Quotes about Personal Growth

sometimes people are broken and don't know how to mend because they aren't able to say what they need or deeply want. Sometimes you get to a point in life where you realize you've made a terrible mistake and you desperately need to fix it, but it's so deep and bitterly ingrained you can't start.

But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

Take a risk. Maybe our pasts don't define us but inform us.

Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it's one damn thing after another.

at a life stage when everyone else is moving forward; the thirties are a decade of building the foundation of the future. He's out of sync with his peers, and in his own way, in his own grief, he probably feels completely alone.

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda

far better that [a patient make progress but] forget what we talked about than the opposite possibility (a more popular choice for patients)—to remember precisely what was talked about but to remain unchanged.

The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn't it safer to stay where I am?

There is a continuing decision to be made as to whether to evade pain, or to tolerate it and therefore modify it.

I'll bet you could name five truly difficult people off the top of your head right now—some you assiduously avoid, others you would assiduously avoid if they didn't share your last name. But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us. That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from developing, or ensure that I'll always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don't perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are.

Sometimes I wonder, Who am I to make the important decisions in my own life? Am I really qualified for this? Everyone wages this internal battle to some degree: Child or adult? Safety or freedom? But no matter where people fall on those continuums, every decision they make is based on two things: fear and love. Therapy strives to teach you how to tell the two apart.

In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

But sometimes without realizing it, we are choosing to be in relationships with people who fit into an old story, or we are choosing to respond to them based on an unhealthy script.

Because therapists know that at first, each patient is simply a snapshot, a person captured in a particular moment. It's like a photo of you taken from an unfortunate angle and with a sour expression on your face. There might also be a photo in which you're glowing, caught opening a present or mid-laugh with a lover. Both are you in that fraction of time, and neither is you in your entirety.

Therapists talk a lot about how the past informs the present—how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past. If we don't accept the notion that there's no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck.

Every day we do things that are capable of changing everything, and that's what makes life exciting.

It's me, though. It's my fault for being like this. I'm going to have to get used to it.

Josh had made a lot of mistakes in his life, and he'd tried to learn from all of them. He definitely tried to not repeat them. Hiring Grace had been his favorite mistake so far.

It wasn't entirely his fault that he was so emotionally challenged, she thought, putting a hand on his jaw. "You're so pretty, Joe. It's really a shame that you're such a dumbass.

How ironic was it that in order to get her fresh start, she'd have to face her past?

She spent a lot of time letting people see only what she wanted them to—a hardworking professional woman on top of her game. And yet somehow in a matter of days she'd revealed herself to him, letting him see someone else entirely. The real her, maybe.