Quotes about Understanding

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves [Book]

From this Book: 12 Quotes

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:

10 Stephen Grosz Quotes From The Examined Life on Pain, Change, and Loss

“I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found. I like riding, going to operas and concerts, travel in the west; but on the whole writing interests me more than anything else. If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die. I make it an adventure every day. I get more entertainment from it than any I could buy, except the privilege of hearing a few great musicians and singers. To listen to them interests me as much as a good morning’s work.”
Willa Cather, via Daily Rituals (Page 199) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜

“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet, Sunbeams (Page 32)

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.

“…You are no longer Buddhist or a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Moslem. You are love, you are truth. And love and truth have no form. They flow into forms. But the word is never the same as that which the word connotes. The word ‘God’ is not God, the word ‘Mother’ is not Mother, the word ‘Self’ is not Self, the word ‘moment’ is not the moment. All of these words are empty. We’re playing at the level of intellect, feeding that thing in us that keeps wanting to understand. And here we are, all the words we’ve said are gone. Where did they go? Do you remember them all? Empty, empty. If you heard them, you are at this moment empty. You’re ready for the next word. And the word will go through you. You don’t have to know anything: that’s what’s so funny about it. You get so simple. You’re empty. You know nothing. You simply are wisdom—not becoming anything, just being everything.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 25)

And none of us are standing in the exact same place.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunbeams (Page 19)

Alicia Keys Quote on Perfection and Being Okay With Our Imperfect Reality

“I tend to want every person to embody the best of humanity—for all of us to be givers and builders and dreamers. That’s not reality. At different seasons in life, we each fall into various categories. Even still, every one of us also has a strong behavioral tendency, and that is okay. I’m coming to terms with the fact that so-called perfection—this idea that everything should be beautiful and in order at all times—is just not going to happen.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 254)

Beyond the Quote (Day 386)

And as she says in her song, Authors of Forever, “Wherever you are, it’s alright / Whoever you are, it’s alright.” It’s okay to be who you are, where you are on your journey. None of us are perfect and we all lead imperfect lives. Expect perfection from someone—anyone—and you’ll always end up disappointed. Expect imperfection and you’ll at least be able to meet people where they are. Disappointment leads to emotional distancing and separation. Understanding leads to emotional advancing and connection.

“I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it… We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
C. Day Lewis, The Poetic Image, via Sunbeams (Page 15)

Beyond the Quote (385/365)

It starts out as a feeling. An inquisition. A hunch. A curiosity. A reoccurring thought. An observation. An idea. A single line of text.

It proceeds as an exploration into the unknown. A navigating of unclear roads. A charting of unexplored territory. An unraveling of knotted up mental yarn. A sorting through of an unorganized desk. As trains of thought.

Less right and wrong; more understanding.

An Insightful Short Story About Spilling Coffee — What’s In YOUR Cup?

Excerpt: This short story about spilling coffee shares a powerful analogy that can help you better understand your temperament (and reactions) in life.

30 Sadhguru Quotes from Inner Engineering on Spirituality, Love, and Understanding Life

Excerpt: Learn how to better engineer the inner workings of your life by reading this powerful collection of Sadhguru quotes from Inner Engineering…

“How can anyone feel complete when they only ever accept a fraction of themselves?”
Leslie Ralph, Tiny Buddha

Beyond the Quote (304/365)

Many people try and fill the “holes” in their lives with another person. The “holes” being fears, doubts, insecurities, and traumas that might have been a part of their past that leave them feeling un-whole. Like parts of them are missing. Like there are voids that they can’t quite figure out or understand. Like only “half” of a person who needs another “half” to feel completed. But, there are two problems with this way of thinking.

“Who you are is always a more vital teaching and a more powerful transformer of the world than what you say, and more essential even than what you do.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 202)

Beyond the Quote (257/365)

But, isn’t what we say and what we do, who we are? Sure, our words and actions are key indicators of our identity, but what Tolle points out as being even more important is the intention behind the words and actions. It’s in how we say what we say and in how we do what we do that makes all of the difference. This is a crucial understanding because therefore, it’s the how that points us to understanding who we are.

The fundamental precursor to understanding.

Paulo Coelho Quote on How People Only Hear What They Want To Hear (and Why I Disagree)

“Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.”
Paulo Coelho

Beyond the Quote (124/365)

I disagree. I stumbled upon this quote on Instagram and I can see why people would share it and agree with it from a superficial standpoint, but I feel that there’s something deeply wrong about it that needs to be discussed. If you never took the time to explain, how would anybody ever be influenced to change their mind? Certainly people change their minds. And in my estimation, it’s ONLY through conversation and explanation that it ever happens: conversations you have with other people, conversations you listen to between other people, and conversations that you read from other people. It’s through this constant exchange of ideas—these explanations—that we only ever advance our thoughts forward. How else could we possibly do that?

“Sometimes we’ll say small things to someone and they’ll lose their sh*t. It’s not because they’re crazy—it’s because whatever we said was the last straw. People walk around collecting moments of stress, and if left unaddressed, stress will pile up until they hit their limit, and then Kaboom! We’ve all had our own stories of hitting our breaking point and letting the wrong person have it. Those experiences, as unfortunate as they are, also allow us to find compassion when it happens to others.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 225)

“There is no absolute good and bad; everything is what we make of it. As we strive to understand more than we evaluate, we open up more possibilities and opportunities for things to improve and unfold the way we want them to. This requires paying attention, and allowing a situation to be complicated, and sorting through the details—zooming in—to find where all the magic is hiding.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 199)

“As adults, we don’t need to empathize just with those people we harm; we also need to empathize with those who harm us. That means we have to suspend judgment and focus more on understanding as much as we can.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 185)