It’s not what you say to everyone else that determines your life; it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the greatest power and influence.

The best lessons we learn in life are the lessons we learn over and over again. The human mind needs lots of reminders — lots of practice — to operate effectively. For example, deep down we know it’s OK to…

• Say “no”
• Speak up
• Tell the truth
• Believe differently
• Change our mind
• Prioritize our needs
• Learn from our mistakes
• Embrace our imperfections
• Forgive and seek forgiveness
• Begin again, stronger than before

Yet, we often do the exact opposite when life gets stressful and we’re under pressure.

We do the wrong things even when we know better.

Because the human mind has weaknesses. It becomes forgetful and insensible when it’s stressed. And the only way to conquer these weaknesses is to practice conquering them. Yes, the mind is like a muscle, and just like every muscle in the human body it needs to be exercised to gain and maintain strength. It needs to be trained daily to grow and develop gradually over time.

The easiest strategy to practice strengthening the mind?

Empowering Quotes on Sticky Notes

It’s all about keeping the right thoughts front and center every day, so they’re readily available in those moments when you need them most. For Marc and me, that means pausing as often as necessary and reflecting on precisely what we need to remember. To make this practice seamless we write ourselves important reminders on sticky notes, like the ones digitally represented below, and then we put them up where we can quickly see and read them throughout the day (most of my sticky notes are up on the wall in my home office, and then I have a couple on my bathroom mirror and refrigerator too).

Our sticky notes keep us on track by keeping our minds empowered with the right perspective. Through this daily practice Marc and I have ultimately learned that while you can’t always control the outer world, you can always choose to fill your inner world with strength, faith, peace, and love. And I’m sure you’ve learned something similar over the years from your own life experiences. But just like us, you often forget. Which is precisely why we have our sticky notes up where we can see them.

So my challenge to YOU is to start practicing alongside us. To get started, use the notes below — perhaps just the ones that resonate most — and rewrite them on physical sticky notes, so you can then stick them up where you can see and read them every day. Whenever you catch yourself feeling overwhelmed or off-center, pause for a moment and quietly read them again to yourself. See how doing so gradually changes the way you respond to life in the heat of the moment…

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(Note: Most of the notes above are included in “The Good Morning Journal: Powerful Prompts & Reflections to Start Every Day”.)

You can use different forms of visual notes too.

Written sticky notes like the ones we’re encouraging you to create are powerful, but they merely scratch the surface of possibilities for beneficial visual reminders. For instance, my phone, tablet, and laptop all have their backgrounds set to photos of my family, both because I love looking at them and because, when work gets really tough, these photos remind me of the people I am ultimately working for. It’s simple but it helps.

I also know dozens of other people who successfully use similar visual reminders on a daily basis. A coaching client of ours who has paid off over $100K of debt in the past five years has a copy of her credit card balance taped to her work computer’s monitor; it serves as a daily reminder of both the progress she is grateful to have made, and debt she still wants to pay off. Another one keeps a photo of herself when she was 90 pounds heavier on her refrigerator as a reminder of the unhealthy lifestyle she never wants to go back to, and the gratitude she has for the changes she has made in her life.

Think of moments when you are most likely to give in to impulses that keep you stuck or take you farther away from your best intentions. Then use written sticky notes and empowering visual reminders to interrupt those negative impulses, so you can keep yourself on track in a positive state of mind in the days ahead.

Now it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to get some empowering notes up on the walls in your living and working spaces, so you can easily reference them. But before you go, please leave Marc and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this post. Your feedback is important to us.

Which sticky note or idea above resonates with you the most today?

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

Let’s cut to the chase right now. What you ultimately do in life comes out of who you believe you are. You have to practice believing in yourself and ignoring the naysayers. Because while you may not be able to control the impolite things some people say and do, or the unfair things that sometimes happen in life, you can press forward and decide not to be endlessly derailed by them.

Of course I know that’s much easier said than done, especially during transitional periods of growth and change, but you must remind yourself that it can be done!

How?

Start by memorizing some helpful “notes to self.” After all, it’s not what others say about you, and it’s not what you broadcast to everyone else that determines the trajectory of your life. It’s what you whisper to yourself behind closed doors that has the greatest power and influence.

A good friend of mine who graduated with honors from Cal Berkley several years ago, is now the co-founder and CEO of a successful start-up in Silicon Valley. Throughout grade school she struggled with reading and writing disabilities. She spent kindergarten all the way through 12th grade in English “special education” classes. During a parent-teacher conference when she was a freshman in high school, two teachers collectively informed her mom that it was highly unlikely she would ever graduate.

So how did she do it? How did she push through and overcome the odds? “The right affirmations and notes to self,” she told me with a serious smile when I interviewed her recently for a side-project I’m working on. “I literally told myself that they were wrong about me. I told myself exactly what I needed to hear, every single day, to move my life forward. It may sound like a cliché to some people, but it’s not. It’s powerful stuff!”

I love her sentiment and I completely agree with her. In fact, there’s a reason training our minds with good reminders and affirmations works wonders. Just like every muscle in the body, the mind needs to be exercised to gain strength. It needs to be worked consistently to grow and develop over time. If you haven’t pushed your mind in hundreds of little positive ways over time, of course it’ll struggle on the days that get harder than expected.

The bottom line is that a mind well trained with the right data has what it needs queued up and ready for retrieval when it’s needed most. If you’d like to begin or enhance this practice in your own life, here’s a selection of “notes to self” Angel and I have been using and suggesting to our clients and friends as starting point:

1. “Peace will come to me when it comes from me.”
2. “I cannot control everything that happens. I can only control the way I respond to what happens. In my response is my power.”
3. “I will not get caught up in what could’ve been or should’ve been. I will look instead at the power and possibility of what is, right now.”
4. “I will stop focusing on how stressed I am and remember how blessed I am. Complaining won’t change my reality, but a positive attitude will.”
5. “Being positive does not mean resisting and ignoring the negative. Being positive means accepting and overcoming the negative. There’s a big difference between the two.”
6. “I have to accept whatever comes my way, and the only important thing is that I meet it with the best I have to give.”
7. “Making mistakes is always better than faking perfections.” (Read “The Gifts of Imperfection”.)
8. “I will never be as good as everyone tells me when I win, and I will never be as bad as I think when I lose.”
9. “I will think less about managing my problems and more about managing my mindset.”
10. “A challenge only becomes an obstacle if I bow to it.”
11. “There is a big difference between empty fatigue and gratifying exhaustion. Life is too short. I will invest in the activities that move me.”
12. “If I don’t have time for what matters, I will stop doing things that don’t.”
13. “I cannot build a reputation or legacy for myself based on what I am going to ‘maybe’ do someday.”
14. “The future can be different than the present, and I have the power to make it so right now.”
15. “I will never get ahead if I keep trying to get even.”
16. “I will focus on making myself better, not on thinking that I am better.”
17. “I will be too busy watering my own grass to notice if yours is greener.”
18. “I will eat like I love myself. Move like I love myself. Speak like I love myself. Live like I love myself. Today. (Note: Angel and I discuss this process in more detail in the Self-Love chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)
19. “My next step in the right direction doesn’t have to be a big one.”
20. “All my small victories are worth celebrating; it’s the small things done well that makes a difference in the end.”

And remember that the goal in the days and weeks ahead is to cope effectively — to gradually grow stronger on the inside — so that less and less on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission…

The right “notes to self” allow for effective coping.

How you cope with unexpected stress and frustration can easily be the difference between living a good life and living an unhealthy one. My friend’s life story that I mentioned above is a simple example of this. She chose healthy coping through her personal notes and affirmations, and you’d be wise to follow in her footsteps. But if you choose unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance or denial instead, you can quickly turn a tough situation into a tragic one. And sadly this is a common mistake many people make. For example, when you find yourself facing a truly hard reality in life, your first reaction might be to deny the situation, or to avoid dealing with it altogether. But by doing so you’re inadvertently holding on even tighter to the pain that you wish to let go of — you’re, in effect, sealing it up inside you…

Let’s imagine someone close to you has grown ill, and supporting this person through his or her illness is incredibly painful. You might not want to deal with the pain, so you cope by avoiding it, by finding ways to numb yourself with alcohol and unhealthy eating. And consequently you grow physically ill too while the pain continues to fester inside you. Obviously that’s not good.

If you notice yourself doing something similar, it’s time to pause, admit to yourself that you’re coping by avoiding, and then shift your focus to a more effective and healthier coping mechanism, like using the affirmations listed above to help calm your mind and open it up.

When you face struggles with an attitude of openness — open to the painful feelings and emotions you have — you find out that it’s not comfortable, but you can still be fine and step forward. Openness means you don’t instantly decide that you know this is only going to be a horrible experience — it means you admit that you don’t really know what the next step will be like, and you’d like to understand the whole truth of the matter. It’s a calm learning stance, instead of one that frantically assumes the absolute worst.

There are many benefits to effective coping.

Coping certainly isn’t an easy practice and I’m not suggesting that it is. What I am suggesting is that it’s worth your while. With practice, effective coping allows you to find better ways of managing life’s continuous stream of unexpected and uncontrollable events. For example…

• A task is harder than you expected it to be. — Instead of running from a daunting and overwhelming task, you can accept it and see what it’s like to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed, and still take action anyway. Writing a book, for example, is daunting and overwhelming, but you can still write one even with those feelings rolling through you (just like Angel and I did with our books).
• An interaction with someone you love angers or frustrates you. — Instead of lashing out at a loved one when you’re upset with them, you can sit quietly with your difficult feelings and just be open to what it’s like to feel them. And then, once you’ve had a moment to breathe, you can see what it’s like to deal compassionately with someone you love who you’re also upset with. To try to understand them instead of just judging them at their worst.
• Unhealthy cravings overwhelm you out of nowhere. — You may be inclined to indulge in unhealthy cravings like alcohol and sweets for comfort when you’re feeling stressed out. But you can sit with these feelings and be open to them instead, and then gradually build positive daily rituals for coping in healthier ways — taking walks, meditating, talking with someone about your feelings, journaling, reviewing the relevant affirmations provided above, etc. (Note: “The Good Morning Journal” is a great tool for the form of journaling mentioned here.)
• You are forced to deal with a loved one’s death. — When someone you love passes away the loss can be utterly overwhelming. At that point, it’s incredibly easy to succumb to unhealthy ways of alleviating the pain. But you have to practice doing the opposite — to give yourself compassion, to sit with the powerfully difficult thoughts and feelings you have, and to open your mind to what lies ahead. Gradually it becomes evident that death isn’t just an ending, but also a beginning. Because while you have lost someone special, this ending is also a moment of reinvention. Although deeply sad, their passing forces you to reinvent your life, and in this transition is an opportunity to experience beauty in new, unseen ways and places.

And of course, we’ve merely just scratched the surface of a deep pool of possibilities for effective coping. The key thing to understand is that by learning to internally cope more effectively, you are better equipped to handle anything life throws your way. Because in the end the world is as you are inside — what you think, you see, and you ultimately become.

Now it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to make yourself a priority by memorizing and leveraging the affirmations above. But before you go, please leave Angel and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us.

Which one of the affirmations or points above resonated the most today?

Also, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

A breakup can feel like your whole world is falling apart.

You question everything (maybe yourself the most). You feel sick to your stomach and heartbroken.

You don’t know if you’ll ever feel whole, feel like yourself again.

To spark hope I’d like to share 120 of the most relatable, hopeful, positive and helpful breakup quotes.

I hope you’ll find something here that will comfort you. Remind you that you are not alone on this journey.

And assure you that you can heal, move on and find happiness again.

Inspirational Breakup Quotes to Help You Heal from Heartbreak

“Every time your heart is broken, a doorway cracks open to a world full of new beginnings, new opportunities.”
– Patti Roberts

“If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.”
– Rick Riordan

“The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

“The cure for a broken heart is self-love.”
– Jonathan Harnisch

“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
– Jan Glidewell

“We too, like trees can shake off our dead leaves and begin again.”
– A.Y. Greyson

“The only way out is through.”
– Robert Frost

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
– Albert Einstein

“The greatest win is walking away and choosing not to engage in drama and toxic energy at all.”
– Lalah Delia

“Every time you thought you couldn’t keep moving forward, you did. Take a moment to appreciate your strength.”
– Karen Salmanson

“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”
– Shannon L. Alder

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.”
– Lao Tzu

“That’s all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.”
– Robyn Schneider

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
– Rumi

“I always get to where I am going by walking away from where I have been.”
– A. A. Milne

“Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game.”
– Jim Butcher

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
– Walt Whitman

“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”
– Roy T. Bennett

“Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.”
– Tyrion Lannister

“So many things become beautiful when you really look.”
– Lauren Oliver

“It’s not how hard you hit. It’s how hard you get hit… and keep moving forward.”
– Randy Pausch

Breakup Quotes on Sad Feelings and New Beginnings

“Someday you will wake up feeling 51 percent happy and slowly, molecule by molecule, you will feel like yourself again.”
– Amy Poehler

“The heart will break, but broken live on.”
– Lord Byron

“When you are in love, and you get hurt, it’s like a cut – it will heal, but there will always be a scar.”
– Soo Jie

“Don’t be sorry, be fierce.”
– RuPaul

“I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.”
– L.M. Montgomery

“I know my heart will never be the same. But I’m telling myself I’ll be okay.”
– Sara Evans

“You will need to allow your mind to take it all in so that by the time you get back up on your feet, you know how you feel.”
– Lauren Conrad

“It’s so empowering to say, ‘This isn’t serving me,’ and walk away in peace.”
– Unknown

“Holding on is believing that there’s a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.”
– Daphne Rose Kingma

“Just believe that the heartbreak was a gift in itself. Cry if you have to, but it won’t be forever! You will find love again, and it will be even more beautiful!”
– Rihanna

“You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.”
– Chinese Proverb

“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.”
– Jean de La Fontaine

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.”
– Louise Erdrich

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.”
– Mary Oliver

“We’re all where we’re supposed to be. I am exactly where I want to be now. You can’t go backward.”
– Sandra Bullock

“You can’t move things by not moving.”
– Suzy Kassem

“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”
– Michael McMillian

“A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back – you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.”
– Jodi Picoult

“I promise you there is something worse out there than being sad, and that’s being alone and being sad.”
– Ted Lasso

“I’m not sure what the future holds but I do know that I’m going to be positive and not wake up feeling desperate.”
– Nicole Kidman

“It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past.”
– Angelina Jolie

“One taught me love. One taught me patience. And one taught me pain. Now, I’m so amazing.”
– Ariana Grande

“I’d rather love a million times and have my heart broken every time, than hold a permanently empty heart forever.”
– H.C. Paye

“Through it all, I have learned to laugh and cry and grow. I look at the woman I was in my 20s and I see a young lady growing into confidence.”
– Beyonce

“Don’t worry. Just when you think your life is over, a new storyline falls from the sky and lands right in your lap.”
– Rebekah Crane

Short Breakup Quotes on Being Deeply Hurt and Moving On

“I would rather have my heart broken a thousand times than never to love at all.”
– Cameron Diaz

“Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.”
– Melissa Marr

“If you didn’t love him, this never would have happened. But you did.”
– Sarah Dessen

“A girl doesn’t need anyone who doesn’t need her.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“We are never ever, ever getting back together.”
– Taylor Swift

“But every time you hurt me, the less that I cry.”
– Sam Smith

“You thought that I’d be weak without ya, but I’m stronger.”
– Destiny’s Child

“Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t pretend that you do.”
– Venus Williams

“Moving on is not forgetting – moving on is being able to remember without feeling awful about it.”
– Sam Madison

“Only time can heal his heart, just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.”
– Miss Piggy

“It is always important to know when something has reached its end.”
– Paulo Coelho

“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”
– Sara Teasdale

“Gonna love myself, no, I don’t need anybody else.”
– Hailee Steinfeld

“Everybody has bad relationships and, at the end of the day, they are just a great way to set yourself up for a good relationship.”
– Anne Hathaway

“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.”
– Robert Brault

“This is the part of me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me, no!”
– Katy Perry

“Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life.”
– Usher

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
– Joseph Campbell

“You stop revisiting memories when you outgrow the people you made them with.”
– Nikki Rowe

“You’re gonna make it after all.”
– The Mary Tyler Moore Show

“I’m breaking down, gonna start from scratch. Shake it off like an Etch-A-Sketch.”
– Fifth Harmony

“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
– Scarlett O’Hara

“The truth is, I should be angry, resentful and disillusioned about relationships. But I’m not.”
– Eva Longoria

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters anymore.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“I love you, but I love me more.”
– Samantha (from the TV-show Sex and the City)

Deep and Relatable Breakup Quotes on Friendship and Love

“There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
– C.S. Lewis

“The pain of letting go will be eclipsed by the relief of moving on.”
– Scott Stabile

“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”
– Alvy Singer

“The best way to mend a broken heart is time and girlfriends.”
– Gwyneth Paltrow

“Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.”
– Graham Greene

“Stuart needs ‘space’ and ‘time,’ as if this were physics and not a human relationship.”
– Kathryn Stockett

“You get through it. It’s a process that’s not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.”
– Ryan Phillippe

“I know that I love being able to give my love out to someone. I know there is somebody great out there for me.”
– Jennifer Love Hewitt

“I was so scared of ever being alone, and I think, conquering that fear, this year, was actually bigger than any other transition.”
– Miley Cyrus

“If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.”
– Michael Bassey Johnson

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”
– Steve Maraboli

“You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day and planning fun dinner parties.”
– Taylor Swift

“I am beginning to feel like the only way to truly get over someone that you cared a lot about is to start a new chapter.”
– Mindy (from the TV-show The Mindy Project)

“Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks?”
– Anita Desai

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction.”
– Suzanne Collins

“I was smiling yesterday, I am smiling today and I will smile tomorrow. Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.”
– Santosh Kalwar

“Letting go is hard but being free is beautiful.”
– Wilder Poetry

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting.”
– Rumi

“Though nobody can go back and make a new beginning… Anyone can start over and make a new ending.”
– Chico Xavier

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together.”
– Tupac Shakur

“The heart was made to be broken.”
– Oscar Wilde

“The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it.”
– Nicholas Sparks

Break Up Quotes on Closure and a Positive New Chapter in Life

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
– Thomas Fuller

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
– Maya Angelou

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.”
– Brian Tracy

“Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”
– Maxim Gorky

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
– Lewis Carroll

“I will not allow myself to not feel chosen every single day. And I’ll wait till whenever that is.”
– Hannah Brown

“Hope, Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson

“We’d always go into it blindly. I needed to lose you to find me.”
– Selena Gomez

“You’ve got to love yourself first. You’ve got to be OK on your own before you’re OK with someone else.”
– Jennifer Lopez

“I used to choose you and what you wanted. Now I choose me. Just me and what I want.”
– Unknown

“I’m just a masterpiece trying to master peace.”
– Dalai Aya

“Life has tried to break me, the wounds have not yet healed. But I am not a victim, never been and never will.”
– John Mark Green

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“Whatever you do, never run back to what broke you.”
– Frank Ocean

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“Go back? No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!”
– J.R.R. Tolkien

“The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday.”
– Steve Maraboli

“The saddest thing about love is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”
– William Faulkner

“The walls we build around us to keep out the sadness also keep out the joy.”
– Jim Rohn

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
– Kahlil Gibran

“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”
– Washington Irving

“Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go.”
– Mooji

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Herman Hesse

Want more inspiration and help? Then have a look at these self-love and self-esteem quotes, this post called The 12 Best Be Kind to Yourself Quotes (and Helpful Tips on Self-Love) plus this one with self-care quotes.