Quotes About Self-awareness

Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don't make us feel worse.

To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

One of my Secrets of Adulthood is that we're more like other people than we suppose and less like other people than we suppose.

I used to think I was pretty typical, but now I see that I'm extreme. I can't judge people according to what works for me.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don't make us feel worse.

I had everything I could possibly want—yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.

Feeling right" is about living the life that's right for you—in occupation, location, marital status, and so on. It's also about virtue: doing your duty

Upholder, I see its dark side, too

They always said that you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.

I remind myself: Just because something is fun for other people doesn't mean it's fun for me—and it's a lot easier to stick to a habit that I honestly enjoy.

else. Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.

Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.

The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic—perhaps even fatalistic—look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks.

I should tailor my habits to the fundamental aspects of my nature that aren't going to change. It was no use saying "I'll write more every day if I team up with another writer, and we race to see who can finish writing a book faster," because I don't like competition.

do once in a while.

and our own values." Is it

People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think.

Most Upholders are good at taking care of themselves and enjoying themselves.

We should make sure the things we do to feel better don't make us feel worse.

Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence. For

In particular, I'd realized that although I possessed all the elements of a happy life, too often I took my circumstances for granted and allowed myself to become overly vexed by petty annoyances or fleeting worries. I'd wanted to appreciate my life more, and to live up to it better.

Fake Self-Actualization Loophole: Often, a loophole is disguised as an embrace of life or an acceptance of self, so that the failure to pursue a habit seems life-affirming—almost spiritual.

By catching ourselves in the act of invoking a loophole, we give ourselves an opportunity to reject it, and stick to the habits that we want to foster.

Clarity of values also makes it possible to identify red-herring habits. A red-herring habit is a habit that we loudly claim to want to adopt, when we don't actually intend to do so.