David Cain Quotes & Sayings

Thoughts repeat themselves. Experiences do not. — David Cain

A conclusion is not the point at which you reach the truth, it's only the point at which the exploring stops. — David Cain

The standard way of reducing stress in our culture is to put as much energy as possible into trying to arrive at a moment that matches our preferences. This ensures that we feel some level of stress until we get there (assuming we ever will) and worse, it makes the present moment into an unacceptable place to be. — David Cain

The quality of your moment-to-moment experience determines the quality of your whole life, because ultimately they are the same thing. — David Cain

Our work and educational institutions reinforce this preference for later over now throughout our lives. In school we focus on the ends - passing the semester, making the grade, or otherwise getting it all behind us - rather than the present-moment experience of actually learning. As employees, we want the work to be over as soon as it begins. Work culture is driven by quotas, billable hours, budgets, and Gantt charts - bottom lines of any sort. The value is always somewhere ahead of you, rather than here right now, in the room with you. We're perpetually looking ahead to a payday or a weekend or some other kind of finish line. Virtually every day of our lives, we're trained to lean towards something we don't have, which essentially trains us to be dissatisfied with where we already are. — David Cain

Essentially, meditation allows us to live in ways that are less automatic. This necessarily means less time spent worrying, ruminating, and trying to control things we can't control. It means we become less vulnerable to the throes of the fear-driven, older parts of our brains, and freer to use our newer and more sophisticated mental abilities: patience, compassion, acceptance and reason. — David Cain

By learning to allow different types of discomfort to simply stay in the room with you, without your scrambling for a button to push (real or metaphorical), you make discomfort matter less.
The pool of things you're afraid of shrinks. It becomes a lot less important to control circumstances, because you know you can handle moments of uncertainty or awkwardness or disappointment without an escape plan. — David Cain

When you can learn to go along for the ride, ordinary moments become compelling. — David Cain

Meditation isn't only the act of successfully keeping your attention on the breath, it's the whole period of time you spend with the intention to observe the breath. It is this intention and its application - not your success at achieving perfect concentration - that is responsible for the benefits of meditation. — David Cain

But disasters are made of paper. You make a decision or two, then walk in to them like you would a harmless corner store, and soon they're behind you, on the enormous pile of dead and harmless disasters that once had you worried sick.

The sky has fallen a thousand times already. — David Cain