Quotes & Sayings About Changing Yourself

Only by helping yourself first can you help the poor. Only by changing yourself first, can you change their condition. You achieve this by first removing from your mind any thoughts of poverty, for to think of something is to invoke it. — Stephen Richards

Don't condemn yourself - that only increases the hold of impurity. Accept your limitations but know that you're working towards changing them. — Frederick Lenz

Don't worry about wanting to change; start worrying when you don't feel like changing anymore. And in the meantime, enjoy every version of yourself you ever meet, because not everybody who discovers their true identity likes what they find. — Antony John

We talk like we know what's going on, but we don't. We don't know anything. We're really young and we're gonna screw up a lot. We're gonna keep changing our minds and even sometimes our hearts. And through all that, the only real thing we can offer each other is forgiveness. I couldn't do that. Or at least, I did it too late. Don't make my mistake. Don't let yourself be so angry you stop loving. Because one day you'll wake up from that anger and the person you love will be gone. — Kevin Williamson

The only thing you don't have the power to change is your genetics. And someday even that won't be true. — Dan Pearce

People who made their dreams come true didn't simply go after it. They changed the person they were, in order to fit the type of person that would live that type of dream. — Shannon L. Alder

The world does not yield to changing. By its very nature it is painful and transient. See it as it is and divest yourself of all desire and fear. When the world does not hold and bind you, it becomes an abode of joy and beauty. You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The enemy of righteousness also works in little steps, so small that they are hard to notice if you are thinking only about yourself and how great you are. Just as truth is given to us line upon line and the light brightens slowly as we obey, even so, as we disobey our testimony of truth lessens almost imperceptibly, little by little, and darkness descends so slowly that the proud may easily deny that anything is changing. — Henry B. Eyring

Life is always moving, changing, shifting into its next shape. The movement is natural. It is how we evolve. Let the shifts happen. Take responsibility for yourself each step of the way. Trust the new shape and form of your world — Melody Beattie

Changing yourself changes everything. — Bryant McGill

Everything you have in your life, you have attracted to yourself because of the way you think, because of the person that you are. You can change your life because you can change the way you think. — Brian Tracy

If you want to test how powerful your mind is, simply start thinking positively and see the results for yourself. — Maddy Malhotra

Holmes," I asked as we stepped into the street, "I realise the question sounds sophomoric, but do you find that there are aspects of yourself with which you feel most comfortable? I only ask out of curiosity; you needn't feel obliged to answer." He offered me his arm and, formally, I took it. "'Who am I?' you mean." He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. "Do you know what a fugue is?" "Are you changing the subject?" "No." I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. "I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time the music's internal logic makes clear the relationship. — Laurie R. King

Meditation means you start changing your inner world. You start removing dust from the inner world, you start removing all that is unnecessary in the inner world. You remove all that clutter, all the rubbish you are full of. Meditation means emptying yourself of all that the society has put inside you so that you can have a clean, clear vision, so that you can have a mirror-like quality. — Rajneesh

It's a scary thing, a life-changing, paradigm-shifting thing, to honestly ask yourself this question: Am I moving with God to rescue, restore, and redeem humanity? Or am I clinging fast, eyeteeth clenched, to an imperfect world's habits and cultural customs, in full knowledge of injustice or imperfections, living at odds with God's dream for his daughters and sons? — Sarah Bessey

You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself. — Joy Page

Three powerful life-changing words passed on from God to us: Now choose life! Right now, this moment, put away the baggage from the past, shake yourself free from the fear of the future unknown. Right now, choose life - seize your divine moment. A — Erwin Raphael McManus

By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

The truth is relative in this world; it's changing all the time because we live in a world of illusions. What is true right now is not true later. Then it could be true again. The truth in hell could also be just another concept, another lie that can be used against you. Our own denial system is so powerful and strong that it becomes very complicated. There are truths covering lies, and lies covering truth. Like peeling an onion, you uncover the truth little by little until in the end, you open your eyes to find out that everyone around you, including yourself, is lying all the time. Almost — Miguel Ruiz

Most people have heard of the Eastern teaching that it is important to exist in the moment. It can be hard to train yourself to observe what is right now (and not to bog down in thoughts of what was and what will be), but the philosophical teaching that underlies that idea - the reason that staying in the moment is so vital - is equally important: Everything is changing. All the time. And you can't stop it. And your attempts to stop it actually put you in a bad place. — Ed Catmull

Would you like to go to a doctor who had taken his last medical course in 1948? You have to keep changing and keep learning so that you are constantly challenging yourself, adding a few new songs to your program every chance you get. If you don't, the world will pass you by. — Harvey MacKay

You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being. — P.D. Ouspensky

Be happy. Be yourself. If others don't like it, then let them be. Happiness is a choice. Life isn't about pleasing everybody. — John Spence

Life is changing every moment. To keep yourself alive and vibrant we have to change with the moment. — Debasish Mridha

I got quite used to changing that cheque, because you can get used to anything. You think: I'll never do that; and you find yourself doing it. — Jean Rhys

Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed. — Quentin Crisp

Because you are never here
but always there, I forget
not you but what you look like
You drift down the street
in the rain, your face
dissolving, changing shape, the colours
running together
My walls absorb
you, breathe you forth
again, you resume
yourself, I do not recognize you
You rest on the bed
watching me watching
you, we will never know
each other any better
than we do now — Margaret Atwood

Really, there's only one way of changing the world, and that's by changing yourself. — A.G. Roemmers

Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget. — Danny Boyle

If you want a meaningful life for yourself don't ask "What can the world offer to me?" but "What can I offer to the world? — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium. — Rob McClure

Change You can draw a path for your life and have all of your goals set. You can change yourself as much as possible and change things around you just to reach those goals. Here's the catch. Never underestimate the power of fate. It can knock down the highest of goals that seem guaranteed in your life. Plan, yes, and decide, yes, but be prepared for plans not to work. If they don't work despite your hardest efforts, there must be a reason. You may not be able to see the reason at the time, but you will one day, maybe even years later. Did your efforts go to waste? If you don't learn from them, then yes, they did go to waste. Even after changing yourself and your surroundings for the sake of reaching that one goal, you may realize that it was waiting for you at the place where you started, when you were the true you who did not need to change or be changed. Change for yourself, not just for a goal. — Najwa Zebian

There's nothing wrong with the fashion industry. What's wrong is changing yourself for something you don't really care about just to get somewhere faster. — Anne Hathaway

If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself. — Terry Pratchett

You can change your life, and you can heal yourself. — Michael Beckwith

Spirit is like a mirror where you see yourself clearly and you start changing yourself. — Nirmala Srivastava

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. — Warren Buffett

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected.
I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid.
I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies.
I am afraid of me.
Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me.
I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here. — Emily Trunko

No one needs to hit rock bottom to change. And yet so many people do, only because most of us are unskilled in communicating with ourselves.
Stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, headaches, illness ... these are all symptoms of a bigger problem. You're trying to tell yourself something. Loudly.
Listen now or listen later. There is no ignoring the call. — Vironika Tugaleva

Your relationship with God, others, yourself, and all creation keeps changing for the better. Most of the world's religions have developed maps to describe this process. — Thomas Keating

Helping professionals, therapists, life coaches, healers can greatly assist you in changing your life for the better, but they pale in comparison to the power thats gained from developing a relationship with yourself. It's you that holds the power for change — Renae A. Sauter

The key to changing your self-image is not to call yourself by the mistakes you've made or how people see you, but to call yourself the way God sees you. — Jamie Larbi

The biggest mistake you could ever make is to think you work for anyone but yourself — Brian Tracy

Remain true to yourself and your philosophy. Changing in the face of adversity will in fact diminish your credibility with your customers. — Giorgio Armani

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ... Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you. — Brenda Ueland

You are going through difficult moments of life. Times when you do not understand the ways of our world or the ways of our people. Hold on to yourself in these moments. These times will change. Calm will return to your being. Hold on to yourself. Please. — Avijeet Das

Part of my success with urban bachata is reinventing yourself as an artist and continuing to give people different kind of fusions, mixing up the elements and concepts without changing the beat. — Romeo Santos

There's a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you have to keep being revolutionary. I can't keep shooting pop stars all my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking for the new, the unusual. — Rankin

Do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness is the sign of a disordered spirit. — Seneca.

You can't change the world, but you can change yourself. That adage suits consumer capitalism perfectly, since the illusion of changing ourselves is a successfully maintained through shopping. — Madeleine Bunting

Start changing yourself if you want to change the life around you. — Mahatma Gandhi

Change the way you speak about yourself and you can change your life. — Joel Osteen

I have a unique workout schedule. I concentrate on balancing with my core and my legs. Then, like any other surfer, I try to read the ocean. It's always changing and moving - doing its own thing - so you need to learn how it works and how to position yourself. — Bethany Hamilton

You are constantly changing & evolving through your experiences, how you interpret your experiences, and how you choose to do things in the future based on those experiences. — Jenna Marbles

Novelty is adaptive when things are changing and you need to adapt yourself. Tradition is essential to lay down the stability to raise families and form cohesive social groups. — Tim Jackson

Connecting with yourself and knowing yourself is a monumental and life changing event. — Bryant McGill

A moment later the race began - poof - without any fanfare. There was no horn or gun or even a megaphone. But someone at the starting line must have yelled, "Go!" for everyone began running. Some things, even some of the most life-changing experiences, start that way. No one says, "This (fill in the blank) is going to be one of the most radical rites of passage you will ever travel through, so pay attention." Someone just says, "Okay, go ahead now," and you find yourself in the middle of an unexpected lightning storm with your life flashing before you. — Cami Ostman

You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it. — Grace Lee Boggs

Listen to what your higher wisdom has to say about how you can deepen your participation in the global shift-through personal healing, changing your worldview, or finding ways to help others and the environment. This is how you can both heal yourself and help humanity. At their deepest level, the two are joined and ready to awaken to a new world. — Edmund Bourne

The most difficult matter is not so much to change the world as yourself. — Nelson Mandela

I know for sure that appreciating whatever shows up for you in life changes your personal vibration. You radiate and generate more goodness for yourself when you're aware of all you have and not focusing on your have-nots. — Oprah Winfrey

Coming to appreciate your worth can, in some cases, dramatically improve your circumstances by changing the choices you make and the actions you take. And as you begin to treat yourself with more respect, other people begin to do the same, since we subconsciously "train" others how to treat us through messages we send through body language, tone of voice, and other subtle cues and behaviors. Discovering your innate worth and living from that place allows you to make more constructive choices-to choose the higher roads of life — Dan Millman

Being meek does not make you weak. You're not someone who sways with changing circumstances. You don't allow yourself to be used. You're not passive or spineless. Your faith is in the Almighty, so you know that you are mighty. — Toni Sorenson

Beauty shouldn't be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It's about knowing that someone else's definition of pretty has no hold over you. — Golda Poretsky

God will cleanse your sins if you yourself are dissatisfied with yourself and will keep on changing until you are perfect. — Saint Augustine

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world
the world of fixed traits
success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other
the world of changing qualities
it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. — Carol S. Dweck

Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding. — Marcus Aurelius

If you don't think it's nearly impossible to change someone who is not willing to change, just think how hard it is to change yourself, and you are willing. — Charles F. Glassman

If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are fair, you're fooling yourself. That's like expecting the lion not to eat you because you didn't eat him. — John Spence

Firing people, damaging morale, and changing the entire way you do business. Ramping up doesn't have to be your goal. And we're not talking just about the number of employees you have either. It's also true for expenses, rent, IT infrastructure, furniture, etc. These things don't just happen to you. You decide whether or not to take them on. And if you do take them on, you'll be taking on new headaches, too. Lock in lots of expenses and you force yourself into building a complex business - one that's a lot more difficult and stressful to run. Don't be insecure about aiming to be a small business. — Jason Fried

MOST PEOPLE think acting is make-believe. Like it's a big game where people put on costumes and feign kisses or stab wounds and then pretend to gasp and die. They think it's a show. They don't understand that acting is becoming someone else, changing your thoughts and needs until you don't remember your own anymore. You let the other person invade everything you are and then you turn yourself inside out, spilling their identity onto the stage like a kind of bloodletting. — Mindy Mejia

When I turned 18, was the first time that I really started concentrating on politics. And I started doing so because I realized that in order to really create and generate change, it has to come from changing laws ... so I started campaigning for Norman Lear's foundation, which was Declare Yourself. — Hayden Panettiere

The world is on fire, young man. As writers, it is only proper that we do what we can to warn people.
But in telling the truth to the world, don't lie to yourself. Write whatever you want. Tell the truth.
Just don't imagine that you are changing anything.
Like I said, people just want to have a good time.

-Snagglepuss — Mark Russell

When we are acting like God, we are being ourselves! The ramifications of having God as our Daddy (rather than some ape dragging his knuckles in the African jungle somewhere) is life changing. I hope you can see that what you believe about your origin makes a difference in the way you value yourself and humanity in general. — Kris Vallotton

you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for "personal intercourse," substituted the safer "personal influence," and gave his junior hints on the setting of kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects them.
Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered this among life's duties. But here is a subject in which we must
inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like kindly traps, were not in Rickie's line, so he abandoned these
subjects altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. — E. M. Forster

Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating, it is irrational. Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do. Your life is a complex and ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions. To put it another way, you are more like a river than a statue. Stop trying to define yourself with negative labels - they — David D. Burns

Changing yourself is supposed to mean hope, at least according to the self-help books and magazine paradigms, but for me - and I suspect many others - it simply means finding new ways to feel inadequate. — Noelle Howey

You're going back?" asked Bod. Things that had been immutable were changing. "You're really leaving? But. You're my guardian."
"I was you're guardian. But you are old enough to guard yourself. I have other things to protect. — Neil Gaiman

Curses. Jesus. It took all kinds. There wasn't anything to a curse but words. Just like blessings and prayers and all the rest of it. People used words to try to change what they should be changing with their own two hands. And if the problem was too big to fix, no words called up into the air would make a lick of difference. — Mindy Mejia

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies. — Ethan Hawke

But...what makes you Nathan--what makes you so special--is that you are both White Witch and Black Witch, both dark and full of light. That's what I love about you. What I've always loved. And I love you still, Nathan, and I know I always will. But you're changing. And now...now what I fear is that you'll get the amulet and you'll hone the Gifts you took from your father. You'll be invulnerable and you'll kill more people, many, many more people. I fear you won't be able to stop and you'll lose yourself completely. And then I'll come to dread you too. — Sally Green

Othalas: Words. What are they but shadows on a page or howling on the wind? They are as ever-changing as the mists below us and it is just as easy to lose sense of yourself among them. I am older than most sorcerers so what I know may, indeed, be close to the truth. Magic, wyrd, words, dreams, they all come from the spirit. Within them lie both power and peril. For to misuse any is to warp your sense of self. To lie in words, or in magic, or in dreams
that is how you become lost. The lights you see, they were lost long before they came to the Vale. — Robert Fanney

When you learn to force yourself to go to the gym or start your homework or eat a salad instead of a hamburger, part of what's happening is that you're changing how you think," said Todd Heatherton, a researcher at Dartmouth who has worked on willpower studies.5.11 "People get better at regulating their impulses. They learn how to distract themselves from temptations. And once you've gotten into that willpower groove, your brain is — Charles Duhigg

As Nancy Frey writes of the long-distance pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, 'When pilgrims begin to walk several things usually begin to happen to their perceptions of the world which continue over the course of the journey: they develop a changing sense of time, a heightening of the senses, and a new awareness of their bodies and the landscape ... A young German man expressed it this way: 'In the experience of walking, each step is a thought. You can't escape yourself. — Rebecca Solnit

Allow yourself to feel those old feelings, but now, instead of engaging in the habitual self-defensive patterns, begin practicing new patterns. In the process of changing the patterns, the residual trauma will emerge. Know that you can feel all your Feels and still be safe. Know that you did everything you could in that moment to protect yourself; grant yourself forgiveness for the things you may still blame yourself for, recognizing that the trauma is the fault of the perpetrator alone. And imagine yourself as you are now, safe and whole. — Emily Nagoski

Accept yourself as you are right now; an imperfect, changing, growing and worthy person. — Denis Waitley

Empowered Women 101: Forgive yourself for having chosen to expose yourself to people who don't care about your feelings and help others to do the same. Enjoy life! It is as simple as changing your focus or perspective when you start thinking about people from the past who hurt your feelings. Eventually, you will forget about those types of people because your time and attention will be taken up by more positive things/people/events/activities etc. When you understand how much time is wasted trying to make people see you, understand you, respect you, value you, like you or agree with you ... life becomes a pointless negative fight for validation that will drain your happiness. You are worth more than the indifference, inattention or crumbs people throw you. You are a queen that demands respect and God will bring the right person into your life to make you forget why you ever wasted your time on nothing important. — Shannon L. Alder

I believe that you become yourself every single day of your life through your choices and how you think. And that's constantly changing every day ... You are constantly changing, evolving through your experiences, how you interpret your experiences, and how you choose to do things in the future based on those experiences ... Being yourself means you think with your own mind, and you make your own choices and that makes you you. — Jenna Marbles

Happiness requires changing yourself and changing your world. It requires pursuing your own goals and fitting in with others. Different people at different times in their lives will benefit from drawing more heavily on one approach or the other. — Jonathan Haidt

Nature is never static. It is always changing. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Nothing endures. Everything is in the process of either coming into being or expiring. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Forgiveness is the key to breaking the cycle of karma and reincarnation. Forgiveness doesn't mean: "What you did was okay." It simply means, "I'm no longer willing to carry the heavy toxic burdens of anger, resentment, and victimhood in my soul." You can work on healing, uplifting, and changing situations from a place of forgiveness, instead of from a place of resentment. Forgive yourself and everyone, and you are free! — Doreen Virtue

How lovely the months, the years with him had been. At the moment I hadn't understood their importance, and now here I was, growing sad. The rain the cold the snow the scents of Spring along the Arno and on the flowering streets of the city, the warmth we gave each other. Choosing a dress, glasses. His pleasure in changing me. And Paris, the exciting trip to a foreign country, the cafes, the politics, the literature, the revolution that would soon arrive, even though the working class was becoming integrated. And him. His room at night. His body. All finished. I tossed nervously in my bed unable to sleep. I'm lying to myself , I thought. Had it really been so wonderful ? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to rigorous examination — Elena Ferrante

Be what you are. Do what you love. Speak what you feel. Don't hide
your humanity. Celebrate it. Embrace it.
That is how you change the world. — Vironika Tugaleva

I use to worry about how hard it would be to stay the same. So I changed. Then I worried about how hard it would be to change. So, I stayed the same. Somewhere between staying the same and changing and changing and staying the same I've realized that worrying doesn't change anything. — Kimberley Alecia Smith

You can't change the world, you can only change yourself. — Beatrice Wood

Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can't change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing — Jim Rohn

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently. — Pema Chodron

Who you spend time with is who you become! Change your life by consciously choosing to surround yourself with people with higher standards! — Tony Robbins

Philosophy goes into the problem deeply, without changing being at all. Religion tells me that I have been created; that I am continuously receiving myself from divine hands, that I am free yet living from God's strength. Try to feel your way into this truth, and your whole attitude towards life will change. You will see yourself in an entirely new perspective. What once seemed self-understood becomes questionable. Where once you were indifferent, you become reverent; where self-confident, you learn to know "fear and trembling." But where formerly you felt abandoned, you will now feel secure, living as a child of the Creator-Father, and the knowledge that this is precisely what you are will alter the very tap-root of your being — Romano Guardini

Not even analysis, by itself, can transform you. You must still do the changing yourself. — Natalie Wood