self-perception

As you heal, you see yourself more realistically. You accept that you are a person with strengths and weaknesses. You make the changes you can in your life and let go of the things that aren__ in your power to change. You learn that every part of you is valuable. And you realize that all of your thoughts and feelings are important, even when they__e painful or difficult.

Who people think they are and what people think they want is not really who they are or what they want.

The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.

A beautiful person is not defined by a hair style, a pair of shoes, it__ not the logos on the T-shirt, the sport__ team on a hat, the designer__ name on a hand bag, or even how you smell.Instead, beauty lies in who you are when no one is watching, the person you are when there__ nothing to hide behind. No amount of concealer can cover up a cantankerous heart, but all the make-up in the world can__ add a single lumen to the brightness of a beautiful soul.

It has nothing to do with who I am as compared to everyone else. It has everything to do with who I am in companionship with God.

I take my cues from the world around me and carefully paint a self-portrait that the world can__ help but accept. However, I would be much wiser to put down all such artistic notions and hold up the portrait of me painted by God simply because that is a picture at which the world can__ help but marvel.

Who you are is too vast to be captured by the reflection of a mirror, classified by the state of your attitude, or categorized by the opinions of others. Therefore, if any of these are defining you, you have yet to be defined.

She had been so vulnerable, and Norah wanted only to protect her. But that vulnerability was tied to a massive mistake, a perception of herself too damaged to love. If Norah got anything from this book, it's that we're all damaged. The tragedy is letting it define you.

Shakespeare and his few peers invented all of us.

There is that gnawing feeling that we are far more than what we believe ourselves to be. Maybe it__ time to believe the gnawing.

When you hear men talking," said Cornelia, "all they ever do is speak ill of women. ... And I don't quite know how they managed to make this law in their favour, or who exactly it was who gave them a greater license to sin than is allowed to us; and if the fault is common to both sexes (as they can hardly deny), why should the blame not be as well? What makes them think they can boast of the same thing that in women brings only shame?

Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.

I Don__ Suffer From A Complex But The Complex Suffers From Me.

Don't spend your life believing a story about yourself that you didn't write that's been fed to you - that simply you've accepted, embedded and added to. Let the story go and there beneath is the real you...and your unique gifts, heart and path that await you.

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one__ work is terribly important.

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.