10% Happier 10th Anniversary: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story

“I do not want to experience the fading of the flavor—the colorless, cottony pulp that succeeds that spectacular burst over my taste buds.”

When I got into a rut, it didn’t take long for me to jar myself out of it. I would use RAIN—watching how the feelings would show themselves in my body and then labeling them with some degree of nonjudgmental remove.

Don’t be nice for the sake of it, he was saying. Do it because it would redound to your own benefit, that it would make you feel good by eroding the edges of the ego.

think for an ambitious person who cares about their career—who wants to create things and be successful—it’s natural to be trying really hard. Then the Buddhist thing comes in around the results—because it doesn’t always happen the way you think it should.”

Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached t

Wasn’t the Buddhist emphasis on “letting go” a recipe for passivity? Was the denigration of desire another way of saying we shouldn’t bother to strive? Furthermore, shouldn’t we be “attached” to our loved ones?

People trained in self-compassion meditation are more likely to quit smoking and stick to a diet.

If you’re never looking up, I now realized, you’re always just looking around.