Quotes About Reflection

I need to talk to you about something. I was so busy feeling upset with you and then acting impatient and irritated that I stepped on your toes instead of walking in your shoes. When I stopped to do that, I thought if I were you, I'd feel frustrated (scared, angry, etc.). Is that true?

If someone can't or won't listen to you, get him to listen to himself.

While the simple act of naming the emotions you feel at each stage in a crisis is part of the solution, it's just the first step.

6. Help guide the person to a saner way of thinking when he is calm.

Next time you have a quiet moment, ask yourself this question: "What's holding you back from accomplishing your goals, and how frustrating is that for you?

Years ago, for instance, I realized that most of the CEOs and managers I meet are not just smart but also wise—but they don't often get a chance to share their wisdom. They're focused so intently on the mundane day-to-day problems of running a business that they rarely have the opportunity to think deeply and creatively and use their highest and usually considerable intellectual abilities.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it." —CONFUCIUS

The next time you catch yourself running on that transactional hamster wheel, try something different. Stop what you're doing, and sit down. Take a breath. And say to yourself: "What would I like to be doing with my life this time next year?" or "What do I need more or less of in my life right now?" or "If my kids looked at me 20 years from now, what would make them proud of me?

In the end we regret not what we have done but what we have not done.

Then, when you find yourself starting down the rocky road to self-defeat, pause, reflect, and

But the goal is not to replace what cannot be replaced, or duplicate what cannot be duplicated, but simply to create opportunities for new memories. One

You can't be curious and on the attack at the same moment.

Self-defeating behavior occurs when we fail to learn the lessons that life tries to teach us. It represents the victory of impulse over awareness, immediate gratification over lasting satisfaction, relief over resolution. Self-defeating behavior invariably begins as an attempt to make ourselves feel better. It is a coping mechanism.

The trick to this approach is to ask the question ("Do you really believe that?") not in a hostile or degrading manner, but very calmly and in a straightforward way. Your intent is not to antagonize the other person, but rather to make the person stop and realize, "I really am making a mountain out of a molehill. I must sound like a jackass.

If you have a setback, instead of beating yourself to death for making a mistake, convert your self-contempt into self-determination. Ask yourself what you would do if you could do it over again. Develop a plan of action for the next time the situation arises.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. —BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CHAIRMAN

Realizing that it isn't personal doesn't mean you shouldn't take it personally. If you don't, in fact, it may mean that you haven't put enough of yourself into the effort.

Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

What's true about you is what God says about you. Not what your mirror says. Not what your past says.

The sky was just beginning to light up a little, the quiet time when all the air is clean and you can hear birds, even in the middle of New York City, the time of day you never see except by accident, and you always tell yourself, "I must get up and appreciate this time of day once in awhile," and then you never do. Don't ask me why.

Do you think you are going to live forever? Is life so long you rather rag somebody than be nice to them?

Make it a point, several times a day, to stop what you are doing and "find" God around you. Pick a moment, such as when you look at your watch, and make that a "God moment." Notice his presence in the obvious things like family pictures on your desk, or the not-so-obvious things like the mess of dishes in the sink - yet another day that he provided your family with food to eat.

Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land.