Quotes About Awareness

He was cognizant that perception would be as important as experience.

Those who suffer terrible wars have a finer sense of when they begin and when they end.

the speed with which we're inventing our world is outpacing our avility to understand the impact of our inventions.

Our conscious memory is full of gaps, of course, which is actually a good thing. Our brains filter out the ordinary and expected, which is utterly necessary to allow us to function. When you drive, for example, you rely automatically on your previous experiences with cars and roads; if you had to focus on every aspect of what your senses are taking in, you'd be overwhelmed and would probably crash.

there is nothing I do that doesn't start with my asking myself, What is my intention in doing this?

We ignore familiar patterns in ordinary contexts, so much so that we forget large portions of our days, which are spent doing routine things like brushing our teeth or getting dressed.

an intention precedes every thought and every action, and that the outcome of your experiences is determined by your intention going in. It sounds complicated, but really there is nothing I do that doesn't start with my asking myself, what is my intention in doing this?

Implicit bias is much more difficult. You may truly believe that racism is bad, that all people are equal. But those beliefs are in the intellectual part of your brain, and your implicit biases, which are in the lower part of your brain, will still play out every day—in the way you interact with others, the jokes you laugh at, the things you say.

The struggles I endured as a child are what allowed me to recognize and care about pain in others. The validation I longed for as a child is what I see other people longing for just as intensely.

And this is why you can't be in a corporation and address these issues by simply having everyone go to an anti-racism course or cultural-sensitivity training. You don't get trained in cultural sensitivity—you go spend time immersed in the culture, spend time with other people.

We have to think about ways to raise our children with more opportunities to be exposed to the magnificence of human diversity earlier in their lives. And we have to change the inherently biased elements of so many of our systems.

Gary taught me that an intention precedes every thought and every action, and that the outcome of your experiences is determined by your intention going in. It sounds complicated, but really there is nothing I do that doesn't start with my asking myself, What is my intention in doing this?

you're a white child who spends no time with children of color, you don't have any personal experiences to help build those important relational associations.

Para poder desenvolverse socialmente, la gente necesita desarrollar lo que se conoce como "teoría de la mente". Dicho de otro modo, necesitan saber que las demás personas son distintas a ellos, que tienen un conocimiento distinto del mundo, así como deseos e intereses diferentes a los suyos.

Just focusing on my breath, my steady heartbeat, the stillness of a tree, or the intricacy of a leaf can center me in the wholeness of all things.

Dr. Perry: It's like when you weren't aware of why you were afraid to be alone at night. You weren't aware of the associations you'd made earlier in your life. Our behaviors begin to shape themselves around the emotional landmines left by previous trauma.

Yes. Unfortunately, our schools are typically not trauma-aware and tend to prohibit many of the regulatory activities we've mentioned: walking, rocking, fiddling with things while listening to a lesson, listening to music with your earbuds while doing homework. "Somatosensory regulation," such as the rhythmic activities we have discussed, actually opens up the cortex and makes the reasoning parts of the brain more accessible for learning.

Oprah: You have said that our world is relationally impoverished. We live in environments where we see fewer people, and even when we do see people and engage in conversation, we're not really listening to each other or being fully present. And this disconnection is making us more vulnerable.

You could say that racism is embedded in the top, "rational" part of your brain, whereas implicit bias involves the distorting "filters" created in lower parts of the brain.

We have to think about ways to raise our children with more opportunities to be exposed to the magnificence of human diversity earlier in their lives.

When children understand why someone behaves oddly, they give him or her more slack, generally.

Your own experiences and the echoes of your ancestors' experiences influence the way you think, feel, and behave. They are major determinants of your health. And being aware of this can help us remember that everything we do right now is going to echo into the future. Our actions matter; we are impacting the next generations. So are we being as mindful as we could?

Emotional memory converts the past into an expectation of the future, without our awareness, and that is both a blessing and a curse.

You cannot be "guilty" of bad parental behavior if you had no awareness or understanding of the implications of that behavior on your child's development.