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Reach your ultimate potential.
By Micki Spollen — Written on May 05, 2022
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is an Indian yoga guru, author, and mystic known for promoting self-help and well-being through meditation and yoga.
In 1992, he founded the Isha Foundation “dedicated to raising human consciousness,” which has since launched a number of projects and programs aimed at bettering communities by bringing people together and helping them realize their inner power.
Between his self-help book and many inspirational speeches and interviews, there are a number of Sadhguru quotes that act as reminders of how important it is to seek joy inside of yourself in order to reach your ultimate potential.
Sadhguru Quotes on Love
1. “Love is not about getting what you want. It is an opportunity to lose yourself.”
2. “Love is your quality. Love is not what you do. Love is what you are.”
3. “If someone is nasty to you, first try love. If that does not work, compassion. If that does not work, distance.”
4. “But to be loving is simply this: a willingness to respond freely and openly. Right now, it may be limited to one or two people in your lives. But it is possible to extend this ability to embrace the entire world.”
5. “Love is not a joy; it is a deep wonderful pain. It is a very deep, tearing, wonderful pain. Something within you should tear; not just something, everything within you should tear. Only then you know what love is. If it feels pleasant, that’s not love; it’s just convenience. Maybe you felt a little affection. If you have ever loved, everything inside you tears apart, really tears apart. It’s painful but wonderful. That’s how it is.”
6. “All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate.”
7. “Too many people are hungry not because there is dearth of food. It is because there is dearth of love and care in human hearts.”
8. “If you strive to make yourself in such a way that no one can help loving you, life will blossom into Beauty and Prosperity.”
9. “With a heart full of devotion, meticulousness will come naturally.”
10. “Without knowing the sweetness of love and the overwhelming nature of the Divine, you are yet to touch life.”
11. “If you eliminate the need to get something out of relationships and naturally overflow with joy, you can have fabulous relationships with all sorts of people.”
12. “Love is a longing to include someone as a part of yourself. It is a possibility to become more than what you are by inclusion.”
13. “I understood that being loving and compassionate is not an idea. To live in empathy is not some esoteric principle. This is the way a human being is made. If you do not identify with anything you have accumulated over a period of time, including your body and mind, you will be able to experience this.”
14. “For most people, love is initially a joy, but after a while it becomes an anxiety. Why? Because this ‘key’ has legs and a will of its own. You can’t keep it in your pocket or hang it around your neck. When you try to do that, two lives are heading straight for disaster!”
15. “A spouse is not a destination but a fellow traveler.”
16. “Lovers and devotees must be allowed a certain margin. Otherwise, just hard logic will kill both love and devotion.”
17. “People who logically examine their relationships cannot sustain them. Two bodies, two minds, two emotions can never fit perfectly. Magic of being together can never be contained in logic.”
Sadhguru Quotes on Happiness
18. “Once you are blissful by your own nature, your life becomes an expression of your blissfulness, not a pursuit of happiness.”
19. “I learned to create a little more space between my thoughts and actions — actually between my feelings and reactions. This is extremely important; without it, life can be a real roller coaster ride.”
20. “Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within.”
21. “If you learn to laugh at your own stupidity, all the rubbish in you will turn into manure very fast. And manure is good for growth.”
22. “If your sadness is reminding you that you are incomplete, it is good. Make use of your sadness to grow. When sadness sets in, if you become more compassionate, more caring, and more loving, you have some sense in you.”
23. “Today, if you have one depressing thought in you, you will sit depressed. Why? The whole cosmos is going on phenomenally well today, but that does not matter. In your mind there is one thought – not too many, just one – that is bothering you, that will depress you and put you in the dumps.”
24. “When you consciously rise above your likes and dislikes, that is maturity.”
25. “Whether it is your work, your love, or your life – unless you throw your entire self into it, you will never really know it.”
26. “If you learn to include others as a part of yourself, your life will become an expression of joyfulness, not a pursuit of happiness.”
27. “Joy does not rain upon you – it blossoms from within. Whatever the situation, if you are joyful, life is a celebration.”
28. “If you are forming relationships to seek happiness – you trying to squeeze happiness out of someone and that person trying to squeeze happiness out of you – this is going to be a painful relationship after some time.”
29. “Whatever you wish to do, you must bring yourself to a moment of joy and clarity within yourself. Why I am saying joy is because when you are happy you are not compulsive. When you are very happy and clear, at that time if you look at things and see that ‘Yes, this is what is more sensible for me’ – just do that. It does not matter if it feels like hell; it does not matter if you go through hell for ten years, you just do that, because that is where your wellbeing is.”
30. “It is possible to transform the greatest adversity into a stepping-stone for personal growth. If you take one hundred percent responsibility for the way you are now, a brighter tomorrow is a possibility.”
31. “Finding joy within and giving joy to everyone around you is the foundation that is needed for ultimate well-being.”
32. “Peace and joy are the basic requirements for a life of well-being.”
33. “When pain, misery, or anger happen, it is time to look within you, not around you.”
34. “When you are Joyful, you are not in conflict with anyone, and you do the most wonderful things.”
35. “If you maintain exuberance of energy, freshness of mind, and a loving heart, every day will be a new adventure.”
36. “Do not try to please anyone. If you are truly Joyful and an overflow of Humanity, everyone will be pleased with you.”
37. “If you try to squeeze joy out of people, only pain will come.”
38. “Loosen up a bit – laugh more, get involved with people around you, do simple things. If you only do very important things, you will become dead serious.”
Sadhguru Quotes on Life
39. “If you resist change, you resist life.”
40. “The most beautiful moments in life are moments when you are expressing your joy, not when you are seeking it.”
41. “The quality of your life depends on how well you manage your body, your mind, your emotion, your situations, your home, your communities, nations, your life in general and the world.”
42. “When you become conscious that Life is ticking away, you will make the best out of it.”
43. “Success is not about getting something. Success is when life within you is happening in a wonderful way.”
44. “Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful because we put our heart into what we are doing.”
45. “Life has no use at all, declared Adiyogi. It is simply a phenomenon. Little acts have purpose. But life is not framed within the narrow grid of utility. It is beyond frames. It is beyond grids. It is beyond utility. If you have a taste of this existence beyond purpose, of life beyond sense, you are enlightened.”
46. “Our lives become beautiful not because of what we do, our lives become beautiful simply because we have included everybody around us as a part of our dream of well-being.”
47. “Your ideas of good and bad are just a certain level of prejudice against life.”
48. “What is happening within you and how you experience your life is entirely your making – your karma.”
49. “It is not enough to just live. It is important that you live strong.”
50. “You can perceive life at its best only when you are at ease, not when you are dead serious.”
51. “Don’t think of this as your first step or last step. Just be here as a piece of life. That is the best way to be. You are not a young man; you are not an old man. You are just a piece of life.”
52. “When life offers more and more pleasures to a man, he doesn’t grow. He goes down. In terms of the real quality of a human being, only when suffering comes, when pain comes, does a man stand up as a human being.”
53. “If human beings are released from the disease of wanting to be better than someone else, life will come to ease.”
54. “Life should touch you, even if life smothers you, it's better than remaining untouched by life.”
55. “Whatever has been the highest experience in your life should become the centerpiece around which your life is structured.”
56. “The walls of self-preservation that you build for today are the walls of self-imprisonment for tomorrow. Boundaries that you establish in your life as a protection for yourself today will feel like constraints tomorrow.”
57. “If you are able to see, feel, and experience life just the way it is – not the way you think it is – you will become available to grace.”
58. “Only if you invest your emotions in what matters to you, will life become powerful and really meaningful.”
59. “Once you are at ease, you will always do your best. In doing your best, your life is a fulfilling experience.”
60. “If you sink into the past, it will rule your present and determine your future. Going beyond this trap is Yoga.”
61. “Life is a circus when your intellect and your body alone are involved. Life is a dance, when the intelligence begins to play its role.”
62. “Life is not in your activity. Life is within you. The question is only how intensely is it happening.”
63. “When you see and use life and life-making material as commodities, you will pay the price.”
64. “Most of the time, you are thinking about life, not living life, not allowing the life energies to function to their fullest exuberance.”
65. “Living well is if you are able to sit here in such a way that nothing matters.”
66. “Karma simply means we have created the blueprint for our lives. It means we are the makers of our own fate. When we say ‘This is my karma,’ we are actually saying ‘I am responsible for my life.’”
67. “If you are really interested in knowing life in all its depth and dimension, it is imperative that you look inward, not out.”
68. “Do not make life decisions based on immediate compulsions. Looking back after many years, it should still be a worthwhile choice.”
69. “Your life and how you experience it is entirely your making. Only if this absolutely sinks in, will you become a genuine seeker.”
Sadhguru Quotes on Positive Thinking
70. “The whole existence is vibration, and so are thoughts. If you generate a powerful thought, it shall become a reality.”
71. “The more you are exposed to the unity and the harmony of creation, the more your mind becomes Inclusive and Harmonious.”
72. “Pain is a good thing as a physical self-preservation mechanism. But suffering is something that you do in your mind.”
73. “The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.”
74. “We can manufacture whatever we want within ourselves – joy or misery, fear or love, anxiety or ecstasy.”
75. “When stillness arises from intense alertness and awareness, your perception opens up in ways that you have never thought possible.”
76. “The path is not difficult. It is very simple. If you are simple, it’s very simple. If you are all wound up, the path is very, very winding. That’s all it is.”
77. “Your mind need not be controlled; your mind needs to be liberated.”
78. “That which knows how to bend will not break.”
79. “The basic principle is that the very things that can be your downfall in life can be used to raise yourself. If you simply change your perspective, what is down can be up. What is a downward chute can be used as an upward process. Whatever draws you into compulsive nature, you use that to become conscious. You use that momentum to grow.”
80. “Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom. When you are able to create yourself the way you want, you can create your life the way you want as well. Your outer life may not be a hundred percent in your control, but your inner life always will.”
81. “Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem.”
82. “We have engineered the outside world in so many ways, but we have done nothing to engineer how we are within ourselves. If you want to know well-being, in is the only way out.”
83. “If your mind becomes a conscious process, it is the most miraculous thing in existence.”
84. “So, as long as your inner life is enslaved to external situations, it will remain a precarious condition.”
85. “If you tell yourself you don’t want to think a certain thought, that is precisely the first thing your mind will produce! That is the nature of the human mind.”
86. “Resentment, anger, jealousy, pain, hurt, and depression are poisons that you drink but expect someone else to die. Life does not work that way. Most people take lifetimes to understand this simple truth.”
87. “Making yourself mentally open is very fundamental and very crucial, because this is something that is immediately in your hands. Your energy is not in your hands; you don’t know how to open it. Even your physical body, you don’t know how to keep it open, but your mind is something that you can consciously open.”
88. “Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you.”
89. “Your mind, your body will work best, will find fullest expression, only when you are joyful and peaceful, and quiet within yourself.”
90. “When the activity of the mind is yours, the suffering that the mind generates is definitely your making. Would you generate unpleasantness and suffering for yourself if your mind was taking instructions from you? No. That means your mind is out of control.”
91. “The simple process of paying a little bit of attention to your inner nature will transform the quality of your life in remarkable ways.”
92. “Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world.”
93. “Everything in this cosmos is happening wonderfully well, but one nasty little thought in your head, and you think it is a bad day. That is lack of perspective.”
94. “If you are too serious about everything, you will only know thoughts and emotions. You will not know life.”
95. “When there is no envy, jealousy, comparison, and competition within you, you can focus your full capabilities on doing what is needed."
96. “If you generate a powerful thought and let it out, it will always manifest itself. For this to happen, it is important that you do not impede and weaken your thought by creating negative and self-defeating thought patterns.”
97. “‘Emotional you’ is also the ‘thinking you’ – the way you think is the way you feel.”
98. “You can use everything that happens in your life as a process of empowerment, or to entangle yourself.”
99. “Hardship can be a great opportunity for you to build a deep level of strength and well-being. Mental hardship is your making – you must stop that.”
100. “Every kind of misery that human beings are going through is manufactured in their minds.”
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Micki Spollen is an editor, writer, and traveler. Follow her on Instagram and keep up with her travels on her website.