Need Inspiration? Here Are 15 Mantras From People Who Changed Their Lives

Need some motivation to live healthier and reach your goals? At The Beet, we asked people all over the world to share their best mantra, words of wisdom, or inspirational quotes that helped them overcome life's biggest challenges.

We listen to failures, successes, and advice from people who beat illness, addiction, disorders, depression, and more by eating a plant-based diet. Then, we share the entire journey (under our success stories column) with you, and our readers, to learn from personal, real-life experiences, and feel inspired to make smarter choices, daily.

The new year is right around the corner, and it's likely you have a new intention or goal in mind. The most important part of your resolution is sticking to it. One simple way to focus on your goals is to speak out loud and repeat mantras or affirmations that spreads positivity, release negativity or doubt from your mind, and help you concentrate to feel present.

We rounded up the ten best mantras we have ever heard from people who changed their lives and stayed committed. Learn, think, appreciate, and execute everything you want to be in 2021.

"My Mantra is: Mood Follows Action. What that means is we have this human tendency to try to make a change, and then we wait to do the hard, uncomfortable thing. We wait until we feel like doing it. But that day never comes. But to me, Mood Follows Action means the action precedes the mood. If you wait to take the action when you feel like it you may never do it. That helps me take the first step, like jumping into the cold water when I may not feel like it, or not hitting snooze on the alarm. And that approach has helped me in many contexts. It has helped me since I first heard it back in AA many years ago. Does the mood follow? Well, yes. You never do the thing and think, "I wish I hadn't done that."

“All things are working for my good. I love that one because I’ve already been through so much, and if I’ve made it this far, I can keep going. I can keep pushing for myself, for my girls, because that’s what mama’s do."

“Still, I Rise, is one of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou. It really helped me through my darkest moments. There was a point when I just didn’t want to continue living, so the quote reminded me that I could still rise above all the things I’d gone through. With depression, even the heaviest of emotions can be thought of as just being a wave and they’ll pass. You just have to ride them out, because whatever you’re going through, you can get past it. You never come up against something you can’t overcome, it just takes the mental space to realize it."

"You can have your best life, or you can have alcohol. That one just blew my mind. The other one I love that I mentioned earlier is if you don’t have control over yourself and your time, someone or something else will."

“Only those who go where few have gone can see what few have seen.” I didn’t write it, but it definitely helped me get through many moments of my personal detoxification journey. Another one I love is, real change occurs when the pain of staying the same hurts more than whatever it is you’re going through."

"Keep going and keep trying. If you fail, just keep going. If you’re doing this for your health, just keep going. You will reap the benefits of it."

"I am all about loving your food and loving your life. I understand food is fuel but I am a foodie first. You don't have to eat what you don’t like to be healthy. By incorporating healthy foods into your life, you are going to love your life more."

"I really like the perspective that time is not real, from a metaphysical perspective. It’s how I healed a lot of my past self-shame and guilt and regret. If I loved myself five minutes ago, shouldn't that apply to myself five years ago, ten years ago, when I was still beating myself up after eating family-sized bags of Cheetos? It really helped me to look at my past self as someone who was doing her best and needed to go through those experiences to feel what I feel now. I can't be mad at myself for eating all those family-sized bags of Cheetos and crying in a closet, I have to hold her and love her. That’s me! If I want to feel better now, I can’t hold on to the negative feelings towards the past version of myself, that’s me right now. It really helped me to view it like that, that it’s all me, and the future version of myself, I can be here in two seconds. That’s it, then I'm there. You don’t have to wait in order to feel good. You don’t have to wait in order to be happy."

"It's that I walk a little bit more softly on the earth. Whether that's in my interactions with people or interactions with animals, I know that eating this way helps everything and everyone. It helps the environment, it helps the animals, and I know I'm not hurting anyone. That next step for me is to be gentle, generous, and kind, and giving that to the humans I interact with. So it is to walk softly on the earth, or gently. That sort of encompasses everything. My wife and I talk every once in a while, and we ask each other: Would you ever go back to eating certain things. For instance, I loved eggs. I loved meat, but when you think about where these things came from, and those abuses that those animals go through, you can’t let go of that idea. For me, that mantra is walk softly on the earth."

"Be kind to every kind, even if it's a rat or a cow. Be kind to every living being, that includes trees, anything in nature. It's also important to be humble."

""What is.. . not What if." It's a mantra to help manage my anxiety. If you keep saying "What if" you are creating stories in your head of what could happen, good or bad. Saying "What is ..." allows you to stay in the present."

"'Love the life you have while creating the life you want.' Meaning: Never wish you had somebody else’s life or body or success or privilege because you don’t know what they are dealing with (and everyone is always dealing with something) so never wish you could trade places. Instead of measuring yourself against someone else measure yourself against your best self and then work to achieve your personal goals. But keep it joyful."

"'Be Here Now', as Ram Dass would say. Reliving the past makes you live in a state of regret, and fixating on the future makes you live in a state of anxiety. True peace is living in the moment, and focusing on what is here now.

“'Be the flame, not the moth,' which is a different way to say be the leader, not the follower. This is a phrase my grandma always said when I was younger, meaning you should look to your inner self and be your own leading light."

"'It takes no more time to see the good side of life than the bad.' In other words, don’t waste your time or energy on looking for the bad when it takes the same time to find the good. For every negative, you can find two positives."