Quotes About Self

If we want to cultivate hopefulness, we have to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Not every goal will look and feel the same. Tolerance for disappointment, determination, and a belief in self are the heart of hope.

Choosing authenticity is not an easy choice. E. E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting." "Staying real" is one of the most courageous battles that we'll ever fight.

1. What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? 2. What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? 3. What more do I need to learn and understand about myself?

Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.

We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others. Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging.

Shame forces us to put so much value on what other people think that we lose ourselves in the process of trying to meet everyone else's expectations. Shame:

In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, "What do you do?" I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now

them—we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame,

Researchers Tamara Ferguson, Heidi Eyre, and Michael Ashbaker have found that "unwanted identity" is one of the primary elicitors of shame. They explain that unwanted identities are characteristics that undermine our vision of our ideal selves. Sick, unreliable, and undependable are huge unwanted identities for me.

As Carl Jung said, "I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become." Even

So often, when we feel lost, adrift in our lives, our first instinct is to look out into the distance to find the nearest shore. But that shore, that solid ground, is within us. The anchor we are searching for is connection, and it is internal. To form meaningful connections with others, we must first connect with ourselves,

Trusting myself or other people is a vulnerable and courageous process.

spirituality—the belief in connection, a power greater than self, and interconnections grounded in love and compassion

I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become.

I had to dig very deep and make the conscious choice to believe… to believe in myself and the possibility of living a different life.

This just reinforces our power and resentment loop: I knew I should have done it myself. I'll be responsible for this, you just do these small tasks that you can handle versus Let's dig into how we could have set you up for success. I know I have a part.

To brave the wilderness and become the wilderness we must learn how to trust ourselves and trust others.

If you own this story you get to write the ending. If you own this story you get to write the ending.

But I have plenty of experience with trying to meet everyone's expectations so they won't reject me. It's easy to become a slave to that - to lose yourself in it.

How anyone becomes herself/is a mystery.

be strange to yourself in your love, your grief

The true self is always in motion - like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining.

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.

we can only love others as much as we love ourselves