Quotes About Introspection

To feel successful, you must be able to be honest about the things that are really important to you.

To be anxious wasn't shameful, it was a high calling. It was to be alive to life's contradictions, more receptive to the true nature of things than everyone else. It was to be a person who saw with sharper eyes with more a active skin.

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril" We failed on both counts. I know I sure did. As generals, we did not know our enemy—never pinned him down, never focused our efforts, and got all too good at making new opponents before we'd handled the old ones.

He always asks questions, and those questions are always the same: personal, direct, focused on the big picture. What did you think of it? What would you have done in that situation?

Cooper uses the phrase "backbone of humility" to describe the tone of a good AAR. It's a useful phrase because it captures the paradoxical nature of the task: a relentless willingness to see the truth and take ownership.

The genuine truth, and I do think about this a lot, is that I'm one of the least competitive people you'll ever meet. Except with myself.

18–40–60 rule. It says that when you are eighteen, you worry about what everyone thinks of you; when you are forty, you don't give a damn what anyone thinks about you; and when you're sixty, you realize no one has been thinking about you at all.

Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.

Like Pi, we all have tigers within us. Lil demons which are a part of us. If you can't run away from them, welcome them, feed them and listen to what they will have to say. There is really not a whole lot to be afraid of.

The third method of self-distancing, as Julius Caesar and Elmo teach us, is through language. Kross, Ayduk, and others have carried out some fascinating research concluding that "subtle shifts in the language people use to refer to themselves during introspection can influence their capacity to regulate how they think, feel, and behave under stress.

If you have a broken heart, it means you have done something big enough and important enough and valuable enough to have broken your heart.

personal narrative has become more prevalent, and perhaps more urgent, in a time of abundance, when many of us are freer to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and our purpose.

framing regret as a judgment of our underlying character—who we are—can be destructive.

Pair New Year's resolutions with Old Year's regrets.

We are all expressions of our own minds, projected onto the world.

How wrong to think I was anyone else, like thinking grass stains make you a beautiful view, like getting kissed makes you kissable, like feeling warm makes you coffee, like liking movies makes you a director. How utterly incorrect to think it any other way, a box of crap is treasures, a boy smiling means it, a gentle moment is a life improved.

Taking time to reflect opens the door to conscious awareness, which brings with it the possibility of change.

Headphones also made the music more personal for me; it was suddenly coming from inside my head, not out there in the world. This

Each of us needs periods in which our minds can focus inwardly. Solitude is an essential experience for the mind to organize its own processes and create an internal state of resonance. In such a state, the self is able to alter its constraints by directly reducing the input from interactions with others. (p. 235)

If you have a fight with yourself, who can win?

What this means is reflecting on your relationships in the past in your own family life and asking yourself how those experiences influenced your development.

Asking why, what, and how can help create an internal sense of clarity even in the face of external chaos.

the ability to look within and understand ourselves, then use what we learn to be more in control of our emotions and circumstances.