“I like making friends, I thought. I began trying to listen to and observe what was going on in my head, and a painful realization washed across me: I wasn’t enjoying being with myself. In fact, I wanted to get away from myself as fast as I could. And it dawned on me, If I don’t want to be with me, why the fuck would anybody else wanna be with me?”
Will Smith, Will (Page 375)
Inner Work Quotes
“We had concluded that no one can make a person happy. You can make a person smile; you can compose a moment that helps a person to feel good; you can deliver a joke that makes a person laugh; you can create an environment where a person feels safe. We can and must be helpful and kind and loving, but whether a person is happy or not is utterly out of your control. Every person must wage a solitary internal war for their own contentment.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 357)
“‘If I am more successful, I’ll be happier, and people will love me more.’ I was trying to fill an internal emotional hole with external, material achievements. Ultimately, this kind of obsession is insatiable. The more you get, the more you want, all the time never quite scratching the itch. You end up with a mind consumed by what it doesn’t have and what it didn’t get, and in a spiraling inability to enjoy what it has.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 333)
“Let’s stop lying to ourselves, saying ‘it will all be better in the future,’ because the present isn’t the problem. None of the external things are. It’s our emotions at the root of discomfort. They are within us. They are our responsibility to work on.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“Things of themselves cannot touch the soul at all. They have no entry to the soul, and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, making all externals presented to it cohere with the judgements it thinks worthy of itself.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 41)
“The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the less you need to manufacture the world around you for comfort.”
Cory Muscara, Twitter
“Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 12)
“We think that perfecting the outward version of ourselves that the world sees will bring us the inner peace we want. But Socrates and the Stoics knew it was the other way around. It’s the inner work that is more likely to bring us the outward success. And more importantly, that the inner work was an end unto itself.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
Meditations [Book]
![Meditations by Marcus Aurelius [Book]](https://movemequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Meditations.jpeg)
By: Marcus Aurelius
Book Overview: Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and the values of leadership. But while the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation, in developing his beliefs Marcus also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a series of wise and practical aphorisms that have been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and ordinary readers for almost two thousand years.
48 Brianna Wiest Quotes from The Mountain Is You on Self-Sabotage and Healing
Excerpt: Why do we self-sabotage? How can we heal? Where do we start? These Brianna Wiest quotes from The Mountain Is You will help (tremendously).
Read More »48 Brianna Wiest Quotes from The Mountain Is You on Self-Sabotage and Healing
“Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs. People will choose careers, families and opportunities simply to avoid confronting the little tiny voice that is hiding inside. And marketers with low standards will brazenly manipulate us to extract money spent to protect the sore spot. It’s almost impossible to make it go away. But if we’re brave enough to acknowledge it exists, it’s possible to help it take up far less room.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“Part X is the judgmental part of you, the antisocial part of you. It’s an invisible… force that wants to keep you from changing or growing. It wants to block your evolution. It wants to block your potential. Part X is the voice of impossibility. Whatever it is you think you need to do, it’s gonna tell you that’s impossible.”
Phil Stutz, Stutz
“I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing — their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights — then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought.”
Jeanette Winterson, The Guardian
