My Personal Motto

Question from a reader: WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO IN LIFE? AND WHY?

My Answer: I don't know that I have chosen a single personal motto. The "why" is that we can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we react - and that choice creates all our happiness or unhappiness.

The following mottos/quotes all reflect the idea that happiness is a matter of choice, rather than external conditions.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)

Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
- Aristotle

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...
It's about learning how to dance in the rain.
- Vivian Greene

Happiness is a choice.
- Anonymous

You don't have the power to make life "fair,"
but you do have the power to make life joyful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We cannot choose our external circumstances,
but we can always choose how to respond to them.
- Epictetus

Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions,
it is governed by our mental attitude.
- Dale Carnegie

Attitude is everything.
- Charles Swindoll

Life is 10 percent what happens to me
and 90 percent how I react to it.
- Charles Swindoll

Choose the World You See, and See the World You Choose.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The beauty does not live out there; the beauty's in my eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

My happiness depends on me.
- A Course in Miracles

Happiness is a function of accepting what is.
- Werner Erhard

The key to happiness is not to have what you want
but to want what you have.
- Anonymous

Success is getting what you want;
happiness is wanting what you get.
- Dale Carnegie

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Further reading: 7 Secrets for a Happy Life

Attitude Quotes

Happiness Quotes

Quotes about Choice

s Quotes to Live By

May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie