Cheerfulness comes naturally with meditation. It is a quality of space created within the mind. When there’s space in the mind, the mind relaxes, and we feel a simple sense of delight. We experience the possibility of living a life in which we are not continuously aggravated by emotions, discursiveness, and concepts about the nature of things…. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Simplification of outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside. I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life — the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is only a technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer.
It takes a great person to creatively inhabit her own mind and not turn her mind into a destructive force that can ransack her life. [Even some] lovely people feel that their real identity is working on themselves, and some work on themselves with such harshness. Like a demented gardener who won’t let the soil settle for anything to grow, they keep raking, tearing away the nurturing clay from their own heart, then they’re surprised that they feel so empty and vacant. Self-compassion is paramount. When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do.
Work can be fast and relentless: pressing deadlines, looming goals, endless meetings; email, phone calls, “to do” lists. At times we can feel out of control, as if driving a car with no breaks, rushing through our jobs holding onto difficult turns, cutting corners, racing through an occasional red light. We might even say to ourselves at the end of the day: “Hey, what just happened – I just spent my whole day at a job without noticing any of it!”….When we are mindful of our job’s speed and hecticness, we take a subtle step: we actually slow down in order to notice how fast we are going. By simply observing the speed mindfully, we have tapped the breaks, so to speak, and slowed down just a bit. 
Mindfulbalance 