Quotes About Self-observation

You cannot see me from where I look at myself.

Looking on oneself as something alien, forgetting the sight, remembering the gaze.

When you seek out - or seek to avoid - your own reflection, the modern city becomes a hall of mirrors: car windows, reflective walls, and plate glass are everywhere, transmitting a cacophony of different versions of you - this one too short, that one too wide, another one with a sickly color you've never seen before.

Look yourself in the eyes in a mirror each day. You can ignore the small voice still inside you, but your reflection will always have something to say.

Inaccurate self-observation. People with ADD are poor self-observers. They do not accurately gauge the impact they have on other people. They usually see themselves as less effective or powerful than other people do.

Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves; indeed, we ourselves are nothing but that which at every moment we experience of this continual flowing.

I really work on paying attention to the clues my self is giving myself. For instance, I think of myself in the third person. That allows me to manage myself better.

I'm gonna film my entire life and watch it later!

I have a hard time watching myself.

Many others do not make this transition so seamlessly: they become enamored of the observing self that beginning meditation empowers and use that capacity for self-observation as a way to avoid personal responsibility. They observe their own pain, but not their contribution to its making.

Everywhere I go, it's me and me. Half of me living my life, the other half watching me live it.

The entire time I was in the camp it was as if I had a double personality. My real self seemed to be observing what was happening to my physical self.

Observe all men, thyself most.

The only reason I don't like playing in the World Series is I can't watch myself play.

I'm my worst critic, and I like the fact that I can listen to myself now and make fun of myself, listen, make changes - 'Oh, man, that's messed up. Okay, I need to work on that; I need to work on this.'

Sabes lo que es quedarse a la orilla de uno mismo, contemplándose?

This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286)

Being self-conscious. Treating one's self as an other. Supervising oneself.

How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?

I hover over myself Watching. Mind and body separated, Each in control As though there are two puppeteers Working the strings of my marionette self.

In order to grow stronger, we need a container for our energies. That container is best built by ongoing practice, self-observation, and learning how to connect outward from our center.

When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity - being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday - there's a part of me that really doesn't grasp that it's me.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell:

Experience…shows beyond any doubt that patients can develop an amazing faculty of keen self-observation if they are bent on understanding their own problems.