We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences
Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
We become what we pay attention to.
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.
Habits are changed by practicing new behaviors, and this is true for mental habits as well.
We all fall into biological and mental habits. It's an easy way for us to navigate day-to-day work and life, but it also doesn't do us any favours in terms of growing into wisdom, growing into a greater understanding of each other, growing into a deeper relationship - all the things that we really crave.
I am the source of my own suffering, because of the habits of my mind.
Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
Observe yourself as you go through a typical day. Stuff happens to you. As it does, you immediately judge it and label it. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. So often that you no longer recognize that you're doing it. It is a deep-seated habit.
Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.
Sometimes I overtinker, which is something wrong with my brain chemistry. But in figuring out why I do that, maybe I'll make myself a better person. I doubt it.
We are what we think we are. The habitual inclination of our thoughts determines our talents and abilities, and our personality. So whatever you want to be, start to develop that pattern now.
To one who is accustomed to thinking a lot, every new thought that he hears or reads about immediately appears as a link in a chain.
My personality's very obsessive-compulsive. I tend to fixate a lot.
Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe techniques as though not observing.
I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.
Whatever a person frequently thinks and reflects on, that will become the inclination of their mind.
The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur.
If you think a certain thought long enough and hard enough, it becomes a fixed belief and you will find yourself behaving on the outside in a manner consistent with it.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
One of the things my success as an author has forced me to face is how dysfunctional... Maybe that's a strong word, but how obsessive I am.
Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.
