29 quotes to shift your mindset

If you’ve been hanging round here for a while, you know that I wholeheartedly, absolutely and unabashedly  believe that words wield power.

Nestled at their core is the potency to turn friendships sour, give rise to periods of unrest, start wars, propose forevers, shower kindness, spark revolutions and influence human nature.

We all crave connection. It runs through our veins and reminds us that we belong to something bigger than ourselves.  When we wander off track or get swept off course, the lyrics in a song or the words in a book have the power to guide us gently back to whence we came.

I’ve collected quotes for as long as I can remember, and although it drives me insane to see so many versions of the same ones rehashed and plastered across the web, I know a gem when I find it by the way it feels.

Wise. Knowing. Generous. Insightful.

Here I’ve chronicled my ultimate favourites with the intent that they spark a little something for you.x

”Run my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings. Run like hell my dear, from anyone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred tender vision of your beautiful heart” ~ Hafiz

”Learn to love the fool in you, the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes, loses often, lacks self control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects you against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom you also harbour and who would rob you of human aliveness, humility and dignity but for your fool.” ~ Theodore Issac Rubin

”Right now, I urge you to unravel the listless, rigid parts and feed your wild, because it is the wild you, not the barely alive, embedded-into-routine, zombie-like you that is now struggling for air. For turn on. For sweet prana. Restore the wild and the warrior. You shouldn’t have to get sick or halt domesticity to find it, you just need to remember that you are human, still very much alive, wickedly, wildly, extraordinary.” ~ Victoria Erickson

‘The moment you realise that your bones are made of the same dust of the planets. Your lungs are breathing the same air as the migrating butterflies and your blood is pumping because of the love and care of thousands is when you realise that you are not as broken as you think you are. You are full of the world.’ Unknown

Image via designspiration.net

”You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book, or you take a trip, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating.

The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death: absence of pleasure. That is all.
It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their family. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.” ~Anais Nin

”If you’re feeling frightened about what comes next, don’t be. Embrace the uncertainty. Allow it to lead you places. Be brave as it challenges you to exercise booth your heart and your mind as your create your own path toward happiness; don’t waste time with regret. Spin wildly into your next action. Enjoy the present, each moment, as it comes, because you’ll never get another one quite like it. And if you should ever look up and find yourself lost, simply take a breath and start over. Retrace your steps and go back to the purest place in your heart…where your hope lives. You’ll find your way again.” ~ Everwood

”Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what it worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” ~George Eliot

”Think of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking what you will; whether it be remembering your own childhood or yearning toward your own future – only be attentive to that which rises up in you and set it above everything that you observe about you. What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lost too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

”Tensing won’t help a thing as your body doesn’t know the difference between a dangerous enemy the millisecond before a collision, a dreaded email, or a chore that was left unfinished. Don’t allow yourself to exist in a chronic state of toxic tension. The moment you find yourself anxiously holding your breath, exhale like you’ve never exhaled before and release it all. Make it a practice. Make it non-negotiable. Make it a priority, Then watch how life responds and softens alongside you.” ~Victoria Erickson

”If you’re laying bed wrapped up in sheets of miserable thought go to sleep. 
If thumbing through old messages only causes your heart to aches and long for something unattainable erase them. If it hurts to keep everything you’re feeling bottled up inside let it out. If you’re clinging onto someone that doesn’t treat you like you’re worth the world let them go. Because sometimes we choose to believe that things are only indistinguishable shades of grey when in reality, life is more black and white than it seems. If you’re unhappy with the way you are living your life change it.” ~m.k. 

”I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought, there are so many people in the world. There must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her and imagine that she would be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here.” ~Frida Kahlo

”Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be – a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation – with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgement and advice, we must dare to show up.” ~Brene Brown; Daring Greatly

”In life, we think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem. The real truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together for a time, then they fall back apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. Personal discovery and growth come from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Suffering comes from wishing things were different. Misery is self inflicted, when we are expecting the ”ideal” to overcome the ”actual”, or needing things (or people, or places) to be different for us so we can then be happy. Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don’t cop out on that. Don’t run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it.

What is the lesson in this wind? What is this storm trying to tell you? What will you learn if you face it with courage? With full honesty and – lean into it.” ~Pema Chodron

“The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”  ~Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the life you want by being present to the life you have

“We often hesitate to follow our intuition out of fear. Most usually, we are afraid of the changes in our own life that our actions will bring. Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations.” ~ Caroline Myss 

”Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do – have the affair ,stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself – as I did every damn time – the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing,  but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do”. ~Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. 

”The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you we’re saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” ~ Stephen King, Different Seasons.

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” ~Anais Nin

”Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.” ~ Bill Bullard

”The Universe got all of its information about what you like from you, and it has remembered every piece of it and has put it together in perfect formation. The things that are on their way to you are so much better than you even know that you want. As you allow them, the essence of all of these things the Universe knows you want will appear in perfect timing for you.”~ Abraham Hicks

”All there is to do, right at this very moment, is breathe in, breathe out, and kiss the joy as it flies.” ~ Dani Shapiro

“The only way one can be fully satisfied is to be empty. If you leave anything in reserve, you will be haunted by it.” ~Alexandra Franzen

[Tweet “”You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck.” ~Rumi”]

“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them” ~ Byron Katie

”The gift is in knowing that your past has been your spiritual schoolroom.” ~Paul Williams + Tracey Jackson

”The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues makes them vulnerable; the are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” ~Ernest Hemingway

‘‘I wanted to burn all the bridges, all the formulas, and if I got burned that was ok too. I wanted to be warm. I wanted the sun, and I went after it.’ ~ More, 1969

[Tweet “”A golden cage is still just a cage.” ~Anita Krizzan”]

‘‘There’s always another level up. There’s always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

Spot any of your favourites? Got one to add?

Pop it in the comments below.

C.x