Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life. Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future.” That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives. Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Posted on January 19, 2013   ( 14)  

+ viktor FRANKL  + philosophy  + existentialism  + present  + past  + future  + meaningful  + life  + happiness  + purpose  + unhappy  + satisfied  + thinking  + suffering   

You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you’ll never know.

— Jerry Spinelli (via larmoyante)
Posted on November 09, 2012   ( 2824)   via  

+ wasting  + days  + moments  + worry  + anxiety  + doubt  + cheating  + calling  + today  + tomorrow  + yesterday  + stuck  + future  + thinking  + trapped  + trickle  + wonderful  + never know  + jerry spinelli   

I’d like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.

— David Foster Wallace
Posted on October 09, 2012   ( 2608)   via  

+ enjoy  + moments  + retrospect  + reflective  + living  + past  + looking back  + thinking  + memories  + david foster wallace  + dfw  + mindful  + time  + happening  + depression  + head  + mind  + replay   

Most of us don’t realize how much of our thinking is narrow, black and white, at times, and also very repetitive. Not to mention, often, negative and protective, often without cause. These kinds of thought patterns are always destined to give us similar feelings. Feelings that create anxiety and worry and leave us fearful and even angry. Feelings that, if acted upon, often produce very unwanted impulsive self-defeating and regrettable behaviour.

— Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance 

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.

— Fernando Pessoa (via hellanne)
Posted on September 17, 2012   ( 505)   via  

+ soul  + impatient  + inside  + restless  + satisfied  + unsatisfied  + distracted  + bothersome  + growing  + forever  + interest  + empty  + wondering  + head in the clouds  + thinking  + fulfilling  + fernando pessoa   

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

— Joan Didion (via dyinginthemoonlight)
Posted on September 10, 2012   ( 20)   via  

+ writing  + fear  + moment  + thinking  + thoughts  + mind  + feel  + looking  + see  + meaning  + wants  + needs  + joan didion  + journal  + expression  + writer   

Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside.

— Haruki Murakami
Posted on September 06, 2012   ( 8)  

+ projections  + haruki murakami  + labyrinth  + inside  + outside  + life  + reality  + consciousness  + thinking  + feeling  + mind  + wisdom  + stuck  + philosophy  + trap   

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.

— Haruki Murakami
Posted on September 06, 2012   ( 17)  

+ haruki murakami  + narrow minded  + devoid  + imagination  + close minded  + theories  + intolerant  + empty  + terminology  + reality  + ideals  + inflexible  + frighten  + fear  + loathe  + people  + society  + narrow  + thinking   

I think I have always had the misguided sense that worry and fear serve as an insurance policy of sorts. On a subconscious level, I subscribe to the notion that if you worry about something, it is somehow less likely to happen. Well, I am here to say it doesn’t work like that. The very thing you fear the most can still happen anyway. And when it does, you feel that much more cheated for having feared it in the first place.

Emily Giffin, Baby Proof
Posted on August 16, 2012   ( 3)  

+ emily giffin  + anxiety  + fear  + worry  + panic  + subconscious  + feel  + thinking  + notion  + cheated  + control  + sense  + misguided   

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

— Charles Bukowski (via selfinspiration)
Posted on August 07, 2012   ( 109)   via  

+ Bukowski  + black and white  + thinking  + commit  + all the way  + dedication   

What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.

— ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Posted on May 12, 2012   ( 5)  

+ Jonathan Safran Foer  + thinking  + overthinking  + happy