Dan Harris Quotes

“Do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand.”

“Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.”

“If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can.”

“If you stay in the moment, you’ll have what is called spontaneous right action, which is intuitive, which is creative, which is visionary, which eavesdrops on the mind of the universe.”

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

“It was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head — the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember — was kind of an *sshole.”

“Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.”

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

“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.”

“Take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day – purposeful pauses. So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.”

“The best solutions often come when you allow yourself to get comfortable with ambiguity.”

“The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.”

“The fact that you exist is a highly statistically improbable event, and if you are not perpetually surprised by the fact that you exist you don’t deserve to be here.”

“The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.”

“There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.”

“What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, 'respond' rather than simply 'react'. In the Buddhist view, you can’t control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.”

“When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome — so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.”

“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

“Your demons may have been ejected from the building, but they’re out in the parking lot, doing push-ups.”