“Stoicism is not just invulnerability…if such a thing even exists. Stoicism is also having the self-awareness to know when you are struggling. It’s having the courage to admit when you could use a hand. It’s having the wisdom not to pretend you know the answer (you can’t learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus says). It takes daring and toughness to go to therapy—perhaps more than just white knuckling it. It’s a brave thing to share your struggles with a friend or to hire a coach or expert to help you get better at something. It takes a confident person to ask a question or admit, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t be like the cowards who are too fragile or fearful to do this. Be truly courageous.”
Ryan Holiday
Self Awareness Quotes
“Where do we begin to understand ourselves? Here am I, and how am I to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking place inside myself? I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship. It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself. I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 22)
“To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday we will fail to understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that movement.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 19)
“In trying to conform to [an] ideology, you suppress yourself—whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 17)
“The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 12)
“All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. It is as if we are all tempted to view ourselves as men on horseback. The horse represents a lusty animal-way of living, untrammeled by reason, unguided by purpose. The rider represents independent, impartial thought, a sort of pure cold intelligence. too often the pilgrim lives as though his goal is to become the horseman who would break the horse’s spirit so that he can control him, so that he may ride safely and comfortably wherever he wishes to go. If he does not wish to struggle for discipline, it is because he believes that his only options will be either to live the lusty, undirected life of the riderless horse, or to tread the detached, unadventuresome way of the horseless rider. If neither of these, then he must be the rider struggling to gain control of his rebellious mount. He does not see that there will be no struggle, once he recognizes himself as a centaur.”
Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 7)
“How well we get along with ourselves depends largely on our internal leadership skills—how well we listen to our different parts, make sure they feel taken care of, and keep them from sabotaging one another. Parts often come across as absolutes when in fact they represent only one element in a complex constellation of thoughts, emotions, and sensations.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 282) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“If you are not aware of what your body needs, you can’t take care of it. If you don’t feel hunger, you can’t nourish yourself. If you mistake anxiety for hunger, you may eat too much. And if you can’t feel when you’re satiated, you’ll keep eating. This is why cultivating sensory awareness is such a critical aspect of trauma recovery. Most traditional therapies downplay or ignore the moment-to-moment shifts in our inner sensory world. But these shifts carry the essence of the organism’s responses: the emotional states that are imprinted in the body’s chemical profile, in the viscera, in the contraction of the striated muscles of the face, throat, trunk, and limbs. Traumatized people need to learn that they can tolerate their sensations, befriend their inner experiences, and cultivate new action patterns.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 275) | ★ Featured on this book list.
“Learning to observe and tolerate your physical reactions is a prerequisite for safely revisiting the past. If you cannot tolerate what you are feeling right now, opening up the past will only compound the misery and retraumatize you further.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 211)
“Emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to experiences and thus are the foundation of reason. Our self-experience is the product of the balance between our rational and our emotional brains. When these two systems are in balance, we ‘feel like ourselves.’ However, when our survival is at stake, these systems can function relatively independently.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score (Page 64)
“There are three strands, present for most everyone: Power (sometimes seen as status, or the appearance of status); Safety (survival and peace of mind); Meaning (hope and the path forward). The changes in our media structure, public health and economy have pushed some people to overdo one or the other and perhaps ignore a third. When a social network finds your button and presses it over and over, it’s hard to resist. New cultural forces catch on because they hit on one or more of these. And politics is understood through this lens as well. See the braid and it’s a lot easier to figure out why we might be stressed.”
Seth Godin
37 Robert A. Johnson Quotes from Inner Work To Convince You Dreams Aren’t Arbitrary
Excerpt: Dreams are NOT arbitrary. Dreams are a primary means of communication. Not convinced? These 37 quotes from Inner Work should change your mind.
Read More »37 Robert A. Johnson Quotes from Inner Work To Convince You Dreams Aren’t Arbitrary
“The ego’s relationship to the huge unconscious is like that of a tiny cork floating in the ocean. We often feel like that. We feel like a cork that is being tossed about in the ocean of life, completely at the mercy of the waves and storms that push and pull us. We seem to have little control or power over anything. The cork is nevertheless morally equal to the ocean, because it has the power of consciousness! Although the ego is small, it has this peculiar power of awareness that we call consciousness, and that special, concentrated power gives it a position that is as necessary, as strong, and as valuable as the seemingly infinite richness of the unconscious.”
Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (Page 184)