Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Interpretation
Understanding oneself is vital before making life decisions.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and self-awareness in shaping one's life choices. Before pursuing any goals or ambitions, it's crucial to listen to and understand your own identity, values, and desires, as this foundational knowledge will guide you in making meaningful decisions that align with your true self.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.
Self-care is never a selfish act - it is only good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others.
We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.
The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.
Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.
The people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force us to change but accepting us exactly as we are. And yet this unconditional love does not lead us to rest on our laurels. Instead, it surrounds us with a charged force field that makes us want to grow from the inside out - a force field that is safe enough to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires.
Listen closely to your invisible thoughts. What do you hear? What are your words implying? That is their potency. What do you want? Name it and rearrange the structure of your mind to imply you no longer desire it, because you already have it!
Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?
The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.
Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme.
It's surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty-strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage.
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