33 Life Changing Quotes

Birthdays are always a powerful inflection point. They’re a moment to look back and celebrate how far you’ve come, and to witness the many ways you’ve grown. I just celebrated the beginning of my 33rd year and ‘grateful’ doesn’t even come close to encompassing how I feel.

In honor of my birthday, I’m sharing 33 quotes that, if applied and practiced, have the power to radically change your life.???

LIFE

Life is simple. You can choose to stop overcomplicating it, but that will require you to dig into your past and go through a process of unlearning. Alan Watts said, “the meaning of life is to be alive” but it can be distilled further…the meaning of life is to BE. These particular quotes inspire me to keep it simple when I start trying to “figure it all out” and to stay focused on truth.

“Detachment is not that you own nothing, it’s that nothing owns you.” – The Bhagavad Gita

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” – Alan Watts

“Love everybody and tell the truth.” – Maharaji

“Where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” – Joseph Campbell

“You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served.” – Nina Simone

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.” – Ram Dass

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.” – Terence McKenna

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” – Rumi

“Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.” – Grace Lee Boggs

DEATH

Honoring death is a fundamental piece of a life well lived and unfortunately, this is something absent from our modern society. If death is something you have not yet begun to work with, reflecting on these quotes can be an easy introduction.

“It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: it is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” – James Baldwin

“I do not think about my death as being imminent, but I live my days against a background noise of mortality and constant uncertainty. Learning not to crumple before these uncertainties fuels my resolve to print myself upon the texture of each day fully rather than forever.” – Audre Lorde

“I encourage you to make peace with death and to see it as the culminating adventure of this adventure called life. It is not an error, it is not a failure. It is taking off a tight shoe which you have worn well.” – Ram Dass

SELF

It is my personal belief that we’re here to first and foremost ‘Be’ in the Human Experience and secondly, to evolve our Spirit or Soul. Whatever your belief, growth is definite and we can do it like it’s a great struggle or we can do it like it’s a part of the dance of life.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in in. – Ram Dass?

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” – Sigmund Freud

“If you want to change the world, start with yourself.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“To heal is to touch with love that which was previously touched by fear.” – Steven Levine

“Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Conscious raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.” – Yuri Kochiyama

“We are not cabin-dwellers, born to a life cramped and confined; we are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our potential as human beings. The world of the senses is just a base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in consciousness as in the world of physical reality.” – The Bhagavad Gita

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” – Buddha

RELATIONSHIPS

It is said that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives, but we are so caught up in our conditioning and old ideas about the type of love we deserve — we will settle for just about anything. Sure, you can find good within anyone, whether intimate, familial or friend relationships, but are you making each other better or worse? Not everyone is for you. When I evaluate the relationships in my life, there are two questions I will ask myself; Does this person make it easier or harder to love myself? Do I feel more alone with this person than when I’m actually alone?

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” – Bell Hooks

“Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection.” – Gabor Matè

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Jung

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” – David Foster Wallace

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” – Jack Kerouac

“A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.” ?– Charles Bukowski

MAGIC

With the ups and downs of life, it’s easy to slap on a mundane lens and forget the magic that exists all around us. Aldous Huxley, one of my favorite authors, was known to be a weirdo. Everything was “extraordinary” and he could often be heard lamenting, “How curious!” to everyday occurrences. My daughter has been my biggest teacher in learning how to “be here now,” as Ram Dass would say. I cannot overstate the importance of having people in your life who will help you to see the magic, at least until you can see it for yourself.

“Everything is ecstasy, inside…close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-endings drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside…and you will remember.” – Jack Kerouac

"Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence." – Haruki Murakami

“Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure…and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.” – Maya Angelou

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly….Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them…throw away your baggage and go forward.” – Aldous Huxley

I would love to hear from you, drop a quote you’re pondering in the comments below!