Quotes About Self-awareness

Today I see myself as a spiritual being with three distinct human facets: I am what I think; I am what I do; I am what I feel. And, to the degree that I control my thinking, I control my actions. To the degree that I control both my thinking and my actions, I control my feelings. Then, the circle is completed when my feelings affect my thinking which again affects my actions.

With increasing awareness of both how we feel at any particular moment, and why we have chosen to feel that way, we develop the ability to change our emotional state if we wish to do so. We generate an awareness of whether we have chosen our current feelings or have allowed them to be implanted by an outside person or circumstance.

For many of us, emotional sobriety fluctuates wildly in personal value.

Every time we are upset, we must admit to ourselves that we have chosen to be upset, no one has made us upset.

He says there are a total of 54 negative emotions such as fear, anger, depression, resentment, loneliness, etc., and he claims that every one of them is based on blame. Furthermore, he insists that anyone can eliminate all 54 negative emotions from their lives by accepting full responsibility for their feelings and thereby no longer blaming any other person or situation for how they feel.

Only we can decide how important emotional independence and emotional sobriety are, and what we are willing to do to obtain and maintain them.

No matter what label we give the feeling, we have willingly put ourselves in the victim role, and have given the person or situation that wronged us control over our feelings, our serenity, our emotional sobriety, and, if we are alcoholic, possibly even our physical sobriety. The seeming pleasure of holding a resentment isn't worth all that.

Add the fact that we so-called normal people frequently allow other people and situations to control our emotions (and thereby our thinking and behavior), and the difference between us and them begins to blur.

In my mind, people and situations "drove me to drink." Once I became sober, I had to learn to handle my emotions so these same people and situations could no longer do this to me.

Regardless of the cause of our emotional disturbances, there is always something we can do about our feelings. In fact, we are the only one who can do something about them.

I blame my emotional state on what is happening outside me rather than admitting that at every moment of every day, consciously or unconsciously, I exercise a choice as to my mood and how I am going to feel.

I had given Max a written declaration of emotional independence stating that she was no longer responsible for my feelings. Thereafter, I could no longer tell her, "You made me angry," or "I feel bad and it's your fault because of what you did (or said)." I also explained how, as a corollary, I was no longer responsible for her feelings. We both agreed that from now on we are each responsible for our own feelings.

When an alcoholic eliminates the allergy problem by removing the alcohol, he or she then faces the same problem as the Al-Anon member, that of not allowing others to determine how they feel.

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us." I take this to mean that we need to take our eyes off what the other person has done to us and look at what we have done to ourselves.

I find myself writing this manuscript and talking to others about controlling feelings when I'm not always able to control my own. At times, not only can I not control my feelings, I can't control my thinking or my actions.

Since I have, by my behavior, taught them to treat me the way they are treating me, I can often, by changing my behavior, teach them to treat me differently.

Whenever I become too busy, too impatient, and too cynical in my daily living, I stop and remember to listen and feel for my heart. I attend to it before it has to demand my attention by gripping me by my chest. During business meetings, on airplanes, or standing in a long, slow line, I place my index finger and thumb together on my left hand and feel the energetic thumping of my heart's code that reminds me to lead life and not be led by it.

Motto: true to myself, false to others (excepting one person).

as the intentional, learned skill of optimizing self-awareness and self-regulation of both the body and mind. In this way, meditation can facilitate better balance, self-restoration and preparedness for present and future flourishing. Meditation is the intentional practice of healthy rest, healthy preparedness, self-aware "eudaemonia," welfare or prosperity.

Enjoy when the judgments are in your favor, I suggested, and accept when they are not, but never put your faith in them entirely, because they are subjective, mysterious, and often meaningless things. No judgment can tell you who you are or what you can be, and no judgment is final as long as we are alive and able to put ourselves out there again and again.

Self-pity is an indulgence for artists and noblemen. Don't spend any more time with it than you must. Hear what it says, learn from it if you can, then move on.

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here.

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.

When you spoke to her there wasn't any mystery. In herself she was all the explanation I felt she needed. And that is rare, isn't it? To be explained by yourself, by what you are and what you do, and not by what you've done, or were, or by what people think you might be or might become.