65 Quotes by Dan Harris

Axelrod responded, “All we can do is everything we can do.

Marturano recommended something radical: 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.

Imagine a world where people were 10% happier and less reactive. Marriage, parenting, road rage, politics – all would be improved upon. Public health revolutions can happen rapidly. Most Americans didn’t brush their teeth until after world war 2 after soldiers were demanded to maintain oral hygiene. Exercise didn’t get popular until science proved its benefits. Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world.

I suspect that if the practice could be denuded of all the spiritual preening and straight-out-of-a-fortune-cookie lingo such as “sacred spaces,” “divine mother,” and “holding your emotions with love and tenderness,” it would be attractive to many more millions of smart, skeptical, and ambitious people who would never otherwise go near it.

All of us struggle to strike a balance between the image we present to the world and the reality of our inner landscape.

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.

We “live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation,” he wrote. We wax nostalgic for prior events during which we were doubtless ruminating or projecting. We cast forward to future events during which we will certainly be fantasizing.

It was the longest, most exquisite high of my life, but the hangover came first.

I do know one thing for sure: there’s much more for me to do. Whether or not 100% happy is achievable, I can definitely be more than 10% happier – and I’m excited to.