Quotes About Self-awareness

Wendell once pointed out that we talk to ourselves more than we'll talk to any other person over the course of our lives but that our words aren't always kind or true or helpful

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping other people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they're free to generate change.

The people who are watching us--the people who really see us--don't care about the false self, about the show we're putting on.

In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgment: Am I good or bad?).

identifying his in-the-moment feelings, because feelings lead to behaviors. Once we know what we're feeling, we can make choices about where we want to go with them.

If we don't accept the notion that there's no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck.

What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in ways they normally choose not to. A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it's up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda—even if he tells you they are.

A therapist will hold up a mirror to patients, but patients will also hold up a mirror to their therapists.

You are not the best person to talk to you about you right now. There is a difference, I point out to them, between self- blame and self-responsibility, which is a corollary to something Jack Kornfield said: 'A second quality of mature spirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance.

I wonder why I seem to be more curious about you than you are about yourself?

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don't know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle.

Certainly we all have our deal-breakers. But when patients repeatedly engage in this kind of analysis, sometimes I'll say, "If the queen had balls, she'd be the king." If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don't recognize that "the perfect is the enemy of the good," you may deprive yourself of joy. At first patients are taken aback by my bluntness, but ultimately it saves them months of treatment.

Your feelings don't have to mesh with what you think they should be," he explained. "They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them

Foarte multe dintre comportamentele noastre distructive prind r?d?cini într-un vid emo?ional, un gol care cauta sa fie umplut.

by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down on the hierarchy of pain. You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking—people imagine that if they say no, they won't be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn't it safer to stay where I am?

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're okay with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.

If something upset her, she usually talked about it or cried and then got on the road to getting over it or changing it. … Kate had a tendency to bury her hurts deep inside and when they tried to rear their ugly heads, she effectively pushed them right back down. Kate gave the appearance of handling upsets well, when in actuality she did not handle them at all.

a person could walk around in a prison of his or her own making and never be behind bars.

biggest troublemaker you'll ever meet stares you in the face when you brush your teeth. —Dutch Callahan

If there's anything worse than knowing too little, it's knowing too much. Education will broaden a narrow mind, but there's no known cure for a big head. The best you can hope is that it will swell up and bust.

Say less than the other fellow and listen more than you talk; for when a man's listening he isn't telling on himself and he's flattering the fellow who is.