Kelly McGonigal Quotes

When your mind is preoccupied, your impulses - not your long-term goals - will guide your choices.

Chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort.

Evolution doesn't give a damn about your happiness, but will use the promise of happiness (using dopamine rushes) to keep you hunting, gathering, working, and wooing.

People come up with resolutions that don't reflect what matters most to them, and that makes them almost guaranteed to fail.

We need to separate the real rewards that give our lives meaning from the false rewards that keep us distracted and addicted. Learning to make this distinction may be the best we can do.

Meditation is not about getting rid of all your thoughts; it's learning not to get so lost in them that you forget what your goal is. Don't worry if your focus isn't perfect when meditating. Just practice coming back to the breath, again and again.

Case in point: Warnings on cigarette packages can increase a smoker's urge to light up. A 2009 study found that death warnings trigger stress and fear in smokers - exactly what public health officials hope for. Unfortunately, this anxiety then triggers smokers' default stress-relief strategy: smoking. Oops. It isn't logical, but it makes sense based on what we know about how stress influences the brain. Stress triggers cravings and makes dopamine neurons even more excited by any temptation in sight. It doesn't help that the smoker is - of course - staring at a pack of cigarettes as he reads the warning. So even as a smoker's brain encodes the words "WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer" and grapples with awareness of his own mortality, another part of his brain starts screaming, "Don't worry, smoking a cigarette will make you feel better!

You can deal with stressful life experiences with strength from past ones.

Stress happens when something you care about is at stake. It's not a sign to run away - it's a sign to step forward.

Though our survival system doesn't always work to our advantage, it is a mistake to think we should conquer the primitive self completely.

A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow.

We wrongly but persistently expect to make different decisions tomorrow than we do today

A tired operator and an energized monitor create a problematic imbalance in the mind. As the monitor searches for forbidden content, it continuously brings to mind what it is searching for. Neuroscientists have shown that the brain is constantly processing the forbidden content just outside of conscious awareness. The result: You become primed to think, feel, or do whatever you are trying to avoid.

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside of ra walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours.

Feeling burdened rather than uplifted by everyday duties is more a mindset than a measure of what is going on in your life.

There are few things ever dreamed of, smoked or injected that have as addictive an effect on our brains as technology. This is how our devices keep us captive and always coming back for more. The definitive Internet act of our times is a perfect metaphor for the promise of reward: we search. And we search. And we search some more, clicking that mouse like – well, like a rat in a cage seeking another "hit", looking for the elusive reward that will finally feel like enough.

He loves productivity seminars because they make him feel so productive - never mind that nothing has been produced yet.)

The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. - RUMI

When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.

Ask your brain to do math every day, and it gets better at math. Ask your brain to worry, and it gets better at worrying. Ask your brain to concentrate, and it gets better at concentrating. Not

My favorite definition of the mindful path is the one the reveals itself as you walk down it. You cannot find the path until you step on to it.

Even in the Stone Age, the rules for how to win friends and influence people were likely the same as today's: Cooperate when your neighbor needs shelter, share your dinner even if you're still hungry, and think twice before saying "That loincloth makes you look fat." In other words, a little self-control, please.

Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.

Research shows that people who think they have the most willpower are actually the most likely to lose control when tempted.1 For example, smokers who are the most optimistic about their ability to resist temptation are the most likely to relapse four months later, and overoptimistic dieters are the least likely to lose weight. Why? They fail to predict when, where, and why they will give in. They expose themselves to more temptation,

It's forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view.

Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness.

For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes.

As Deb Lemire, president of the Association for Size Diversity and Health, says, If shame worked, there'd be no fat people.

Self-awareness: the ability to realize what we are doing as we do it, and understand why we are doing it.