Quotes About Self-awareness

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us.

Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It's not what they're not doing or should be doing that's the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is "out there," stop yourself. That thought is the problem.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.

I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday

Ironically, you'll find that as you care less about what others think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves and their worlds, including their relationship with you. You'll no longer build your emotional life on other people's weaknesses. In addition, you'll find it easier and more desirable to change because there is something—some core deep within—that is essentially changeless.

as Marilyn Ferguson observed, "No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

humans have between what happens to us and our response to it.

if you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself

If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same?

These four gifts—self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, and independent will—reside in the space we

We hear a lot today about identity theft. The greatest identity theft is not when someone takes your wallet or steals your credit card. The greater theft happens when we forget who we really are, when we begin to believe that our worth and identity come from how well we stack up compared to others, instead of recognizing that each of us has immeasurable worth and potential, independent of any comparison.

If you don't let a teacher know at what level you are—by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance—you will not learn or grow. You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out. Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. Thoreau taught, "How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger. (p. 62)

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

Be Proactive. People are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than

The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self-knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or willpower. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don't possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels.

Sadat was able to use his self-awareness, his imagination and his conscience to exercise personal leadership, to change an essential paradigm, to change the way he saw the situation. He worked in the center of his Circle of Influence. And from that rescripting, that change in paradigm, flowed changes in behavior and attitude that affected millions of lives in the wider Circle of Concern.

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is "outside-in"—what's out there has to change before we can change. The