Quotes About Self-awareness

At a certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.

Every now and then I could see myself—truly see myself—and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was the woman with the hole in her heart.

saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.

people will try to tell you otherwise, but boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself.

You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings...

It's a lie you've told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts.

You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your best self. This means that you're like the rest of us.

boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you, and they teach you how to respect yourself.

Thinking deeply about your choices and actions from the stance of your future self can serve as both a motivational and a corrective force.

You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.

we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be selfish assholes first.

An arrow pointed into its center, above which were written the words YOU ARE HERE. This image had become ubiquitous on T-shirts as well as posters and I always felt mildly irritated by it, unsure of how to take it, whether it was meant to be comical or grave, to indicate the largeness of our lives or the insignificance.

transformation often depends that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds.

you are so goddamned young. Which means about eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false.

But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth.

I was not going to nod. Everything that had ever happened to me in my whole life was mixed into the cement that kept my head perfectly still

I'm sorry," she said and reached over and squeezed his leg. She couldn't help but think that she'd ruined his life. It didn't yet occur to her to wonder about having ruined her own.

He didn't do anything. I'm the one. I broke my own heart.

What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? …What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

You're clear that you don't want to act on your crush, so trust that clarity and be grateful that you have it.

ucked-up people will try to tell you otherwise, but boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives.

I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in. I was there now. Or close.

Heroin had made me dumb and distant from myself. A thought would form and then evaporate. I could not quite get ahold of my mind, even when I wasn't high.