How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it’s important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What’s good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?
It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.
The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation – abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a “virtue” that corrodes self-esteem.
Self-discipline is the ability to organize your behavior over time in the service of specific goals.
What a great teacher, a great parent, a great psychotherapist and a great coach have in common is a deep belief in the potential of the person with whom they are concerned. They relate to the person from their vision of his or her worth and value.
The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.
Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.
Feel deeply to think clearly.
It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively – which means to live authentically – is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding – from others and also from themselves.
The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.
There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.
Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.