The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning and transformation.
Geneen RothRead
For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Self-criticism does not lead to positive change or self-love; only self-love can foster true transformation.
Geneen Roth's quote highlights the misunderstanding that harsh self-criticism can lead to personal improvement or self-compassion. Instead, Roth asserts that only through a foundation of love and kindness towards ourselves can we cultivate meaningful change and acceptance.
Themes
Self-CriticismLoveChangeKindnessShame
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about self-care and acceptance.
More from Geneen Roth
All quotes →No matter where you go, no matter how many gifts you give and receive this holiday season, unless you are actually present, it all flies by as if in a dream. Satisfaction in anything--a meal, an interaction, a gift, a sunset--depends on your willingness to take it in. Breathe. Feel your arms and your legs. You are allowed to love every little thing about yourself and your life. You are allowed to take up space and be all that you are. Really you are.
Geneen RothRead
Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart.
Geneen RothRead
It's never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale.
Geneen RothRead
Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic…The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.
Geneen RothRead
The big horrible thing isn't the plane crash or the earthquake or the diagnosis. When those things occur, we act, we know what to do. We live or we die. Hell is what we do in the meantime. It is the ways we starve our souls as we prepare for the future that never comes as planned. The true disaster is living the life in your mind and missing the one in front of you.
Geneen RothRead
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O soul, be patient: thou shalt find A little matter mend all this; Some strain of music to thy mind, Some praise for skill not spent amiss.
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It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
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What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
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Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.
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