Quotes About Self-discovery

The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and conviction where we are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, "This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I intend to live my life"?

The drawing is also a reminder that there's an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on.

I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call "monkey-mind" chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner.

The part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Besides, what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty? Isn't that the whole point of healing?

The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves.

What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. Remember, the part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part we create from can't be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we've got, the better and richer that part becomes.

The hero's journey can take place on a battlefield or in a cubicle. We can live it out amid public clamor or in the soundless vault between our ears. The demons we are dueling are always the same. They are our own fears of becoming who we are. No one who has ever lived—or ever will—has a journey like ours. And yet our journey is universal. It is every woman's and every man's.

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?

If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business.

it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? chances are you are.

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to pain killers, gossip, and compulsive cell phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?

My role-options in life and career, I realized, were not limited to Businessman, Athlete, and Boneheaded Patriot.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. If we were born to paint, it's our job to

The more important an activity is to your soul's evolution, the more you will feel resistance to it.

We're facing dragons too. Fire-breathing griffins of the soul, whom we must outfight and outwit to reach the treasure of our self-in-potential and to release the maiden who is God's plan and destiny for ourselves and the answer to why we were put on this planet.

This is how Resistance disfigures love. The stew it creates is rich, it's colorful; Tennessee Williams could work it up into a trilogy. But is it love? If we're the supporting partner, shouldn't we face our own failure to pursue our unlived life, rather than hitchhike on our spouse's coattails? And if we're the supported partner, shouldn't we step out from the glow of our loved one's adoration and instead encourage him to let his own light shine?

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. If we were born to paint, it's our job to become a painter. If

Nuestro trabajo en esta vida no es convertirnos en ese ideal que imaginamos ser, sino encontrar la persona que ya somos y convertirnos en ella.

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. Have

That year made me a pro. It gave me, for the first time in my life, an uninterrupted stretch of month after month that was mine alone, that nobody knew about but me, when I was truly productive, truly facing my demons, and truly working my shit. That year has stuck with me.

Instead let's ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.

I write all day. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have never heard of narrative structure or theme or concept or act 1, act 2, act 3. I work entirely on instinct. I'm writing, as I said, about Burton Lines, about the trucking company. I'm writing about myself.

I wish every aspiring writer or artist could have a year or two years like this—a season when you have no responsibilities except to your own Muse and your own daimon, a run of months when you're invisible to everybody but yourself, when you don't give a shit about anything except the challenge before you, when you could drop dead on the street and no one would stop except to step over your cold corpse, and you don't care.

I'm trying. I'm giving it my all. The thought of tailoring my output to any market or to please any imagined audience never enters my mind. This is for me. I'm writing to save my own life.