Quotes & Sayings About Making Your Own Mind Up

Assertiveness is critical for feeling empowered in your own mind as well as at work and at home. It's saying honestly to yourself and others, "This is who I am. This is how I want to be treated," while respecting other people's rights and opinions. Assertiveness isn't about being liked all the time, nor about making sure everyone is happy. It is about standing up for your right to be treated fairly. There are many advantages to assertiveness. First, — Judy Murphy

At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working - I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I'd spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn't handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. — Gillian Flynn

Grinning to himself, Blue went out the door pulling out on his T-shirt. So sue him, he had changed his mind, but he sure wasn't going to quite admit it. She'd laugh like a hyena, and he had some pride. He found his hat, made sure to clean up Roy's kitchen, and went out to see to the horses. God, had he ever had so much fun in a relationship before? Most of them had been just about sex, and he and Jenna still hadn't even done that.
Maybe that was the secret. Liking someone first and then realizing you wanted to make love to them made a lot more sense. Blue put on his hat. And he would be making love with Jenna, he was damned sure about that. Sometimes even a Marine had to reassess his priorities.
44% — Kate Pearce

Knowledge is power. Power in the aspect of making your own mind up;and, not accepting what others tell you. — Temitope Owosela

Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present. — Eckhart Tolle

I had slept nothing all night, making ghosts for myself, filling my mind with them and giving myself pale frights. All the ghosts had a different punishment for me, some of them shocking indeed. — Richard Llewellyn

Having Simultanagnosia (object blindness), Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Semantic Agnosia (meaning blindness) goes in my favour with regards to abstract art living in world full of fragmented pieces when I draw it is in real time no visual memory means no "pre-formatted" picture in my mind so I go where my hand takes it's like journey that is happening in the moment, hence why I drew these without my lenses on. When I was younger I would draw pictures by "route" which made it a appear that I had a visual memory (cobbling together things out of context and making a contextual image) — Paul Isaacs

Not to be with the one you love, Laura, the one person you should be spending your life with
it's like a kind of living death. To wake up every morning and know you are still here. To have that brief, sweet moment of blankness, before your mind reminds you who you are, and why you are unhappy. It was like hell. A living hell of the heart's own making. — Harriet Evans

... don't confuse between self-love and narcissism. Self- love is making yourself your number one priority but narcissism is start enforcing that priority over others. First one is healthy; second one is not. First one is for your mental healthiness and well-being while the second one is to mess up with other peoples' peace of mind to serve your own needs. — Gracia Hunter

I can always make up my mind better when there's a man around, because I know the thing to do is just the opposite to what he says. — Sophie Kerr

Listen to your gut, her father was fond of saying, but make up your own damn mind. — Jeremy Robinson

I made my way to the control room, where I had the most mind-numbing communication that I've ever experienced with a man. And no, I am not a chauvinist. But if you're a woman, you must realize by now your propensity toward largely complex and seemingly illogical thought processes, making you capable of inflicting unusually cruel amounts of distress upon the relatively simple mind of a man. Personally, I'd take that as a compliment. — Mixerman

Part of growing up is making sure your sense of reality isn't entirely grounded in your own mind. — David Levithan

In some sense, list-making is to mind-mapping as black and white photography is to color photography. Both are good, both are useful. One gives you precision and clarity; the other gives you a broader spectrum of potential beauty, as well as access to otherwise-unseen features. — Anonymous

If you meditate, meditation is so beautiful, who bothers about the result? And if you bother about the result, meditation is not possible. This result oriented mind is the only barrier, the only block. There are not many blocks, the only block is that of the result oriented mind: never here-now, always somewhere else thinking of the result; while making love, thinking about the result. — Rajneesh

We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given. — Midge Decter

It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on. — J.M. Barrie

You're making me get used to sleeping at night," she said. "Plus, I don't sleep in my clothing anymore." "If you did, it would make things a little awkward." "Yes," she said, "but what if we get attacked during the night? I'd have to fight them naked." "I wouldn't mind watching that." She — Brandon Sanderson

It" is the idea of him or her that resides in us--inspired by the "Something" in them, as Pope has it, "That gives us back the Image of our Mind." Although the perception of It must be excited by some extraordinary perturbation in the looks and personality of the adored, the aura that It broadcasts arises not merely from the singularity of an original, as Walter Benjamin supposed, but also from the fabulous success of its reproducibility in the imaginations of many others, charmed exponentially by the number of its copies. The one-of-kind item must become a type, a replicable role-icon of itself--from "a Charles Hart" or "a Nell Gwyn" to "a Mary Pickford" or "a Douglas Fairbanks"--in order to unleash the Pygmalion effect in the hearts and minds of the fans, making the idea of him or her theirs--as much or more than anything else they might call their own. — Joseph Roach

The essence of leadership is making up your own mind and then being able to take other people with you. — Eva Cox

Keep your arms dow." He let go of the shirt and slipped his arms around me. A second later, his agile fingers unclasped my bra.
"What are you doing?"
He laughed as the straps slid down my arms, making me shiver. "Like I said before, get your mind out of the gutter. Your virtue is safe with me."
"My virtue?" I wasn't sure if I wanted it to be safe with him.
He peeked up. "For now. — J. Lynn

In behaviorism, an infant's talents and abilities didn't matter because there was no such thing as a talent or an ability. Watson had banned them from psychology, together with other contents of the mind, such as ideas, beliefs, desires, and feelings. They were subjective and unmeasurable, he said, and unfit for science, which studies only objective and measurable things. To a behaviorist, the only legitimate topic for psychology is overt behavior and how it is controlled by the present and past environment. (There is an old joke in psychology: What does a behaviorist say after making love? "It was good for you; how was it for me?") — Steven Pinker

You always did like to run things, never mind your crafty knack for making everyone believe that somebody else was in charge. — Janny Wurts

When you step outside of school and have to teach yourself about life, you develop a different relationship to information. I've never been a purely linear thinker. You can see it in my rhymes. My mind is always jumping around, restless, making connections, mixing and matching ideas, rather than marching in a straight line. That's why I'm always stressing focus. My thoughts chase each other from room to room in my head if I let them, so sometimes I have to slow myself down. — Jay-Z

She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that
she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty.
Tiffany thought of it as the I'm-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they
were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their
I-am-here signal.
Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. She could turn it off, too. She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all. — Terry Pratchett

Some people make friends by wining and dining people with the sole objective of doing business with them. Once the usefulness goes, the friendship also goes. It is unfortunate because it is very shortsighted and insincere. One should keep in mind that just because a person is a friend it does not mean they are under an obligation to buy from you. In my career, I have acquired clients professionally and built friendships later, versus making friends with the intention of doing business. Sooner or later, people uncover the ulterior motive. — Shiv Khera

He was annoyed with his mind - it would be a lot easier to do his task well if his mind would just behave and not keep making him scared. — Larry McMurtry

Independent Thinking simply means making up your own mind. — Pearl Zhu

She's a sickness in my head."

Then get well.

What you feel is self-made and attended to over time. You want to let go but are unwilling to let go because you are getting something from it; An escape? An excuse? Bondage?

You are idealizing another person, building up the idea of them, and making them a legend in your own mind.

Is it really a sickness or something you can control?

The question is: do you even want to?

Each time a thought creeps into your mind, you choose whether to give it freedom to remain or to wander. You can rebuke it or replace it. After all, it's your mind. — Donna Lynn Hope

To the average eye, my bedroom was a complete disaster. The floor was hardly visible with all of the empty soda bottles, chip bags, and piles of clothes covering it. The rustic nightstand by my bed was so cluttered with papers, more soda bottles, notebooks, and hoodies that it looked like a pile of contemporary art. And my bed? It was just a pile of dark blue blankets and pillows scattered on an old mattress. What's the point in making your bed, anyway? You're just gonna mess it up and unmake it at the end of the day. Why even bother? My bedroom might look like a mess to anyone else, but to me, it was my own personal oasis. I liked it just the way it was. I never bought the whole saying, "A cluttered room is a cluttered mind." Me? Cluttered? Nah. More like creative. The more cluttered your room is, the more creative you are. And judging by my room, I must be pretty creative. I — Savannah Ostler

It's odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who's happy to fill you in on his life's story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank he'll soon rob.' - Richard Ford, Canada — Richard Ford

He wonders if it's some sort of twisted joke the adults are having, shoving hormonal teens into tight quarters but making it impossible to do anything but breathe.
"I wouldn't mind suffocating if it was with you," the girl says, which is flattering, but makes him even less interested in her.
"There'll be a better time," he tells her, knowing that such a time will never come - at least not for her - but hope is a powerful motivator.
Eventually they settle into a sort of symbiotic breathing rhythm. He breathes in when she breathes out, so their chests don't fight for space.
After a while, there's a jarring motion. With his arm now around the girl, he holds her a little more tightly, knowing that easing her fear somehow eases his own. — Neal Shusterman

The hot air wrapped me up like a blanket, curling around my body and making me want to hang my tongue out like a dog. And then spray it with water. From a fire hose. On full blast. I don't know, I think the heat was messing with my mind. It — Robert J. Crane

The reason you might not be creating the life you want is that you are making most of your decisions unconsciously, and most of your subconscious policies (programs and rules) are fear-based and inaccurate. These inaccurate policies are sabotaging your success, because they don't want the very things you think you consciously want. — Kimberly Giles

You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow. — Marcus Aurelius

When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence. — Vladimir Nabokov

If one kept the great yellow mounds of smashed brick in the corner of one's eye, then the mind understood them as the contours of nature and forgot its trick of making one unhappy. — Chris Cleave

Meditation is the study of making the mind still. As your mind becomes still, a power enters you. This power transmogrifies your mind, it escalates your evolution and you begin to cycle through many incarnations in one lifetime. — Frederick Lenz

Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts. — Paul Brunton

Voting is the least arduous of a citizen's duties. He has the prior and harder duty of making up his mind. — Ralph Barton Perry

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles come together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaws can encompass and what the light will stain. — Lee Friedlander

A mind is a terrible thing. All this evolution nonsense is making me feel like a complete APE! — Berkeley Breathed

Dali blinked at me. "Would you mind making coffee while you're dancing? I smell it on the bottom shelf, either first or second jar on the left."
I opened the first jar and looked inside. Coffee. The label said BORAX. "What's up with the labels?"
Dali shrugged. "You're in the house of a cat whose job is to spy. He thinks he's clever. I'd be careful with the silverware drawer. There might be a bomb in it. — Ilona Andrews

Filmmaking is not the work of the weak-minded. It may not be rocket science, but it requires ten times more strength of the mind than that. — Abhijit Naskar

Have been slowly making up my mind, seriously & quietly. Either I am loathsome to others, I have decided, or else I shall be a beacon of rich warm light, spreading good and plenty, making things prosper, being a cosmic architect, conquering the world and being respected, myself grinning surreptitiously. Either that, Sirs, or I shall be the most loathsome, useless, and parasitical (on myself) creature in the world. I shall be a denizen of the Underground, or a successful man of the world. There shall be no compromise!!! I mean it. — Jack Kerouac

To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.
"And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years," said Dick. "We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly."
"And what conclusion do you draw from that?" asked Mrs. Crowley.
"Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda. — W. Somerset Maugham

Shutting out all external objects, fixing the vision between the eyebrows, making even the inward and outward breaths, the sage who has controlled the senses, mind and understanding, who is intent upon liberation, who has cast away desire, fear and anger, he is ever freed. — The Bhagavad Gita

Meditation, you know, comes by a process imagination. You go through all these processes purification of the elements - making the one melt the other, that into the next higher, that into mind, that into spirit, and then you are spirit. — Swami Vivekananda

RVM Thoughts for Today
Joy and Bliss can come from the little and most unexpected things if only we Program our Mind to enjoy these little things. — R.v.m.

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self. — David Brooks

In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a decision for them as a veritable light from Heaven; any making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable for him there, — Thomas Carlyle

Even though the Judge would charge the jury that they should listen to all the evidence before they made up their minds, the chances were likely that 100% of them will have already decided if William was guilty or not before the trial was over. — Kenneth Eade

Often the inspiration to write music comes from the voices in your head. You're not crazy. Just be thankful they are not making you rescue people in 20-degree weather at 2:30 in the morning in the forest. — Shannon L. Alder

that dressing room for an hour as my mother pretended to be making up her mind about buying that dress she could never afford. And from that day on we never saw her adorn her glorious hair with a single blossom, nor was she ever in our long childhood — Pat Conroy