Happiness is more about peace than it is about joy.

The best exercise is the one your enjoy doing every day.

I think true happiness comes out of peace. Peace comes out of many things, but it comes from fundamentally understanding yourself.

Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.

I don’t have a preconception of a perfect day, because if I did, then it would ruin the day that I was living.

As you get older, you just realize that there’s no happiness in material possessions.

I think a lot of us learn as we get older that happiness is internal.

Yoga cultivates Peace of Body. Meditation cultivates Peace of Mind.

Internal happiness is reward from being in flow. Create, meditate, love, play. Clears the mind and leaves us in peace.

Happiness is an internal trait that comes out of being peaceful and accepting of whatever is going on around you. It’s that sense that nothing is missing in this moment.

We are born with happiness, we are intrinsically happy creatures but we become unhappy because our egos create desire. The desire pulls us out of the moment. So something is missing right now then we chase that and we wonder why we are unhappy.

The success driven mentality drives you to unhappiness. 

Every moment has to be complete in and of itself.

First time you saw a sunset, it was amazing. It was jaw-dropping. You forgot yourself.

The second time you saw it, it was cool. The hundredth time you see it, it’s nothing.

The thousandth time you’re seeing it, and someone shows you a sunset, you’re like, “Well, actually, I saw this one sunset in Mexico at this time that was really cool.” You’re not even there.

Happiness is that state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and your mind stops running into the future or running into the past to regret something or to plan something.

If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

Happiness to me is mainly not suffering, not desiring, not thinking too much about the future or the past, really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, the way it is.

Caught in a funk? Use meditation, music, and exercise to reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for rest of day.

To me, peace is happiness at rest and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness anytime you want.

In today’s day and age, many people think you get peace by resolving all your external problems, but there are unlimited external problems. The only way to actually get peace on the inside is by giving up the idea of having problems.

In every moment, in everything that happens, you can look on the bright side of something. There are two ways of seeing almost everything.

The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.

I like to stay free because then I can see the little miracles in life. There are little miracles everywhere; it’s just we have taken them for granted.

The problem happens when we have multiple desires. When we have fuzzy desires. When we want to do ten different things and we’re not clear about which is the one we care about.

You don’t want to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high-strung, high-stress, and unhappy while leaving a trail of emotional wreckage for you and your loved ones.

On meditation: Sit down, close your eyes, get in a comfortable position, and whatever happens, happens. If you think, you think. If you don’t think, you don’t think. Don’t put any effort into it.

You have to work on your internal state until you are free of as many biases and conditioned responses as possible. This will improve every aspect of your life.

Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts. It isn’t this thing you achieve after 30 years of sitting in a corner meditating. It’s something you can achieve moment to moment and you can be a certain percentage enlightened every single day.

People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.

I think a lot of what we think of happiness is is just pleasure. It’s physical pleasure, either from, “Oh, that tasted good”. Or it might be momentary pleasure from, “He loves me, she loves me”.

I actually think happiness is the absence of suffering. It comes from peace, and that comes from being very careful about that desire, judgment, reaction. Realizing that you don’t actually need something anymore. That something is not important to you.

On how to deal with anxiety: I remember that I’m going to die — memento mori, as they say. It’s hard, though. Anxiety is the human condition. It’s probably the single most pervasive emotion. I don’t think people understand how deep anxiety runs. If I conquered anxiety, I’d be the Buddha; so would you if you conquered anxiety.

You should realize that this is such a short and precious life that it’s really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy. There’s no excuse for spending most of your life in misery. You’ve only got 70 years out of the 50 billion or so that the universe is going to be around.

The fact that you can listen to this podcast on an iPhone or whatever you’re listening to it on mans you’re already better off than a lot of people.

To live in the present moment is the highest calling. It’s the source of all happiness.

I need 4-5 hours of time by myself every day doing nothing. Because if I don’t have that time, I won’t be able to do anything. 

It’s a bad habit that we develop that we forget how to appreciate what we do have.

I’m not a busy person and I’m not busy because I refuse to schedule things.

If you try to micromanage yourself all you’re going to do is make yourself miserable.

Knowing how little you matter is very important for your own mental health and happiness.

Uncertainty, not outcome, is the root of stress.

I think to have peace of mind, you have to have peace of body, first.

Looking forward to holidays takes the joy out of everyday.

The best work is the work you’d do for free.

Work becomes flow at the limits of ability.

A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

The secret to public speaking is to speak as if you were alone.