Pema Chodron Quotes

You can know what's in your life when you know what's in your heart.

I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please - and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us.

It's like that perfection thing, trying to be that thing you're not. You have to feel that discomfort and not try to get rid of it. Accept that aspect and get into it. Acknowledge those feelings and let them be. You are who you are.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier.

If you just sit and spend time with yourself - you were born as you, just you, and that's how you're gonna die. Why do we spend the time in between trying to not be ourselves? That's what meditation is. You just sit with yourself. Through all of it. It's like John Patrick Shanley said: "Where the terror is, you must go." Where the terror is, is where you must go.

The key is your thoughts and feelings, and you have been holding the key in your hand all of your life.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.

Enjoy the fashions, read the good articles, and when you feel threatened, turn your mental gaze inward, but keep your eyes on the road, or you won't know where you are going. Have a practice or discipline that lets you be in touch with your inner self, your soul.

The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.

I live in the moment, and I reflect later.

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

I've fully embraced who I am. I stopped fighting with people and just come to realize, 'This is me. This is all of me.'

Life is so much easier when I allow myself to be myself and go with the flow. Whatever that looks like on a given day. If I can get quiet enough to truly check-in with myself, I usually end up on the right track.

There's something very touching to me about someone almost communicating to themselves in some way - trying to come to some deeper understanding of yourself and having compassion for yourself.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.

It's important to have an examined life - but it's a fine line between having an examined life and being hypercritical of oneself. There has to be balance in there somewhere.

I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person.

I've learned to accept who I am.

My journey is not to be a star but to become as aware a person as possible.

I wish I could have gone back and told myself what I know now: Accepting yourself is the way to go.

You've got to tune out the other people and tune in to what's going on inside. Love yourself. Nourish your body.