Quotes About Self-awareness

I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed.

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

We have to know ourselves to know where we end and another person begins, and we have to develop the skills to navigate the space between us. Or else we will seek wholeness through false means that honor neither us nor those we love.

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.

Until we begin to question our basic assumptions about ourselves and view them as fluid, not fixed, it's easy to repeat established patterns and, out of habit, reenact old stories that limit our ability to live and love ourselves with an open heart.

The notion of loving oneself has gotten an undeservedly bad rap, which goes something like this: self-love is narcissistic, selfish, self-indulgent, the supreme delusion of a runaway ego looking out for "number one." In fact, just the opposite is true.

Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.

Living in a story of a limited self—to any degree—is not love.

The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known—even by ourselves.

Concepts such as loving kindness should never be used as weapons against our real feelings.

Mindfulness may help you gain insight into your role in conflicts with others, it won't single-highhandedly help you resolve them.

Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.

The more we identify and acknowledge moments when we're unable to share in someone else's pleasure and ask ourselves whether another person's happiness truly jeopardizes our own, the more we pave the way for experiencing sympathetic joy

See, you smart, James. You sit and watch everyone, and you know stuff without having to run your mouth. I'm always running my mouth, which gets my release took away and a bunch of knows in my head.

He's just my brother now and not my hero. I will not try to be like him. So, then who am I supposed to be like?

What's real strength Samson? he says. It's when you're a balanced man. When you can think as well as use your body. And you have to know who you are and be okay with it. If that means that you're not ripped or tough or a badass, then so be it, says Samson.

It is much more difficult to deal with the truth about your life when you have no idea that you have feet of clay and it suddenly begins to rain.

You couldn't handle being me." She swirled her forefingers around her head and admitted, "All that goes on inside this head at any given time…would destroy you.

None of us come to this earth to gain our worth; we brought it with us.

Star calls to star: "Here I am, who is like me?" Tree calls to tree: "I am I, who knows me?

One should not want to be anything but what one is, because it creates unhappiness.

For the rest of our lives, all we can hear are our names chanted over and over, until we are deaf to everything else.

F]rank knew he was guilty of arrogance and misanthropy, but he compensated by being kind to strangers and tipping really well at restaurants.

The stuff that you hate in others is often the stuff you hate in yourself. But perhaps you can learn something about yourself when this happens. When you are angry at somebody, what does that say about who YOU are?