Quotes About Self-awareness

It isn't only that we know less than we pretend about the outside world; we don't even know ourselves all that well.

What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others. —Confucius

He who angers you conquers you. —Elizabeth Kenny

Mr. Rogers might have liked me just the way I am, but I certainly don't.

Psychologist Robert Kegan,8 chair of adult development at Harvard, has a term for unzipping those costumes. He calls it "the subject-object shift" and argues that it's the single most important move we can make to accelerate personal growth.

But you also want to be honest about your weaknesses. People are much less harsh on weaknesses that are clear than weaknesses that are hidden -- as they should be.

was] a stranger to himself.

As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully.

O auto-engano é talvez o mais cruel de todos os motivos, pois faz com que nos julguemos corretos quando estamos errados e nos encoraja a lutar quando deveríamos nos render. Nos desenhos animados e filmes, os vilões são degenerados que enrolam os bigodes e dão gargalhadas de júbilo pela própria maldade. Na vida real, os vilões estão convencidos de sua integridade.

Much of what we call wisdom consists in balancing the conflicting desires within ourselves, and much of what we call morality and politics consists in balancing the conflicting desires among people.

The experience of choosing is not a fiction, regardless of how the brain works. It is a real neural process, with the obvious function of selecting behavior according to its foreseeable consequences. It responds to information from the senses, including the exhortations of other people. You cannot step outside it or let it go on without you because it is you.

A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on "Not everyone, just me!" falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that "here," the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe.

This one broaches the topic in still another way: what we can learn about our makeup from the way people put their thoughts and feelings in words.

The Devil's Dictionary, the mind has nothing but itself to know itself with, and it may never feel satisfied that it understands the deepest aspect of its own existence, its intrinsic subjectivity.

Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?

If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.

To practice Extreme Self-Care, you must learn to love yourself unconditionally, accept your imperfections, and embrace your vulnerabilities.

Until you are somewhat comfortable and confident and embrace who you are, as a person, you can't possibly love somebody else because you don't like yourself that much.

I'm good, but I'm not an angel.

Love your enemies, for they determine who you are.

Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others we are withholding from ourselves.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.

Being attached to someone is not about the other person. It is about your own sense of inadequacy.

There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love.