Jessica Alba‘s just like a lot of regular people getting out of a long relationship … she’s making some big life choices — including putting a permanent art piece on her body.

Daniel Winter — a popular tattoo artist better known by the moniker Winterstone — tells TMZ … Jessica came into his private West Los Angeles studio for a tattoo. While Winterstone wasn’t supposed to work that day, he came in on his afternoon off to personally ink the star.

The actress got the quote “Life is transformation is life” tattooed on her arm in cursive … running from her wrist to right around her elbow.

Basically, Jessica’s new mantra is all about life revolving around change — and, she seems ready to live despite all the major changes in her life.

We’re told Alba came in with this particular tattoo idea, and Winterstone wrote it in several different fonts that she got to choose from. The one tattooed on her body was obviously her favorite.

Daniel says Jessica’s a very spiritual person — which given the way she celebrated Kerry Washington‘s birthday isn’t totally a shock.

Winterstone has done tattoos for other celebs too … like John Legend, Lady Gaga and Demi Lovato. We know mutual friends introduced Jessica and Winterstone — unclear if they were any of these Hollywood heavyweights.

As you know, Jessica and her longtime husband Cash Warren announced they were splitting last month … and she filed for divorce a few weeks ago. Despite not having a prenup, we’re told the split is super amicable.

BTW … our “TMZ on TV” crew talked all about Jessica’s tattoo on the show — and, they gave their honest thoughts on the tat.