Quotes by Dan Harris

A big part of (Janice) Marturanos success in bringing mindfulness to this unlikely venue was that she talked about it not as a spiritual exercise but instead as something that made you a better leader and more focused, and that enhanced your creativity and innovation. She didnt even like the term stress reduction. For a lot of us, she said, we think that having stress in our lives isnt a bad thing. It gives us an edge.

The brain is a pleasure seeking machine. Once you teach it, through meditation, that abiding calmly in the present moment feels better than our habitual state of clinging l, over time, the brain will want more and more mindfulness.

We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? You can no more disconnect from the universe and its inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.

Science experiments have found that people who practice meditation release significantly lower doses of cortisol, known as the stress hormone. This is consequential because frequent release of cortisol can lead to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, and depression.

Meditation is the best tool for neutralizing the voice in the head. Its a muzzle for the ego. Being mindful is an innate but underused ability we all have, the act of being aware without judging. When you repeatedly go through the cycle of trying to focus on your breath, losing that focus, and noticing and returning to the practice, you are literally building your mindfulness muscle the same way dumbbell curls build your biceps. As this mind-muscle develops, you start being way more aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as what they really are: squirts of chemicals & hormones that enter, peak and then fade completely back to the nothingness of which they arose. In other words, mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so youre not a slave to whatever pops into your head. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of them.

“The route of true happiness, the Buddha argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. To truly tame the monkey mind and defeat our habitual tendency toward clinging, meditation was the prescription, and sitting and actively facing the voice in your head mindfully for a few minutes a day might be the hardest thing youll ever do. Accept that challenge and improve your life drastically. Its about mitigation, not alleviation. Its that simple. The only way out is through.”