One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.

~ K.l. Toth

K.l. Toth Confusion Identity Loss Mask Philosophy Sadness Self Sense Of Self Tragedy

The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different. In externalizing the source of their self-esteem, they surrender all emotional independence. (Conquest requires two parties, after all.) A man cannot feel like a man without a partner, corporation, team. Manhood is a game played on the terrain of opposites. It thus follows that male sense of self disintegrates when the Other is absent.

~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Antonella Gambotto-Burke Body Image Boys Center Centre Conquest Femininity Gender Gender Roles Gender Stereotypes Girls Inward Focus Masculinity Men Self Esteem Sense Of Self Women

Beautiful moments in life need no words for description. Living those moments and feeling the beauty suffices.

~ Mamur Mustapha

Mamur Mustapha Beauty Feelings Life Moments Nature People Sense Of Self Time Understanding Words Of Wisdom

They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.

~ Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood Body Philosophy Sense Of Self World

Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.

~ Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey Death Life Living Sense Of Self

To give value to others, you have to begin by valuing yourself.

~ Tim Fargo

Tim Fargo Belief Believe Happiness Leadership Sense Of Self Success Value Wisdom

It was a gift. What did I do with it? Life didn't accumulate as I'd once imagined. I graduated from boarding school, two years of college. Persisted through the blank decade in Los Angeles. I buried first my mother, then my father. His hair gone wispy as a child's. I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.

~ Emma Cline

Emma Cline Death Depression Disillusionment Life Loneliness Passage Of Time Sense Of Self

I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction ... I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me.

~ Emma Cline

Emma Cline Depression Futility Loneliness Sense Of Self

There is nothing better in life than commitment to personal development and lifelong learning.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Lailah Gifty Akita Commit Commitment Commitment And Attitude Learn Learning Learning By Doing Learning From Mistakes Learning To Live Learning To Love Yourself Life And Living Life Changing Life Experience Life Lessons Life Long Learning Life Philosophy Life Quotes Person Personal Personal Development Personal Development Insights Personal Planning Personal Responsibility Personalities Personality Purpose Purpose Driven Purpose Driven Life Purpose In Life Purpose Of Life Purposeful Purposeful Living Purposes Self Of Purpose Driven Sense Of Being Sense Of Freedom Sense Of Humor Sense Of Purpose Sense Of Self Sense Of Touch Sense Of Wonder

To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.

~ Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki Buddhism Japanese Life Meditation Physics Quantum Mechanics Science Sense Of Self Spirituality

Imagination and recollection of cherished memories of the pastimes are closely related. We do not recall memories verbatim. As our perspective changes regarding our place in the world, we shift through our recollections and revise our memories. People possess the ability to edit their memories by repressing unbearable episodes and highlighting incidences that generate fond memories. How we perceive and comprehend ourselves in the past, the present, and the future shapes our evolving sense of self. Humankind’s ability to repress unpleasant events and humankind’s ability to act as the solo editors of our germinating awareness of the world that we occupy is ultimately responsible for activating our metamorphosing sense of identity.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Awareness Awareness Quotes Identity Imagination Imagination Quotes Memory Recollection Recollections Remembrance Reminiscence Repressed Memories Self Sense Of Self

These ideas fit the experience of these Japanese women who often talked about searching for or trying to develop self (jibun). Cultivating or polishing self by doing tea ceremony or being a good mother, for example, had a good connotation for the Japanese because it meant that you were trying to go beyond your narrow self and connect self with the larger world beyond social norms. But developing self in the new way these women used it meant to develop self according to just what you want to do or in a way that enhances your own possibilities in the world. Would others see choosing a life for self as selfish? These women had to maintain some ambiguity because they were wandering into dangerous territory when they wanted to travel just to enjoy themselves, or keep working and not marry. In a society that honored the cultivation of a larger self, would they themselves someday suffer for having chosen the self-centered way?

~ Nancy Ross Rosenberger

Nancy Ross Rosenberger Collectivism East Vs West Individualism Japan Jibun Larger Self Modernism Self Self Actualization Self Centered Self Realization Sense Of Self Western

I will, without hesitation, walk away from anything and anyone that threatens my peace or sense of self.

~ Izey Victoria Odiase

Izey Victoria Odiase Good Company Inner Peace Self Esteem Self Love Self Value Sense Of Self

For in some ways the world was like a shopping centre, and he himself was a doubtful customer, often ineffectual, being talked into buying things he didn't want, things indeed which nobody in their right mind would want to buy.

~ Margaret Mahy

Margaret Mahy Confidence Identity Sense Of Self Shopping

I want to be judged by who I am as a person, not by what happened to me. In fact, all the bad things have only contributed to my confidence and sense of self, because I survived them and became a better and stronger person.

~ Jenna Jameson

Jenna Jameson Confidence Inspirational Judged Sense Of Self Survivor

It doesn't really matter how you feel about your character, it just matters what you do with it.

~ Kiera Cass

Kiera Cass Advice Character Sense Of Self

I had the strangest feeling -- like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place -- that I wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be. The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones.

~ Alexandra Bracken

Alexandra Bracken Self Awareness Sense Of Self

The greatest freedom in this world is a sense of self detached from appearances so that we may sacrifice today’s comforts for tomorrow’s opportunities.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Vironika Tugaleva Change Embracing Impermanence Freedom Impermanence Self Awareness Sense Of Self

My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to f**k off, and I have fallen down weeping at its compassionate response.

~ Sera J. Beak

Sera J. Beak Sense Of Self Universe

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss Identity Self Image Sense Of Self Stories Storytelling

I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.

~ Beatrice Sparks

Beatrice Sparks Identity Sense Of Self

One way to think of this dignity is to equate when you are on the path with unraveling a ball of yarn. You have wound your sense of self so tightly that it's hard to be anything other than you, a big ball of yarn. That's just who you are, not string, or threads, but a ball of yarn.

~ Lodro Rinzler

Lodro Rinzler Buddhism Identity Sense Of Self

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it.

~ James Jones

James Jones Autonomy Emotions Indifference Sense Of Self Virginity

O, wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as others see us!It wad frae monie a blunder free us,An' foolish notion.

~ Robert Burns

Robert Burns Embarrassment Error Foolishness Perception Sense Of Self

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

~ W.h. Auden

W.h. Auden Autobiography Perception Sense Of Self

Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.

~ Bethany L. Brand

Bethany L. Brand Abused Children Alter Identities Alter Identity Alter Personalities Alter Personality Alters Child Abuse Compartmentalization Coping Mechanism Defense Mechanism Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotional Pain Memory Loss Mental Illness Personality Development Posttraumatic Posttraumatic Stress Sense Of Self Trauma Traumatized

He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.

~ Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel Privacy Secrets Sense Of Self

Newsflash she already has body image issues. It's an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates. Her hands are too small, her feet are too big, her hair is too straight, too curly, her ears stick out, her bums too flat, her nose is too big and, you know, nothing you can say will change how we feel. What men don't understand is, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right makeup it just... It, it hides the flaws we think we have. They make us look beautiful to ourselves. That's what makes us look beautiful to others.Used to be all she needed to feel beautiful was a pink tutu and a plastic tiara.And we spend our whole lives trying to feel that way again.

~ Richard Castle

Richard Castle Castle Season 1 Episode 10 Clothes Fashion Sense Of Self

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they came to their senses and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of enoughness.

~ Sheila M. Reindl

Sheila M. Reindl Bulimia Eating Disorders Inward Focus Recovery Sense Of Self Shame

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self.

~ Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande Autonomy Elderly Care Independence Sense Of Self

Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.

~ Mark Goulston

Mark Goulston Dangerous World Lack Of Trust Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Ptsd Sense Of Self Shattered Souls Stress Trauma Traumatic Stress Work View

I think what's most interesting about me is the work that I do.

~ Susie Orbach

Susie Orbach Career Sense Of Self

In order to remember who you are, you have to have known it in the first place.

~ Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire Being Sense Of Self