Cultivating Happiness

Here I compile a list of my favorite quotes that are my go to when I experience some blues. They manage to inspire me each time. I am sharing them with you and hope you find light and positive energy from them as well.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

— Socrates

“It is always heavy because you are deciding over and over again to carry it. Embrace change, and loosen up your sense of identity. Let yourself walk a new path. You do not have to ignore or erase the past. You just have to wholeheartedly embrace the present and move on.”

— Yung Pueblo

“The central promise of ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) is that you carry your difficult thoughts and feelings inside; you observe them, but you and they are not the same.

You are not your psychological experiences, even though they can affect you.

You are not just the uncomfortable thoughts in your mind, the feelings they trigger, precisely because you can observe those thoughts and feelings. Whatever or whoever this observer is — the self, the personality, the soul, call it what you will, it is, by definition, set apart from those feelings and the fact that you can observe them is proof of this. When you recognize this observer as being separate from the pain, you can become better at tolerating that pain.”

— The Upside of Your Dark Sides

To wrap up, below is what I came up to calm my nerves when I find myself anxious over being anxious, or sad over being sad: your emotions and the feelings that they trigger are like your stomach responding to the stimuli in its environment. Diet, stress, temperature change etc may trigger discomfort in your gut; the same things along with less observable stimuli such as hormonal fluctuation and changes in brain chemicals, may trigger different emotions and feelings. Do not take them personally. You have not changed one bit. You are just fine as you always are.