What We Tell Ourselves Quotes

#1. Our wants always exceed our resources, and we believe that's the source of our unhappiness. Not so. Never was. No wonder we always feel stressed out and inadequate; we never make enough money to afford what we tell ourselves we need.

Anonymous

#2. The most difficult part of our stories is often what we bring to them - what we make up about who we are and how we are perceived by others. Yes, maybe we lost our job or screwed up a project, but what makes that story so painful is what we tell ourselves about our own self-worth and value.

Brene Brown

#3. What bothers me is this idea of validation, of rationalization. The notion that some of us (regardless of what we tell ourselves) are doing this because we are not sure what else to do and it's easy to apply to and it will pay us decently and it will make us feel like we're still successful.

Marina Keegan

#4. It's never what people do that makes us angry; it's what we tell ourselves about what they did.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#5. It's important to remember that regardless of what happens during the day, we can go to bed at night and tell ourselves that we are good enough and although we aren't perfect, we still deserve to be loved.

Bibliomaniac

#6. It matters what myths we tell ourselves -- which ideals we choose to honor.

Robert Roper

#7. We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

Oliver Sacks

#8. Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to declare it: I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak with you always.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#9. Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

Sharon Salzberg

#10. We tell specific stories about ourselves to ourselves and we're all the heroes of our own lives. But you live through certain experiences with other people, and sometimes they have very different takes on what happened.

James Franco

#11. No matter what we survivors like to tell ourselves about the afterlife, when someone dies, everything is over.

Jodi Picoult

#12. I think most of us tell ourselves we don't want what we think we can't have just to make life bearable.

Chris Crutcher

#13. We can think so much about life and take ourselves so seriously; I mean, I like to tell people, 'Don't take life too seriously' because you'll cloud the experience. That's what the meaning of life is to me - being able to enjoy the moment.

Janine Shepherd

#14. I started wondering about life stories, how each one of us has one that isn't apparent at first glance, what we tell the world about ourselves and what we deliberately tuck away and never reveal.

Laura Wiess

#15. We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

A. N. Wilson

#16. Reach out, share your truth, tell someone, "This is who I am. This is what I stand for. Hold me to it." Often, we'll do far more for another than we will do for ourselves.

Kamal Ravikant

#17. I cannot tell you how proud watching that [Iraqi] war coverage makes me. I know a lot of people are saying that they think that it's, that you know what we're doing is imperialistic. I watch the way we handle ourselves over there and I've never felt more patriotic in my life.

Dennis Miller

#18. But I think there was a sense amongst the House Republicans especially that we didn't just want to be opposed to Bill Clinton; that we wanted to tell the country what we were for and to brand ourselves in a more positive manner.

Ed Gillespie

#19. Other people will try to decide things for you, she says. They'll try to tell you who you are. Remember, no matter what they say, you're the only who really decides.

Robin Talley

#20. But what really happens after you are dead - that is what I want to know?

I cannot tell you Renisenb. You should ask a priest these questions.

He would just give me the usual answers. I want to know.

We shall none of us know until we are dead ourselves.

Agatha Christie

#21. The most effective way to distort reality is to deny it; if we tell ourselves there isn't a problem, then we never have to worry about what to do about it. And the most effective way to deny a reality is to make it invisible.

Melanie Joy

#22. The warrior has awareness ... we are aware that we are at war , and the war in our minds requires discipline. Not the discipline of a soldier but the discipline of a warrior. Not the discipline from the outside to tell us what to do and not to do, but the discipline to be ourselves, no matter what.

Miguel Ruiz

#23. Sarah's right. We punish ourselves so much in our own imaginations. We convince ourselves everything we do, everything we think, is wrong.

For eighteen years I've believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now. I'm deciding.

Robin Talley

#24. We all feel better when we can defend ourselves. When we can tell ourselves and everyone else that we did what was necessary and no more. That's easy. What's so much harder is doing what is necessary before others see it and when the actions are harsh and unpopular.

L.E. Modesitt Jr.

#25. I'm not in a position to tell anyone anything about how to live his or her life, but I think it's worth noting that no one can lie to us as effectively as we can lie to ourselves. We know exactly what to say! And I do think that women, even extremely smart women, can be very, very vulnerable to men.

Jean Hanff Korelitz

#26. What else are our lives but a story we tell ourselves to find some sense in the pain ofliving?

Mark Frost

#27. Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.

Ryan Holiday

#28. Music lives and breathes to tell us who we are and what we face. It is a path between ourselves and the infinite.

Yehudi Menuhin

#29. The problem with the stigma around mental health is really about the stories that we tell ourselves as a society. What is normal? That's just a story that we tell ourselves.

Matthew Quick

#30. Awareness is something that is very important. And you say that it looks impossible to become what we really are, to be authentic, to be ourselves again. But I will tell you that it is much more difficult to try to be what we are not.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

#31. Perhaps summer's ephemeral nature is what inspires us to embrace the beach read. We tell ourselves that these twisted plots and wild characters are literary ice cream sundaes - extravagant treats that aren't as calorie-laden when we're wearing flip flops.

Sarah MacLean

#32. We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.

Ryan Holiday

#33. how to think in the right genre?" "We already do it, every day. We tell ourselves what kind of story we're in, and we're often wrong, because life is mostly every genre, sometimes at once.

Michael R. Underwood

#34. We can rarely tell others what we really think about them
not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves.

Douglas Kennedy

#35. That's what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and - given the urgent problems our species now faces - whether it makes sense to go.
Should we solve those problems first?
Or are they a reason to go?

Carl Sagan

#36. There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.

Ryan Holiday

#37. By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women.

Zainab Salbi

#38. I really want the pope to come into the pulpit and tell Filipinos to their faces what's wrong with them, because we refuse to listen to ourselves.

Carlos Celdran

#39. The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. we live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we are afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we will lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy.

Richard Bach

#40. The forces are there, we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be.

Unknown

#41. All I can tell you is that we have to re-live the gospel every time we pray. We have to re-live it every time we go to church. We have to re-live the gospel on the spot and ask ourselves what we are doing in the courtroom. We should not be there. The court is adjourned.

Timothy Keller

#42. We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes, and a story we tell about ourselves.'
And what others say about us.

M T Anderson

#43. Words are such powerful things. We can rip somebody apart with them, we can write words down that can forever hurt another person. We can use them to tell stories and lies. We can misquote them and change what other people said to make ourselves look good ...

Joan Bauer

#44. The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are.

Kirk Douglas

#45. There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.

Eleanor Brown

#46. The president can't tell you what we got. I'll tell you what the world got. The world has a burgeoning nuclear power that didn't, as the Soviets, say "we might defend ourselves in a war."

Mike Huckabee

#47. We could either develop paradise on Earth or oblivion; wipe ourselves out, only the future will tell. It's what you do to make the future.

Jacque Fresco

#48. We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

#49. People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.

Emma Forrest

#50. I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around and think of most often - are the dark ones? Maybe we have to wander around in the darkness to understand it?

Peter Orner

#51. I tell them that if compulsive eating is anything, it's a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard. When we don't want to notice what is going on. Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be.

Geneen Roth

#52. The Islamic terror threat is so fierce, unrelenting and barbaric that we tell ourselves fairy tales about how these ruthless acts are anything but what they are: acts of war.

Monica Crowley

#53. Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Erich Fromm

#54. Tell me which places lie along your routes, and I will tell you who you are. What if, by connecting all of these points on a map, we discover something special about ourselves? What if we see the silhouette of fate, the secret sign that marks each of us?

Nadezhda Belenkaya

#55. We're trained, in our culture, to take care of ourselves first. Even flight attendants tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping those around you. But they never tell you what happens afterwards. How do you live with yourself if you survive and the person next to you doesn't?

Tracy Weber

#56. The culture of Do and Tell does not teach us how to change pace, decelerate, take stock of what we are doing, observe ourselves and others, try new behaviors, build new relationships.

Edgar H Schein

#57. After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.

Paulo Coelho

#58. As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.

Martha C. Nussbaum

#59. The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy.

Richard Bach

#60. I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#61. When asked, most folks will gladly tell us about ourselves, who we are, what we're feeling, and where we should be heading. And if we don't honor ourselves by listening to our lives, we'll believe them.

Susan L. Taylor

#62. I can tell you what women need in general. They need respect and love. They need to be able to trust your word and to be able to confide in you. So often, we can't care for ourselves in this world, so we need protection and provision.

Tracie Peterson

#63. Take outside - freedom. What is it? What does it mean to a madman? I'll tell you, we go years through a lifetime with no love, no sex, no nice food and no nice clothes. So when it comes ... we choke on it! The kindness strangles us; we can't cope, so we make pigs of ourselves.

Stephen Richards

#64. Stories help shape the way we see ourselves in the world. They help tell us who we can be and what we can achieve.

Nicola Yoon

#65. Every moment of life wants to tell us something, but we do not want to hear what it has to say: when we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered into our ear and hence we despise quiet and drug ourselves with sociability.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#66. What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.

Rabih Alameddine

#67. We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That's where the adventure is. Not knowing where you'll end up or how you'll fare. It's all a mystery, and when we say any different, we're just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?

Eowyn Ivey

#68. We think we have some kind of privileged access to our own motives and intentions. In fact we have no clear insight into what moves us to live as we do. The stories we tell ourselves are like the messages that appear on Ouija boards. If we are authors of our lives, it is only in retrospect.

John N. Gray

#69. We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves.

Pauline Kael