Quotes About Self-awareness

It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

Like so many of our neighbors who latched onto tragedy to stand out from the crowd -- slavery, incest, a suicide -- I had exaggerated the ethnic chip on my shoulder for effect. I've learned since that tragedy is not to be hoarded. Only the untouched, the well-fed and contented, could possibly covet suffering like a designer jacket. I'd readily donate my story to the Salvation Army so that some other frump in need of color could wear it away.

In fact, because the unself-aware—which includes basically everybody—are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into people and what makes them tick are surprisingly useless.

Should what you get up to fail to comport with who you think you are, something is surely inaccurate (and likely optimistic) about who you think you are.

Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy.... I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself, but maybe what disturbed me was that I was capable of it. I feared this was a knack one could get the hang of rather readily, and it was therefore now lurking in my house waiting for me to pick it up like a winter flu.

And one of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story. I should know; I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray. Accordingly, the one respect in which I depart from my younger self is that I now regard those people who have little or no story to tell themselves as terribly fortunate.

I've found that people's generalizations are largely illuminating about themselves.

This sounds idiotic, but every time I encounter a picture of myself I am shocked to have been seen. I do not, under ordinary circumstances, feel seen. When I walk down the street, my experience is of looking. Manifest to myself in the ethereal privacy of my head, I grow alarmed when presented with evidence of my public body.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.

Courage' isn't the kinds of word you use to describe yourself, Nick, even if we both know it's true. That only works if other people are saying it.

Courage' isn't the kind of word you use to describe yourself, Nick, even if we both know it's true. That only works if other people are saying it.

Outward pressure is always an opportunity to be inwardly transformed.

I'd like to say I'm not dressed up for anyone in particular, but that would be a lie.

Few moments in life spark more maturation than when a young person recognizes that her parents have strengths and limitations that were in place long before she came along and that will be there long after she moves out. In letting go of the dream of turning you into the perfect parent, your daughter recovers a lot of energy that has been devoted to being angry with you, feeling hurt by you, or trying to change you.

In good marriages, partners can help their children appreciate what they should and shouldn't take personally in the other parent's behavior. My husband has told our daughters that I've been clean crazy for as long as he's known me and that he stopped taking it personally years ago.

Well, I don't think just because people are in a relationship that they're happy. I don't think relationships necessarily make people happy. You just are happy or you're not happy.

For me, just being how old I am, I know I don't want to be a single mom. I really would rather make it a two-person job. But I've also come to terms with not being a mother at all. I'm actually really good with either direction that my life can take as being a valid experience.

People must come to the understanding that they do not have a fixed identity. They have the power to identify and alter features of their personalities that they find negative or unpleasant.

To the extent that we retain the critical attitudes and destructive elements we have incorporated into our own personalities, we remain undifferentiated from our parents throughout our lifetime.

Look," I say at last. 'You know me. You know my life. I always thought-or hoped-" "You thought what?" "I just want to be happy," I finally say. She stares at me hard. "You have been," she says.

And is there a difference, I wonder, watching the ease with which T.J. settles back into her reading, between the happiness of being happy and the happiness of being happy because you think someone might be less happy than you?

Every day we have a choice about whether we react or respond to life. The first step in that direction is becoming self-aware and aligning our conscious and subconscious minds, where our Imposters live. In short, it's about becoming aware of our Imposters (negative thoughts in our heads).