Jeffrey Brantley > Quotes

“Daily habits can anchor your thoughts and feelings just as readily as any spiritual practice or yoga class.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Five Good Minutes: 100 Morning Practices to Help You Stay Calm and Focused All Day Long

“Anxiety, excessive fear, and worry arise because you turn away from the present moment and become lost in memories, stories, and beliefs about the past or future.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Daily Meditations for Calming Your Anxious Mind

“Changing the habits of inattention and distraction we have developed over a lifetime is hard work.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Mindfulness is based in a daily meditation practice”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Speaking especially kindly, use words like: “For any hurt or harm I have caused to you or in this situation, I offer myself forgiveness.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“With the focus on yourself, begin to recite the following phrases: May I be happy. May I be healed and healthy. May I be filled with peace and ease. May I be safe.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“You don’t have to be “perfect” at doing the meditation. There is nothing to attain. Just doing the practices is good enough.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Having an agenda to get rid of something or to change something is a common source of frustration in meditation practice. Change and transformation do occur through meditation, but only when you teach yourself to allow attention and awareness to include disturbing and unpleasant conditions like anxiety and panic.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“relaxation is not the ultimate goal. Awareness is. Try not to judge your practice by how relaxed or “good” you feel. Try not to judge it at all. Just try to be present and to recognize and accept what is here.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“One way I like to practice mindfulness is by the simple instruction “relax and stay present.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Approaching the pain with kindness and compassion is crucial. Meeting pain with anger does not help. Meeting fear or anxiety in oneself with anger or hostility simply multiplies it.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“What does a “good life” really mean to you, how does it relate to your sources of meaning and purpose and to your deepest values, and what keeps you from realizing the possibility for greater well-being in your life?”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Angry Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anger and Bring Peace to Your Life

“Mindfulness may be understood as friendly, nonjudging, present-moment awareness. To succeed with this approach, you must learn and use a variety of meditation practices all directed at cultivating mindfulness.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Kabat-Zinn responded, “There is no purpose in meditation. As soon as you assign a purpose to meditation, you’ve made it just another activity to try to get someplace or reach some goal” (128).”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Kindness here means friendliness, or openheartedness. It enables you to welcome experience. Compassion is usually associated with feelings of empathy and concern for pain or suffering in another.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Let curiosity and love of learning support you in the art of meditation.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Mindfulness may be understood as friendly, nonjudging, present-moment awareness.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“To practice mindfulness means to pay attention to life with an open heart. Meditation can actually help this way. Meditation is a heart-opening activity!”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“to acknowledge to ourselves how fear-based our lives and our decisions can be, and how inexperienced we are at facing and freeing ourselves from the inner workings of such pervasive and potentially destructive mental states.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“When this meanness happens in you, you become your own worst stressor. No matter how bad the situation is, your mean attitude amplifies and adds to your misery, usually through the addition of criticism, judgment, and blame.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“By releasing my past resentments, I may be able to protect myself more, to relate to that person in a healthier way, and to have more compassion for what drives them to act as they do.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“By practicing mindfulness, kindness, and compassion in a steady and committed way, you will begin to recognize the habits of meanness toward self or another when they surface.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“When you meditate consistently and with proper instructions and effort, you are training yourself to overcome the power of old habits. In particular, the habits of inattention, distraction, and absence,”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Cultivating awareness takes effort. Changing the habits of inattention and distraction we have developed over a lifetime is hard work.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“Imagine speaking to this person in words like: “For any hurt or harm you have caused me, intentional or unintentional, I offer forgiveness.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“strengthens its circuits when you use it in”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Angry Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anger and Bring Peace to Your Life

“Silence empowers us. Stilling the chatter and clamor of our minds and our worries about life, we find the focus and clarity needed to end pain, alienation, oppression, and fear” (Feldman 2003, 26).”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“establishing a kind attention on your inner experience of anger and hostility, recognizing it as experience, not as self. It means being a friend to yourself and to the anger.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“forgiveness actually benefits us more than them!”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

“This book is designed to help anyone who is burdened by fear, worry, anxiety, or panic and would like to do something to improve the situation.”
― Jeffrey Brantley, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic