering you back to the present moment whenever needed.