Quotes About Self-awareness

I don't go for this auto-cannibalism. Very damaging.

If you're serious about obtaining an effortless power, you must learn to take the principle of relaxing to what your brain will consider a ridiculous degree. No matter how relaxed you are, you can always relax more.

We confuse being some thing with Being.

Once a conceptual identity occupies the place of "self," this is what we think we are "being.

Being driven by your beliefs is a very different matter than consciously understanding how it is your beliefs are created and what purpose they serve.

An inner dialogue runs pretty much unceasingly though our minds. Sometimes we listen; sometimes we barely notice. The commands and assessments of this story line are there all the same, even if the depth of their influence goes unnoticed. But the most dangerous fictions aren't those we recognize as stories. Of more concern to us here are the ones we assume to be real.

We become attached to our beliefs, to our roles and traits, and also to the strategies needed for maintaining all this. We rarely acknowledge that all our mental, emotional, and perceptual activities are processes, and that they're there to serve a specific purpose. We're so busy identifying with mind's conceptual mechanisms that we lose touch with what's real. It is not hard to see, then, how self becomes confused with the mind.

Watch your thoughts for they become words.  Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits.  Watch your habits for they become your character.  And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.  What we think we become.

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?' "4 The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, "the will to be oneself.

We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do, strategic or otherwise. If we fail to recognize that who we are on the inside informs every aspect of our leadership, we will do damage to ourselves and to those we lead.

In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.

Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly—to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you.

Most leaders shipwreck or live inconsistent lives because of forces and motivations beneath the surface of their lives, which they have never even considered.

What is most startling in reading a detailed explanation of what goes on beneath the surface at the age of fifteen is that the same dynamics continue into the twenties, thirties, fifties, seventies, and nineties. We remain trapped in living a pretend life out of an unhealthy concern for what other people think.

ADOLESCENTES EMOCIONALES Tienden a estar siempre a la defensiva. Son amenazados y alarmados por las críticas. Mantienen una puntuación de lo que dan para después pedir algo a cambio. Tratan mal los conflictos, generalmente culpan, apaciguan, van con una tercera persona, hacen mala cara o ignoran el tema por completo. Se preocupan por ellos mismos. Tienen dificultad para escuchar verdaderamente el dolor, las desilusiones o necesidades de otra persona. Son críticos y sentenciosos.

Lewis Smedes sums up the dangers of superficial forgiveness: "We will not take healing action against unfair pain until we own the pain we want to heal. It is not enough to feel pain. We need to appropriate the pain we feel: Be conscious of it, take it on, and take it as our own … I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain.

Most of us never examine the scripts handed to us by our past.

Our wisdom . . . consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

Few killer viruses are more difficult to discern than this one. On the surface all appears to be healthy and working, but it's not. All those hours and hours spent lost in one Christian book after another . . . all those many Christian responsibilities outside the home or going from one seminar to another . . . all that extra time in prayer and Bible study. . . . At times we use these Christian activities as an unconscious attempt to escape from pain. In

Grow me, I pray, into an emotionally mature adult through the Holy Spirit's power.

The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone else's life, or at least someone else's expectations for us. This does violence to ourselves, our relationship with God, and ultimately to others.

Using God to run from God Ignoring anger, sadness, and fear Dying to the wrong things Denying the impact of the past on the

the result of denying and minimizing our wounds over many years is that we become less and less human, empty Christian shells with painted smiley faces.

The degree to which you recognize and engage your own shadow is the degree to which you can free others to face theirs.