153 Quotes by Richard Carlson

Accepting people's quirks or flaws doesn't just take changing them off your to-do list—it also gives you the time and energy to change the things you can.

True happiness comes not when we get rid of all of our problems,but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice, and to learn.

We deny the parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable rather than accepting the fact that we're all less than perfect.

Happiness is a state of mind, not a set of circumstances.

It is our ability to forget our problems, through the process of thought, rather than the passage of time, that frees us from the circumstances of our past.

Almost universally, when people look back on their lives while on their deathbed [...] they wish they had spent more time with the people and activities they truly loved and less time worrying about aspects of life that, upon deeper examination, really don't matter at all that much. Imagining yourself at your own funeral allows you to look back at your life while you still have the chance to make some important changes.

You are what you practice most.

Learning to stop sweating the small stuff involves deciding what things to engage in and what things to ignore. From a certain perspective, life can be described as a series of mistakes, one right after another with a little space in between.

Life is a process--just one thing after another. When you lose it, just start again.