Alan Cohen quotes:

Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Everything will line up perfectly when knowing and living the truth becomes more important than looking good.

Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.

You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity. Let out a little more string on your kite.

If you have to have it, it's ego. If you have to not have it, it's ego. Hold life lightly and it will deliver what you need and release what you don't.

Money is but one venue for generosity. Kindness is an even more valuable currency.

Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.

Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.

To change your mind under the direction of the wisdom of the heart is a brush stroke on the masterpiece you are delivering to the world.

Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn't.

Joy is the wild card of life; it supersedes every other formula for success. If you can find a way to create joy, you can rise beyond all external factors. If you can play at whatever you are doing, you are the master of your life.

If you desire to know where your spiritual work lies, look to your emotional pain.

View the past as your enemy, and it will be an albatross. View it as your friend, and it will give you wings.

As you recognize that you already own the wholeness you seek, and no one outside you can give you more than you already are, dysfunctional situations will evaporate like bad dreams exposed to the morning sun.

Kindness to self will put you in the perfect attitude and position to be kind to others.

Will you ever run out of creative ideas and expressions? Ha! The more creative ideas you have, the more you will discover. Creativity is a tree with countless branches that never stop blossoming.

Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don't wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.

Optimism may sometimes be delusional, but pessimism is always delusional.

Great masters neither want nor need your worship. Your greatest gift to them and yourself is to emulate their divinity by claiming it as your own.

Joy is not the result of getting what you want; it is the way to get what you want. In the deepest sense, joy is what you want.

I've been a musician since I was nine. I think a ghost or goblin visited me in the night. Maybe aliens abducted me, or a divine figure sent me a spiritual memo. Who knows.

The fire of purpose easily melts the icicles of obstacles.

There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

When your sense of worth exceeds your conditions, conditions will shift to match your vision.

An authentic life does not require anyone else's approval for your creative choices.

Simply be who you are, do what you do best, be where you are called by joy, and let life work its magic on your behalf.

Every day the word 'gift' is used to define talent, ability, and performance. Being gifted has an even deeper meaning, a meaning that isn't always measured in points per game or win/loss records - it's measured by heart, effort, and desire.

Great masters merit emulation, not worship.

If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts.

A happy ending is always possible if you are willing to keep the story moving to get there.

Happy people do not demand a lot from the world because their happiness proceeds from a place deeper than the world can touch.

What your heart desires is not too good to be true. It is good enough to be true.

You can be helping many people, but if you are not helping yourself, you have missed the one person you were born to heal.

Your greatest contribution to helping other people live their destiny is for you to live your own.

The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.

Preparing to live your dream is postponing it. You are either living it, or not.

The difference between famous creators and struggling artists is that the creators know that improving the lives of others deserves the highest reward.

The best way to lose weight is to know that you are light.

The purpose of life is not to fight against evil and misfortune; it is to unveil magnificence.

If you have good wealth mentality.... you will generate wealth wherever you go. Even if you lose money temporarily, your wealth mentality will attract it again. If you have a lack mentality, no matter how much you receive or what financial opportunities come your way, wealth will evade you or, if it comes, it won't last.

To be a miracle worker you do not have to get a doctoral degree, become a minister, eat a particular food, or be able to meditate for long hours. All you need to do is to begin to see beauty in your life and those around you.

Everything will change when your desire to move on exceeds your desire to hold on.

Ask for peace first, and you will clearly see your next step.

It is not selfish or narcissistic to love yourself. It is your first and foremost responsibility.

It is not selfish to be happy. It is your highest purpose. Your joy is the greatest contribution you can make to life on the planet. A heart at peace with its owner blesses everyone it touches.

Our history is not our destiny.

You change the past when you change the way you see it.

If you act anxiously to hasten your results, you delay their arrival. Calm poise reveals the shortest route home.

What a doctor or healer tells you is a reflection of the beliefs and expectations you hold. Change your beliefs and you change the prognosis. Who is the doctor? The mind of the patient.

When you protect yourself from pain, be sure you do not protect yourself from love.

If you are losing your peace in your quest for peace, you are not on the road to peace. The road to peace is peace.

The only real knowledge is who you really are - a spiritual being created in the image in the likeness of a loving God. If you know that, everything you do will honor the wisdom and beauty you already own.

You need not wrestle for your good. Your good flows to you most easily when you are relaxed, open, and trusting.

Gratitude incorporates both the heart and mind, and instantly paves the shortest road to happiness.

Whatever you think and talk about paves the runway for what you will create.

Everything you think, feel, say, and do contains seeds of more of itself.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.

It is not insult from another that causes you pain. It is the part of your mind that agrees with the insult. Agree only with the truth about you, and you are free.

Your thoughts do not create reality, but they do create your experience.

Focus on the highest, clearest, and most meaningful teaching you can find, and let all else go.

Do not wait for the future to be happy. You are happy now, or you are not.

You have the power to take away someone's happiness by refusing to forgive. That someone is you.

When we make the choice to care, we set into motion a snowball effect that touches many people, most of whom we will never know about . . . never underestimate the importance of a kind act.

We attain freedom as we let go of whatever does not reflect our magnificence. A bird cannot fly high or far with a stone tied to its back. But release the impediment, and we are free to soar to unprecedented heights.

Appreciation empowers not just money transactions, but all interactions. Gratitude is one of the greatest meditations of a lifetime, the fastest attitude uplifter I know. Be grateful for all the good in your life and your good will only increase, along with your happiness.

If you are not living with a whole heart now, the end of the world poses no threat; your life is already gone. Life is only as valuable as our presence to enjoy it. To miss the beauty of the moment because you are preparing to protect yourself from the next one, is to trade a precious gem for a cheap trinket.

True champions are team players.

Love is heaven and fear is hell. Where you place your attention is where you live.

You are in integrity when the life you are living on the outside matches who you are on the inside.

God is a frequency. Stay tuned.

You can only see in someone else what you see in yourself.

You are doing better than you think you are.

Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.

No matter what has happened, let today be new.

We believe we are hurt when we don't receive love. But that is not what hurts us. Our pain comes when we do not give love. We were born to love. You might say that we are divinely created love machines. We function most powerfully when we are giving love. The world has led us to believe that our wellbeing is dependent on other people loving us. But this is kind of upside down thinking that has caused so many of our problems. The truth is our well being is dependent on our giving love. It is not about what comes back; it is about what goes out!

To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.

We have all been hypnotized into thinking that we are smaller than we are. Just as an undersized flowerpot keeps a mighty tree root-bound or a little fishbowl keeps goldfish tiny, we have adapted, adjusted, and accommodated to a Lilliputian life. But place the same tree in an open field or the fish in a lake, and they will grow to hundreds of times their size. Unlike the tree or goldfish, you are not dependent on someone else to move you. You have the power to move yourself. You can step into a broader domain and grow to your full potential.

Only those who ask for more can get more and only those who know there is more, ask.

Trust who and what you are, and the universe will support you in miraculous ways.

Gratitude, like faith, is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it grows.

Upgrade your past by seeing it with appreciation.

All limits exist only in the mind, and it is only in the mind that they can be overcome.

Eventually we grow weary of seeking treasures outside ourselves and we begin to look within. There we discover that the gold we sought, we already are.

You weren't born guilty. You were born bold and playful. Then you forgot who you are and what you deserve. When you remember who you were before you learned to apologize for asking, you'll have everything you want.

Don't use the past as an excuse to miss out on your future.

Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits.

Since you are the one who has to live with your choices, be sure they are your own.

If you gave your inner genius as much credence as your inner critic, you would be light years ahead of where you now stand.

One of the best ways to realize that age is an illusion is to have your body get older and realize that you are who you always have been.

Keeping your commitment to your purpose does not depend on other people keeping theirs.

The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation.

Everything that you need to succeed has been given to you.

When you invest your time and energy in stuff that drags you down, you die a little bit every day.

When you want what you want more than you fear what you want, you will have it.

No one can bother you unless you agree with them.

Be clear on where you are and where you want to go and you will get there. It can be the best year of your life.

Wouldn't it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.

When you learn to say yes to yourself, you will be able to say no to others, with love.

Enlightenment does not ask you to be perfect; it simply asks you to find perfection right where you stand.

You cannot judge what should bring others joy, and others cannot judge what should bring you joy.

Don't postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.

Life has meaning only if you do what is meaningful to you.

To think you know what is best for another person is an industrial-strength ego trip.

I claim my heart's desire, and I choose my direction. I will attain my chosen goal.

The world would have you agree with its dismal dream of limitation. But the light would have you soar like the eagle of your sacred visions.

You are destined to become the peer of those you most respect because the greatness you perceive in them is your own.

Do what is healing to your spirit and without effort you will bring the world healing in return.

Gratitude, like faith, is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it grows, and the more power you have to use it on your behalf. If you do not practice gratefulness, its benefaction will go unnoticed, and your capacity to draw on its gifts will be diminished. To be grateful is to find blessings in everything, This is the most powerful attitude to adopt, for there are blessings in everything.

To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek.

You give your power away when you make someone or something outside of you more important than what is inside of you.

Humility is born of the spirit, humiliation of the ego.

We can look at any experience in two ways: through the eyes of lack, or the eyes of plenty. Fear sees limits, while love sees possibilities. Each attitude will be justified by the belief system you cherish. Change your allegiance from fear to love, and love will sustain you wherever you walk.

The people who matter will recognize who you are.

Successful people pay more attention to their visions and goals than to history and the opinions of others.

People who do not need to please are irresistible because they radiate wholeness, a rare delicacy in a world of hungry hearts.

The only thing more important than being good is being real. Authenticity is kinder than resignation without conviction. Truth leads to good faster than good leads to truth. Ultimately truth is good, but you have to live it from the inside out.

You can always tell what you believe by what you are getting.

Acts that proceed from your calm center are always more effective than acts that proceed from fear, guilt, or anger.