Quotes About Self-awareness

Only this reality is real now, only this place is real, sitting in the lonely cell of your will...

Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.

You're all murdering life...You're all trying to change yourselves, all trying to change what is, and thus you're never actually living what is. You're killing who you are every day of your lives by not being who you are...where you are.

I am fat, lazy and kind.

Abuse counselors say of the abusive client: "When he looks at himself in the morning and sees his dirty face, he sets about washing the mirror.

Your problem is not that you lose control of yourself, it's that you take control of your partner. In order to change, you don't need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of control of her.

When you are left feeling hurt or confused after a confrontation with your controlling partner, ask yourself: What was he trying to get out of what he just did? What is the ultimate benefit to him? Thinking through these questions can help you clear your head and identify his tactics.

One exercise that can help you address this trap involves making a list of all the ways, including emotional ones, in which you feel dependent on your partner, then making another list of big or small steps you might take to begin to become more independent. These lists can guide you in focusing your energy in the directions you need to go.

Pointing fingers at other countries can be a way to ignore the serious problems in our own.

Make a decision inside of yourself—a deep decision—that you are 100 percent responsible for your actions, and he is 100 percent responsible for his actions. You have zero responsibility for what he does, and he has zero responsibility for what you do.

To lay the blame of one's own inadequacy of responsibility on someone else and expect them to comply is to deny both you and them the right to a mind, a spirit, and the pleasure of living.

Os meus olhos deviam ter a mesma expressão nos últimos anos, mas nunca notei. Bem que me olhava no espelho para ver que cara a pessoa tem quando sofre muito, mas era sempre o meu rosto. Cada vez mais achava que devia ter mudado muito, não se podia ser a mesma depois de tanta coisa, de tanta dor. Contudo, era eu.

Muito do que nos legaram pode ser re-programado: somos fruto mas não escravos, o olhar primordial que nos saudou não é necessariamente uma sentença de morte.

What we focus on defines us, so if our focus is inward, on ourselves, we wind up defining for ourselves whether we are righteous or guilty. When we begin and end with us—with our self— we miss the heart of the gospel and never truly find the freedom for which we ache.

he descubierto que mis obsesiones al servicio de mis pasiones advierten a la que seré el resto de mi vida.

Novels hadn't interested her for a long time now: not for a moment could she tear her mind away from her own life and concentrate on somebody else.

People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?

How strange it is to realize now that although I was frightened of the emptiness between us, that emptiness was not his fault but mine: I was waiting to see what he would give me, how he would entertain me. And yet I was incapable of being profoundly interested in him or, maybe, in anyone. Just the reverse of what I thought at the time, when it seemed so simple: he was too callow, or too cautious, or just too young, not complex enough yet, and so he did not entertain me, and it was his fault.

But no matter how clearly I saw what I was doing, I would go on doing it, as though I simply allowed my shame to sit there alongside my need to do it, one separate from the other. I often chose to do the wrong thing and feel bad about it rather than to do the right thing, if the wrong thing was what I wanted.

because she couldn't write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn

I think I know what sort of person I am. But then I think, But this stranger will imagine me quite otherwise when he or she hears this or that to my credit, for instance that I have a position at the university: the fact that I have a position at the university will appear to mean that I must be the sort of person who has a position at the university.

I was tired of so much thinking, which was what I did most in those days. I did other things, but I went on thinking while I did them. I might feel something, but I would think about what I was feeling at the same time. I even had to think about what I was thinking and wonder why I was thinking it.

We know we are very special. Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?

I should check now and then to make sure I am not alone too much, or unhappy with other people too often.