Quotes about Personal Growth

If at the end of our time together you find yourself walking out with just what you walked in with, you will have wasted your time.

So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

No matter how quiet and conformist a person's life seems, there's always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.

I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I'm much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That's just the kind of person I am. I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

The only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.

He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

You need to come face-to-face with the past, not as some naive, easily wounded boy, but as a grown-up, independent professional. Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see. Otherwise you'll carry around that baggage for the rest of your life.

I'm not totally uncompetitive. It's just that for some reason I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn't matter what field you're talking about -- beating somebody else just doesn't do it for me. I'm much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine.

I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world ... over time ... little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that, I am a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing.

The way I see it," Menshiki said, "there's a point in everybody's life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes you have to grab it by the tail. Grab it hard, and never let go.

People grow up, and when they grow up they change/

For the sake of argument, let's say all your choices and all your effort are destined to be a waste. You're still very much yourself and nobody else. And you're forging ahead, as yourself. So relax.

You need to use the thread of logic, as best you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that's worth living for.

This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution--abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me.

When told that future promotions will depend to some degree on their ability to nurture leaders, even people who say that leadership cannot be developed somehow find ways to do it.

helping people overcome their limitations to become more successful at work is at the very heart of effective management.

The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen.

Menopause isn't Cocoon. Sorry.

We had started thinking of ourselves not in terms of things that we had done, but in terms of what we were going to do.

But your task is to become something much more unique and surprising than anyone your parents could ever imagine you to be. You have to know that the life you have is completely yours.

Father, I scarcely dare to pray, So clear I see, now it is done, That I have wasted half my day And left my work but just begun. A Last Prayer

On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening.