As human beings we are as impermanent as everything else is. Every cell in the body is continuously changing. Thoughts and emotions rise and fall away unceasingly. When we’re thinking that we’re competent or that we’re hopeless – what are we basing it on? On this fleeting moment? On yesterday’s success or failure? We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us. Nothing and no one is fixed.

Pema Chödron

from the book The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

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Further quotes from the book The Places That Scare You:

• A flexible identity
• Our Shared Humanity
• Idiot Compassion
• Cultivating equanimity
• Compassion takes courage
• Abiding in openness
• The essence of generosity
• Doing all with one intention
• Threefold purity
• Stay!
• Forgive into freshness
• Our true nature and condition
• Whatever we encounter
• Being inspired by everyday good fortune
• The queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere
• The anxiety of opening
• Everyday uncertainty
• Cultivating equanimity
• Happiness