Quotes About Self-awareness

There is always someone smarter than you; you'd think we die from the constant pain of our mental inferiority, except that most of the time we're too stupid to feel it.

This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I'll admit, because up to now I'd not done much more than be, and when I wasn't just being, I'd caused some pain, too.

The truth is that the world is full of bumblers exactly like you, and to think that you're special is just one more thing you've bumbled.

The truth is there is no Devil making you torture, rape, murder, and sodomize one another, or making you destroy the very land that feeds you. There is only you.

Man has only himself to fear now . . . he has become his own worst devil.

Victims are not vulnerable. They just haven't done their work. Do

I've never found therapy to be a sign of weakness I've found the opposite to be true. The willingness to have a mirror held up to you definitely requires strength.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don't go off somewhere else! . . . just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are. —Kabir (mystic poet, 1440–1518)

He remarked that thinking often spoils everything and that evil usually begins with our thoughts.

That he had no scruples; for, said he, when I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, I am used to do so: I shall never do otherwise, if I am left to myself. If I fail not, then I give GOD thanks, acknowledging that it comes from Him.

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts!

As if true pride Were not also humble!

You think you're so cool." "As a matter of fact, you have absolutely no idea what I think," Dolores said. "But if you'll allow me to rephrase that comment in the form of a question, the answer is that in fact I do not think I am 'so cool' in the least. For all I know, I may be cool, or perhaps I may be irretrievably nerdy. But that's for other, wiser, trendier minds to decide.

Things are the changeless mirror in which we watch ourselves disintegrate.

We have to take care of ourselves so we can bring our best selves.

until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed.

When young children hear fewer words, they can still learn to speak—they'll just be less fluent. In the same way, when children have fewer relational interactions, they'll still develop social capabilities—they'll just be less mature, more self-centered, more self-absorbed.

I now have the tools and understanding to step back, observe what I'm feeling, and choose how to move through the fear.

This is where the work begins—the work to excavate the roots that were put down long before we had the words to articulate what was happening to us.

if you have experienced trauma but haven't excavated it, the wounded parts of you will affect everything you've managed to build.

She said that until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. The wounds will bleed through and stain your life, through alcohol, through drugs, through sex, through overworking. You have to have the courage to pull out the wound and begin to heal yourself. This is the lesson I hope everyone carries with them from our conversation, too.

Most people, at least much of the time, live in a state of defensiveness. Chronic defensiveness not only fatigues us, it also keeps us from being in a state of openness to healing and receiving more energy.

Your body may live in a cellar; but it's your own fault if your mind lives there.

Twelve-step programs have long stressed that the key is giving up any illusion of control—to admit that we're wrong, weak, or full of it, and then relinquish authority to a higher power.