Henry Cloud Quotes

You aren't alive if you aren't in need.

~ Henry Cloud

This is one of the marks of a truly safe person: they are confrontable.

~ Henry Cloud

Defensive devaluation is a protective device that makes love bad, trust unimportant and people no darn good any way. People who have been deeply hurt in their relationships will often devalue love so it doesn't hurt so much. And they often become resigned to never loving again.

~ Henry Cloud

Freedom comes from taking responsibility, bondage comes from giving it away.

~ Henry Cloud

Learning to accept powerlessness has profound spiritual implications for your child. When we accept the reality of our human condition -- that we are ultimately powerless to change our fallen state, yet totally responsible for being in it -- we are driven to receive God's solution based on his Son's payment of a debt we can't pay.

~ Henry Cloud

Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results.

~ Henry Cloud

When leaders lead in ways that people’s brains can follow, good results follow as well.

~ Henry Cloud

As a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: What you create and What you allow.

~ Henry Cloud

For love to work, each spouse has to realize his or her freedom. And boundaries help define the freedom we have and the freedom we do not have. Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.

~ Henry Cloud

Certainly, child rearing requires many different interventions. There are times for helping, for not getting involved, or for being strict, But the real issue is this: Is what you are going being done on purpose? Or are you doing it from reasons that you do not think about, such as your own personality, childhood, need of the moment, or fears?

~ Henry Cloud

If you do not forgive, you are demanding something your offender does not choose to give, even if it is only confession of what he did. This ties him to you and ruins boundaries. Let the dysfunctional family you came from go. Cut it loose, and you will be free.

~ Henry Cloud

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks:1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one‘s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourty-three? Yes, these are tall orders but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

~ Henry Cloud

We grow in part by confessing our faults and weaknesses to each other (James 5:16; Eccl. 4:10). If we are always being strong and without needs, we are not growing, and we are setting ourselves up for a very dangerous fall.

~ Henry Cloud

Page 99: ...unless something changes, the future that you can expect is more of the past. Sorry or becoming committed does not make Jim Carrey a great golfer, or made Jack nicklaus funny. Recommitment does not make a person who is unsuited for a particular position suited for it all of a sudden. Promises by someone who has a history of letting you down in a relationship mean nothing certain in terms of the future.

~ Henry Cloud

Many people will not be honest because they fear loss of intimacy and togetherness. In reality, honesty brings people closer together, for it will strengthen their identities. The more you realize your separate identities, the closer you can become. Telling loved ones what is really on your mind and telling others what you really think is the foundation of love.

~ Henry Cloud

It's important to understand that your no is always subject to you. You own your boundaries. They don't own you. If you set limits with someone, and she responds maturely and lovingly, you can renegotiate the boundary. In addition, you can change the boundary if you are in a safer place.

~ Henry Cloud

Couples often live out years of falsehood trying to protect and save a relationship, all the while destroying any chance of real relationship.

~ Henry Cloud

To forgive someone means to let him off the hook, or to cancel a debt he owes you. When you refuse to forgive someone, you still want something from that person, and even if it is revenge you want, it keeps you tied to him forever.

~ Henry Cloud

Just as we leave the effects of our work behind in results, we leave the effects of our interactions with people in their hearts, minds, and souls.

~ Henry Cloud

When a person travels through a few years with an organization, or with a partnership, or any other kind of working association, he leaves a 'wake' behind in these two areas, task and relationship: what did he accomplish and how did he deal with people?

~ Henry Cloud

Who a person is will ultimately determine if their brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed.

~ Henry Cloud

If we demand perfection from ourselves we are not living in the real world...The inherent problem in the relationship between the ideal & the real is that the ideal judges the real as unacceptable and brings down condemnation and wrath on the real. This sets up an adversarial relationship between the two and like all adversaries, they move further and further apart.

~ Henry Cloud

Denial of one's need for others is the most common type of defense against bonding. If people come from a situation, whether growing up or later in life, where good, safe relationships were not available to them, they learn to deny that they even want them. Why want what you can't have? They slowly get rid of their awareness of the need.

~ Henry Cloud

We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.

~ Henry Cloud

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.

~ Henry Cloud

If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you 'do' boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.

~ Henry Cloud

Don't go overboard in praising required behavior: 'We have only done our duty' (Luke 17:10). But do go overboard when your child confesses the truth, repents honestly, takes chances, and loves openly. Praise the developing character in your child as it emerges in active, loving, responsible behavior.

~ Henry Cloud

Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent's job is to make the rule. The child's job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines. The child breaks the rule again, and the parent manages the consequences and empathy that then turn the rule into reality and internal structure for the child.

~ Henry Cloud

Mature, healthy people need other people; they don't isolate themselves...Needing love isn't being immature. Rather, it gives us the energy we need to go out and slay our dragons.

~ Henry Cloud

Setting boundaries isn't an alternative to loving your child. It is a means of loving her.

~ Henry Cloud

Be careful not to give your child the impression that you love her perfect, performing parts more than you do her mediocre, stumbling parts.

~ Henry Cloud

Sometimes we represent our weakness as if it were bad. We don’t think it’s okay to be weak…We have been injured in many ways and our real self houses all of the evidence of those injuries. The pain, the brokenness and the emotional underdevelopment we all possess is part of who we really are.

~ Henry Cloud

Encourage literally came from in courage. The courage is put into you from outside. Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves.

~ Henry Cloud

fruit of passive-aggressive people. These people resist demands by indirect tactics. They will not take responsibility for their own choices; instead, they turn around and blame someone else for making them do it. Or they will agree to do things that they don’t really want to do, and then gripe about the person behind her back.

~ Henry Cloud

When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.

~ Henry Cloud

People who own their lives do not feel guilty when they make choices about where they are going. They take other people into consideration, but when they make choices for the wishes of others, they are choosing out of love, not guilt; to advance a good, not to avoid a bad.

~ Henry Cloud

All of your precious resources - time, energy, talent, passion, and money - should only go to the areas of your life or your business that are best, are fixable, and are indespensable. Otherwise, average sets in and [your life] does not become what it was designed to be.

~ Henry Cloud

Values are sometimes worth living and dying for, and are certainly worth dating and breaking up over.

~ Henry Cloud

This principle is taught in Scripture: We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). In other words, we learn to be loving because we are loved. Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this truth is that we can't love when we aren't loved. And, taking the thinking further, we can't value or treasure our souls when they haven't been valued or treasured.

~ Henry Cloud

When we ask we are owning our needs. Asking for love, comfort or understanding is a transaction between two people. You are saying: I have a need. It's not your problem. It's not your responsibility. You don't have to respond, but I'd like something from you. This frees the other person to connect with you freely and without obligation. When we own that our needs are our responsibility we allow others to love us because we have something to offer. Asking is a far cry from demanding. When we demand love, we destroy it.

~ Henry Cloud