Quotes About Growth

think of something else Wendell once said: "The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change." It was a paraphrase of something he'd read that had resonated with him both personally and as a therapist, he told me, because it was a theme that informed nearly every person's struggles

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It's one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It's another to stop being so restrictive.

As the late psychotherapist Kohn Weakland famously said, "Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it's one dame thing after another.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me.

The more you welcome your vulnerability," Wendell had said, "the less afraid you'll feel." This isn't how we tend to view life when we're younger. Our younger selves think in terms of a beginning, middle, and some kind of resolution. But somewhere along the way—perhaps in that middle—we realize that everyone lives with things that may not get worked out. That the middle has to be the resolution, and how we make meaning of it becomes our task.

There is a continuing decision to be made as to whether to evade pain, or to tolerate it and therefore modify it.

The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.

I think of something else Wendell once said: "The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don't know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing.

but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

The more you welcome your vulnerability, the less afraid you'll feel.

Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate

In reality, there are many people we could be happy with. It's just that your soul develops in different ways with different people.

We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the

particularly liked this line from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over.

Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

FAILURE IS PART OF BEING HUMAN.

Stage 1: Pre-contemplation Stage 2: Contemplation Stage 3: Preparation Stage 4: Action Stage 5: Maintenance

procrastinate or self-sabotage as a way to stave off change — even positive change — because they're reluctant to give something up without knowing what they'll get in its place.

Insight is the booby prize of therapy" is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't change when you're out in the world, the insight—and the therapy—is worthless. Insight allows you to ask yourself, Is this something that's being done to me or am I doing it to myself? The answer gives you choices, but it's up to you to make them.

As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same. To help John, I'm going to have to figure out what his loss would be,