Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.
Sharon Salzberg
Related I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of for... IMTIAZ ALI We thought things were happening on the landscape that we don't know about. We said, 'Let's get a bu... JANETTE BRIMMER I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES People were talking about virtual reality, and some were saying one day we will download our conscio... JEFFREY SCONCE In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and... SHEKHAR KAPUR And the stories we tell ourselves are not the only stories. ERICA LORRAINE SCHEIDT Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat differ... ALICE MUNRO ...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what hap... RABIH ALAMEDDINE So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get sha... JOHN MARSDEN Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe? SCOTT TUROW It's like we want the audience to travel with us as we tell our stories. I think of it as a musical;... JUANITA CRIDER When we don’t tell those we love about what’s really going on or listen carefully to what they h... SHARON SALZBERG We are focusing on bringing the stories of these women to the world. These stories must be told if w... EVE ENSLER It is really important to tell the stories so we can see how unique they can be ... bringing (storie... ELEN SEMRAN It's our job to get answers to the many questions still out there, to tell the human stories -- abou... MARCY MCGINNIS I was limited by stories that came before mine. We are so often limited by our own expectations... KAMERON HURLEY A lot of our songs tell stories. We like to reflect on what's happening in the suburbs. We do a lot ... JACK JOSTES We tell ourselves stories, JOAN DIDION We are the stories we tell ourselves. SHEKHAR KAPUR Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and oursel... NATHAN MYHRVOLD We carry our wounds and perhaps even worse, our capacity to wound, forward with us. If we learn not ... PATRICIA HAMPL Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can le... DAVID STRATHAIRN We literally had thousands of people coming in and out of our house. Everyone remembers her gracious... KATHY HENDRICKS I have a little pussy,/ And her coat is silver-gray;/ She lives in a great wide meadow/ And she neve... STORIES OF CHILDHOOD I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would k... BEN OKRI The key to creating the mental space before responding is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of being... ELIZABETH THORNTON Laugh and cry and tell stories. Sad stories about bodies stolen, bodies no longer here. Enraging sto... ELI CLARE But they get some comfort out of the made up stories. And if that helps them get along maybe I shoul... KAYE GIBBONS All the stories we tell ourselves are wrong. J. ROBERT LENNON We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line u... JOAN DIDION To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened... UMBERTO ECO We tell ourselves stories in order to live, JOAN DIDION We tell ourselves stories in order to live. JOAN DIDION I don't know of anybody's political bias at CBS News. We try very hard to get any opinion that we ha... LESLEY STAHL You know... we all have stories. We all have unique experiences that make each and everyone of us di... G. BRIAN BENSON It's the stories we're after. We love the stories and the artifacts can tell the stories. DAN ELLIOTT You see, I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories tha... BEN OKRI A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hea... DONNA TARTT I don't pay much attention to the distinction between fantasy and science fiction–or between “ge... KEN LIU We are essentially in the business of telling stories. We would like to think that most of our stori... BRYANT GUMBEL This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and expe... YAA GYASI Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of dat... STEVEN LEVITT You can take any one of our stories that we use right now, put western clothes on us, stick us out i... MAJEL BARRETT Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own... SHARON SALZBERG Well, religion has been passed down through the years by stories people tell around the campfire. St... ANDREW GREELEY [All were] pivotal stories in the Australian narrative ... And obviously there is something elementa... GEORGE MILLER The stories that bind us, Halli. The stories we live by, that dictate what we do and where we go. Th... JONATHAN STROUD The problem with the stigma around mental health is really about the stories that we tell ourselves ... MATTHEW QUICK It's about the power of stories. It's through our stories that we come to know each other and share ... FAYANNE HAYES Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all ... PATRICK ROTHFUSS We speak for those who cannot speak. We have a duty to tell the stories for those who do not have th... BILLY MARSHALL STONEKING We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It ... WILLIAM KITTREDGE As Africans Americans we often think about the tragic stories associated with our lineage, but there... LAZ ALONSO There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willi... PHILIP PULLMAN A lot of it is stories we were telling ourselves last week. JAMES CORNISH There are recurring elements in popularized fairy tales, such as absent parents, some sort of strugg... KATE BERNHEIMER Our dreams and stories may contain implicit aspects of our lives even without our awareness. In fact... DANIEL J. SIEGEL We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going. LAUREN OLIVER We tell stories with maps about global warming, biodiversity; we can design more livable cities, tra... JACK DANGERMOND Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story betwe... PAULO COELHO All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retri... JOHN YORKE Stories are as unique as the people who tell them, and the best stories are in which the ending is a... NICHOLAS SPARKS I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral ... ISHMAEL BEAH Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from... TABITHA SOREN Should we call her?Maybe we should give her a RING to see where she is? Get it? Get it? -... CHRIS COLFER I think if you had someplace to escape to once in a while , it'd help you deal with whatever you're ... CHRIS COLFER THE LAND OF STORIES I get tired of stories that keep going and going and never get anywhere. It's like a promise tha... TED NAIFEH Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental... CHRISTOPHER DINES Anyone can have a once-upon-a-time or a happily-ever-after, but it's the journey between that makes ... CHRIS COLFER But anyone can write, right?'" Conner asked. "I mean, that's why authors get judged so harshly, isn'... CHRIS COLFER Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in o... MICHAEL MORPURGO I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories w... DAN HARMON Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people ne... JAMES MCAVOY It is my belief that all gods are stories, or at least the ideas behind stories, but stories or idea... ALAN MOORE It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the envi... FRANK OCEAN The stories in books hate the stories in newspapers, David's mother would say. Newspaper stories wer... JOHN CONNOLLY As we got into our 40s and we saw the dilemmas of the people around us, we saw it in terms of storie... MARSHALL HERSKOVITZ Often, we ignore the fact that our spiritual condition and psychological state of mind are highly af... TONY CAMPOLO We wanted to tell stories that were inspirational, that were informative, and . . . with as broad a ... JUSTIN FALVEY Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well,... PHILIP PULLMAN It's not unlike how we develop any of our stories on our athletes. It's a pretty collaborative effor... ADAM ROTH There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one ... SEAN LENNON How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to oursel... FRANK OCEAN I'd say about 75 percent of the story is based on true stories from growing up, [but] not necessaril... ZACH BRAFF We all mythologize to some degree ourselves and probably embellish. I think some of that is the desi... DAVID GRANN We shared stories about having bikes as kids and how much freedom that created to get places. BETH MARQUART We understand 'Roots,' and that experience was mind-boggling, and it changed the way society... ESAI MORALES We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of pr... MARGARET ATWOOD We can't constantly tell stories of heroes. We have to hear the other stories, too, about people... REBECCA HALL I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some... GILDA RADNER If we had our preferences, of course we'd like all the stories to be good, strong positive stories. ... DARRYL SEIBEL We are always looking for more listeners, and are also looking for people who have interesting stori... WREN ELHAI People are capable of good and bad. As long as we continue perpetrating these absurd two-dimensional... SAM MENDES Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of ... NADIA BOULANGER I read the Sunday Telegraph stories. They're not too far off what may be happening. RICHARD BRANSON Everybody loves vampire stories, and if there's one show in particular that's done really we... MADCHEN AMICK Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism— a repetitive cycle of flaying our... SHARON SALZBERG In those long months of listening to those horrible stories, dreadful stories, how did you get throu... MORLEY SAFER We've been talking about it and putting up little things every day of the week. That's helped us to ... JUSTIN PARNELL Acting allows me to tell a lot of stories, you know start at the beginning, finish at the end, and t... CAMERON DIAZ
More Sharon Salzberg
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SHARON BEGLEY Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world, and it's wonderful that she didn't cu... SHARON STONE The strength that I have comes from irrigating the citrus plantation, ploughing in the vineyard, gua... ARIEL SHARON And they were writing scripts where Christine had hit the glass ceiling. And I always thought Christ... SHARON GLESS But it took me awhile to figure out Christine at this age, you know. SHARON GLESS The way they were writing Christine as this older woman who got married, which she shouldn't hav... SHARON GLESS At first it was exhilarating but when I realized it wasn't going away, it became scary and claus... SHARON STONE I guess I kind of lived in a fairytale world... looking at everything through rose-colored glasses. ... SHARON TATE I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would ma... ARIEL SHARON What I've learned from my visit here is that the plan -- disengagement plan -- contributes to the se... ARIEL SHARON The United States was surprised to hear that Israel was allegedly planning to modify the (road map) ... ARIEL SHARON The handling of the problem of the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip is a very delicate and compli... ARIEL SHARON We attach vast importance to Egyptian activity in the Gaza Strip and along the border, but I don't i... ARIEL SHARON It is an old project launched by Ariel Sharon when he was housing minister nearly 15 years ago, ARIEL SHARON The terrorist attack was perpetrated by members of Islamic Jihad, ARIEL SHARON Palestinians who have reached a conclusion that, with terror, they can't achieve anything. And the w... ARIEL SHARON Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewi... ARIEL SHARON By now we're over 60 percent out... The number of infiltrators has been halved, ARIEL SHARON I've never been willing to lie about my age. Why on earth would I want to tell people I'm 35... SHARON STONE Sexiness is all in the eye of the beholder. I think it should be. Absolutely. My sex appeal, whateve... SHARON TATE I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved ... SHARON STONE As for meat, I'm not going to become vegetarian. I'm telling you that right now. I want me a... SHARON JONES The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered... This is the Je... ARIEL SHARON Our names are an integral part of the faces we show to the world. If we're judged first on outwa... SHARON BOLTON As women, we understand our bodies, and there's a blossoming that occurs. We're hungry for g... SHARON STONE The power of a person derives not from the office he occupies but from a clear sense of direction an... ARIEL SHARON We have a good arrangement. Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him. SHARON TATE Arafat is the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East. ARIEL SHARON Arafat is hosting, training, supporting, sponsoring terrorist organizations. ARIEL SHARON