Identity Quotes
“We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency. This is so, I hasten to add, whether we are patients or psychoanalysts.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 123)
“Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this—stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us—we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 10)
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves [Book]
Book Overview: An extraordinary book for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives. In his work as a practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behavior. The Examined Life distills more than fifty thousand hours of conversation into pure psychological insight without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to the analyst as to the patient. These are stories about our everyday lives; they are about the people we love and the lies we tell, the changes we bear and the grief. Ultimately, they show us not only how we lose ourselves but also how we might find ourselves.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
Russell Brand Quote on Self-Image and How What We Justify Is What We Recommit To
“In justifying our misery we recommit to it.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 101)
Beyond the Quote (Day 407)
There’s an expression in the performance world that nobody can outperform his/her own self-image. Meaning, how a person thinks they’ll end up performing is how they’ll most likely end up performing. Self-image becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Read More »Russell Brand Quote on Self-Image and How What We Justify Is What We Recommit To“You build the pain into the story of who you are until it isn’t pain anymore, it’s just another piece of who you are.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 75)
“There is no objective history, this we know, only stories. Our character is the result of this story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the process of inventorying breaks down the hidden and destructive personal grammar that we have unwittingly allowed to govern our behaviour.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 69)
13 Poignant Tara Westover Quotes from Educated
Excerpt: From one of the most acclaimed books of our time, these 13 Tara Westover quotes from Educated are poignant, powerful, and well worth the read.
Read More »13 Poignant Tara Westover Quotes from Educated
Tara Westover Quote on How Education Is About More Than Making A Living
“An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.”
Tara Westover, Educated
Beyond the Quote (Day 394)
We don’t come into this world already made—we come into this world ready to be made. We are not finished when we are born, we are born so that we can start. We are not a masterpiece that is revealed once born—we are a pile of puzzle pieces which reveal a masterpiece once assembled. If we truly want to understand who we are, this is the reality of our situation. Our identity is not just given—it’s a reward that has to be earned. And the process of assembling this puzzle isn’t simple nor is it easy.
Read More »Tara Westover Quote on How Education Is About More Than Making A Living“When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into the likeness of a person. That person, or that likeness of one, had belonged. I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.”
Tara Westover, Educated
“This is a magical place,” I said. “Everything shines here.” “You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”
Tara Westover, Educated
“Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
Tara Westover, Educated
R. Buckminster Fuller Quote on Truth and How It’s Completely Spontaneous
“Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”
R. Buckminster Fuller, Sunbeams (Page 23)
Beyond the Quote (Day 387)
I suspect that most people overthink the act of being—and it’s easy to see why. Think about everything that we’re exposed to on a daily basis. All of the advertisements, the images, the messages, the conversations—and think about how each of them communicate a different way of being. You can be the person who does this; who buys that; who believes this; who supports that; who interacts here; who chooses to go there; who speaks up about this; who follows people like that; who dresses like this; who spends their time doing that… the possibilities for becoming are, quite literally, endless.
Read More »R. Buckminster Fuller Quote on Truth and How It’s Completely Spontaneous“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, day and night, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight… It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
E. E. Cummings, via More Myself (Page 251)
“I don’t have to fit in. None of us does. Our uniqueness isn’t a scar, but a beauty mark. What makes us different is also what makes us wildly, boldly, and marvelously who we were born to be.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 250)
“The path to self-discovery is not a straight line. It’s a zigzag. We move in and out of awareness: one step forward, three steps to the left, a baby step back, another leap forward. A lightbulb moment might shine brightly one day, but then flicker the next. It takes work to hold tightly to a certain consciousness, to live in its wisdom. Every day, I have to intentionally maintain an awareness of my value. I know I’m worthy. But you don’t cross over into the Land of Self-Worth and just become a permanent resident. You have to keep your passport current. You have to work to preserve your status.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 246)
“When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You’re broken open. You’re hyperaware of what you’re feeling.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 144)