Self Quotes - Page 304

Our stories arise from our hearts and our souls. In this sense, telling our stories becomes a sacred gesture, opening a clear way to that deep, ecstatic center where we are most uniquely our selves, individual and unique, and yet are ourselves, joined together at the heart.

Absolute faith is not the place of self-affirmation, but the place of self-negation. Life of faith is not limited to our spiritual life. What is important is how our spiritual sensitivity is applied to our relative environment.

An extremely important part of our work toward emotional growth and change will come from examining our belief systems regarding all areas of life. To gain the courage to be yourself, you need to address the beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are. What beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes are you holding onto even though they no longer enhance your life? It is possible to free yourself from worn-out beliefs and acquire ones that bring happiness, strength, and self-esteem. What we believe we may become.

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.

Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned.

With our sense of self out of the the way we are liberated from doubt and insecurity.

The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?

By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy; make happy. No happiness is greater.

Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.

Only one human being recognized as one's neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love

Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.

To divest one's self of some prejudices would be like taking off the skin to feel the better.

One of our problems is our sense of discipline - dancers have an extraordinary sense of self-discipline.

It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.

The true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

There's no journey worth taking except the journey through one's self. That's the most important journey you take. I found that out as I went around the world many times: I was learning about me.

All of the things that have happened in my life have been self-propelled. I can't blame anybody else or point a finger at anybody.

...as far as self-discipline goes, it's still ultimately up to me how well I can push myself. Only I can do that. I just have to keep on going, keep on working, keep on improving.