You can’t pick your family, but you can pick your friends. If you’ve chosen good ones, remember to be grateful for them and express your love and appreciation.

Build a skill set that’s worth something.

For the longest time, I believed that there’s only one purpose of life: And that is to be happy.

Happiness can’t be a goal in itself. Therefore, it’s not something that’s achievable. I believe that happiness is merely a byproduct of usefulness.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

We all need comfort: It’s one of our basic needs as human beings. But we also need growth. So whatever you do, don’t stay in your comfort zone for too long. Try to keep moving forward every day: Even if it’s just a tiny step. No magic. Just effort.

Don’t take it too seriously. Don’t overthink it. Just DO something that’s useful. Anything.

But success is not about a glorious vision. It’s about you, working on your goal—even when no one’s watching. With an emphasis on working because dreaming alone won’t get you anywhere.

Worrying involves negative--often catastrophic--predictions about the future.

Awareness is the first step in putting an end to overthinking. Start paying attention to the way you think. When you notice you’re re-playing events in your mind over and over, or worrying about things you can’t control, acknowledge that your thoughts aren’t productive.

Ask yourself what steps you can take to learn from a mistake or to avoid a future problem. Instead of asking why did this happen? Ask yourself what can I do about it?

Don’t try to be something you’re not. If you’re an introvert, don’t pretend that you can work in a boiler room. If you’re an extrovert, don’t pretend you can work in solitude. Stay close to yourself—there’s no point in pushing yourself so badly that your life becomes miserable

When you notice yourself overthinking things outside of your scheduled time, remind yourself that you’ll think about that later.

Busying yourself with an activity is the best way to change the channel. Exercise, engage in conversation on a completely different subject, or get working on a project that will distract your mind from the barrage of negative thoughts.

Thoughts themselves do NOT cause us to suffer Suffering comes from how we relate to thoughts

When we are drowning under a tsunami of rapidfire thoughts and don't know how to stop thinking, the mind SEEMS to be an all-powerful entity with the power to make us suffer. In truth, however, the ONLY power the mind has is the power we give it through habit.

An important tip on how to stop thinking is to take everything the mind tells you with a large pinch of salt! We don't suffer because of the content of the mind. We suffer because we believe it. What you don't believe has no power over you.

questioning everything the mind comes up with through using the question: "Do I know for absolute certain that this is true?" If you practice this, you will quickly come to see that the mind is filled with a million and one beliefs and assumptions which simply have no basis in truth

We create suffering for ourselves through wanting it to be different from how it is. Through consciously choosing to allow whatever the mind comes up with to be OK, we wrap even the most disturbing thoughts in peace.

You woke up this morning, breathing and with a heartbeat. You get to enjoy today and hopefully wake up again tomorrow. You get to see your family and friends, and enjoy food and life’s luxuries. It can sometimes be easy to forget to be grateful for the most basic thing: life itself.

you should be grateful for your health because it is the foundation of who you are. According to Reiss, you don’t necessarily need to be physically and mentally well to feel healthy, but when you do feel healthy, it’s one of life’s greatest blessings.

So even if you don’t have the most exciting job in the world, remember to feel some gratitude for it every once in a while, because your life would be a lot different without it.

Feel thankful and express that gratefulness if you are lucky enough to have family who is more like friends: They’re people you can confide in and who will be there for you through thick and thin. Many people don’t have that kind of family, so be grateful. And remember to tell them how lucky you are.

friends are the families we make. Friends help you remember who you really are and who you can become. They remind you what you want and need, as well as what you deserve. True friends are there through your best and darkest times. Appreciate that connection. Express your gratitude every chance you get.

Free time lets you be you. You get to do your favourite things, no matter what those are. Free time allows you to sleep more, enjoy the outdoors, relax at home, garden, fish— whatever you enjoy most. Be grateful that you get the opportunity to do the things you love.

It is important to feel gratefulness for today’s modern gadgets. Think about how much they contribute to your daily life. For some, they help them do their jobs every day. Some people use them solely as a form of entertainment. For some, they provide a beat to keep you motivated during your run or gym workout.

Feel even more gratefulness for the modern techno-gadgets that keep people alive, like pacemakers. Today’s gadgets do so much to keep our lives going that we often overlook them. Instead, the next time you’re typing away on that computer, remember to appreciate it and be grateful.

At my core, the glass isn't half-empty - it's not even what I ordered in the first place.

Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown your inner voice.

Sisters are splendid and incredible siblings who tower our life with exuberance and responsiveness at all times!

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

It was a bright, clear afternoon in the late fall that pretty Miss Cable drove up in her trap and waited at the curb for her father to come forth from his office in one of Chicago's tallest buildings.

The set for 'Blade Runner' was maybe the hardest set I've ever worked on because I think we worked 50 nights in a row, and it was always raining.

It is not necessary to argue to those for whom I write that the two great needs of mankind, that all men may be lifted up into the light of the highest Christian civilization, are, first, a pure, spiritual Christianity, and second, civil liberty.

A lot of my favorite artists are fashion icons.

Pinterest is offering consumers a way to discover things on the web, in a serendipitous way, with a beautiful user interface. So it's offering a whole new paradigm called 'discover' and allowing users to be creative.

I decided at 10 I wanted to be in a band; everyone else wanted to play football.

The Knowledge of how to give birth without outside interventions lies deep within each woman.

One thing that's always helped quell my writerly anxieties is seeking out interviews with writers I admire.

The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation.

The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else.

The agricultural potential of Africa is unlimited.

To me, I think people who don't think it's a big deal to toss a plastic bottle in the garbage are not only being irresponsible, but I think they're being disrespectful of all the other humans on earth.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

When, President Obama, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours swaggering about as it does now?

Christians consider Friday as the day on which Christ was crucified by the Romans.

What makes you grind You have to always be chasing something.

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.

It's not up to one individual to decide, 'I'm going to dictate the outcome of what's going to happen legislatively.' That is not a democracy; it's an atrocity.