Quotes & Sayings About Self Observation

BREATHE
Mindful breathing is a basic wonderful pleasure for life. Breathing calms our body and mind to unify our soul within the present moment. Breathing is a supreme gift from Mother Nature, giving universal pranic energy which one guides within.

BELIEVE
Intentions, wishes and dreams can come true. Not necessarily all at once, but herein lies the splendour of life's journey. The secret tonic to success is belief and imagination, blended with confidence to open your heart and follow your dreams.

BE
Savadhyaya is the practice of inward reflection, honest self-observation and learning. Whatever you do, wherever you are, find contentment and simply be there, because that's exactly where you need to be. — Eva

His skin was a pretty colour, it made me jealous.
Jacob noticed my scrutiny.
What?" he asked, suddenly self-conscious.
"Nothing. I just hadn't realised before. Did you know, you're sort of beautiful?"
Once the words slipped out, I worried that he might take my implusive observation the wrong way.
But Jacob rolled his eyes. "You hit your head pretty hard, didn't you?"
"I'm serious."
Well, then, thanks. Sort of."
I grinned. "You're sort of welcome. — Stephenie Meyer

There is no way you can share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself. When you are contemptible to yourself, you are no longer in you. To feel shame is to feel exposed in a diminished way. When you're an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness that Kaufman describes as "creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self." This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction. The severed parts of the self are projected in relationships. — John Bradshaw

We develop our whole character from our thoughts, actions, attentive observations, and from the resolute pursuit of our inspirational dreams. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The most fundamental exercise is self-observation, which is the catalyst for inner change, it will give self-knowledge and a clear mind and perception. Without it, the attempt to reach enlightenment and awaken consciousness is destined to fail. — Belsebuub

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world. — Franz Kafka

In all of knowable reality, God is unique. He is knowable not like the multiplication table or the table of elements; he alone is knowable as the one totally in control of being known. He is not at the disposal of the human mind. He is known when he wills to be known. Yet he is known in and through created reality, which is known naturally. Therefore the glory of God is exalted most not when we know God apart from observation and reading and study, but when we know God as a result of his free and gracious self-revelation in and through our earnest observation of and meditation on his work and Word in history. — John Piper

This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286) — Eugene Taylor

The power of attention is much greater than the force of self-restraint. — Charles Eisenstein

And yet if anything in the world can save you, it is not a convent and not Catholicism, but simply an active interest in your fellow-creatures. When experience and observation have taught us love and charity, we are saved, and life is no longer terrible. Fate may be as cruel as she pleases ; but if we have warmth and love in our hearts, we shall never be alone, never in despair, and shall never think of self-destruction, if only out of pity for all our suffering brothers, whom, as long as we live, we have always the chance of helping. — Aimee Dostoyevsky

Nothing is so capable of diminishing self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation-to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Whatever her name was, she was pretty. She had a thick, careless braid of chestnut hair, a quick smile, and dark, merry eyes. She wore some kind of a fuzzy lavender pullover, and when she crossed her legs and lifted her guitar onto her lap, she had an interesting way of tucking the foot of the bottom leg back under her chair that made Hector feel melty. He looked away in self-preservation. — Lynne Rae Perkins

Observation is the telescope of human nature. It is the tele of watching distantly. But taking an action is the result of Self-regulation and interference. It is going beyond boundaries in aiming to achieve a considerable ambitions. — Mohammed Rasmi

It has been said that self-respect is the gate of heaven, and the most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Remember yourself. Deep inside, you have an observer, a constant neutral witness to your posture, gesture, facial expression, breathing, taste, impressions of light and sound. Don't leap to interpret. Just be there and observe. — Jonathan Price

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding. — Amit Ray

From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the Foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help us to: 1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. unclutter — Gretchen Rubin

All genius is simple. It involves close observation and a momentous act of self trust. — Howell Raines

Based on decades of observation, I propose that sudden high levels of praise always trigger an equal amount of inner self-loathing. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it. — Neal Stephenson

Sacrifice of the self is the source of all humiliation, as also on the contrary is the foundation of all true exaltation. The first step will be an inward gaze - an isolating contemplation of ourselves. Whoever stops here has come only halfway. The second step must be an active outward gaze - autonomous, constant observation of the external world.
No one will ever achieve excellence as an artist who cannot depict anything other than his own experiences, his favorite objects, who cannot bring himself to study assiduously even a quite strange object, which does not interest him at all, and to depict it at leisure. An artist must be able and willing to depict everything. This is how a great artistic style is created, which rightly is so much admired in Goethe. — Novalis

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation. — Anthony De Mello

Well, she had her own sorry self, her own story, the snowflake of her life, but even as a child she had been unimpressed by the breathless adult observation that no two of these were exactly alike. In the first place, she had thought, how does anybody know that? And in the second place, so what? — Jincy Willett

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation. — Franz Kafka

For spiritual change, we need to see and understand ourselves. What sees is consciousness, it is what perceives, and is essentially what we are. To understand ourselves we need to look within and study how we think and feel, and doing that is called self-observation. — Belsebuub

When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on. — John R. Perry

Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellowmen, who usually arrange to hide secrets where none exist; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Disparate from animals, human beings are constantly interpreting who we are. The mental rhythm of the human mind is a stream of thought that is constantly in motion. The development of conscious awareness is a lifetime process of interpreting the external world by employing the tools of observation, memory, and imagination; supplemented by rational thoughts, meditative reflections, intuition, and freelance conjure. Every day we can consciously work to alter our being or remain mentally stagnant. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve. — Charles Dickens

I greatly admire first-class mimics' super-sensitive powers of observation, the extraordinary accuracy with which they observe vocal production, inflexions, rhythms of speech, facial expressions and body language, all those tiny, unique traits which they can then reproduce so precisely. But I also can't help wondering whether they are, unconsciously, observing others closely in the hope they can find something there that they can "borrow" and incorporate into their own personality structure, to strengthen their sense of self. Perhaps it's an extreme form of the desire most people display early in their lives to find role models. Of course, once impersonators have developed this ability, they are rewarded by the delight they produce in an audience, whether they are at a party with friends, or earning a living on television, so they have no reason to stop, even though its original purpose has never really been accomplished. — John Cleese

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [ ... ] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [ ... ] a being which immediately recognises itself, [ ... ] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

The shaping of character mimics the smallest detail of habit; humans are creatures that learn from observation. Each little thing you do, and each thing you allow yourself to become desensitized to matters. They create you - whether you know it consciously or not. — Grace Sara

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint. — Henri Matisse

Look up at the moon; don't think about yourself. — Marty Rubin

Our observer is not affected by emotional ups and downs, our personal life dramas, or by the events of the external world. It is our observer, at the core of our being, that teaches us to let go as we begin identify with it rather than with all the hubbub of our moment-to-moment experience and our mental chatter about it. — Marcey Shapiro

(12) TWELVTH SIGN: Another sign of the learned man of the next world is that he saves himself from innovations even though the people are unanimous on innovations and novelties. He is rather diligent in studying the conditions of the companions, their conduct and character and their deeds. They spent their lives in jihad, meditation, avoidance of major and minor sins, observation of their outer conduct and inner self. But the greater object of thought of the learned men of the present time is to teach, compose books, to make argumentation, to give Fatwa, to become mutawali of Waqf estates, enjoy the properties of orphans, frequent the rulers and enjoy their company. — Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

I was lying in bed this morning and saying to myself, 'the remarkable thing about Ethel is her stupendous self-satisfaction' when in came your letter to confirm this profound psychological observation. How delighted I was! — Virginia Woolf

The training is a set of interpersonal interactions that lead to emotional and intellectual experiences that provide a circumstance and an intrument for self awareness, self observation and reflection on the circumstances of the subject trainee, both in his individual life and as a social being. — Humberto Maturana

The good news, however, is that the self also has made reason and scientific observation possible, and reason and science, in turn, have been gradually correcting the misleading intuitions prompted by the unaided self. Overcoming — Antonio R. Damasio

So she retreated into herself, rebuilt the damaged pathways of her mind, explored long-unvisited memories, wandered among the trillions of human lives that were open to her observation, read over the libraries of every book known to exist in every language human beings had ever spoken. She created out of all this a self that was not utterly linked to Ender Wiggin, though she was still devoted to him, still loved him above any other living soul. Jane made herself into someone who could bear to be cut off from her lover, husband, father, child, brother, friend. — Orson Scott Card

(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

Sometimes the heart can hear what the ears do not. — A.J. Darkholme

Low states are a like a poison to the psyche. Millions of people throughout the world take tranquillizers each day to combat depression, but this does not tackle its root cause, which is found in the basic state of the internal energies of the psyche.
Basically the energy of the psyche needs to change, from low states to spiritual ones. It requires inner observation, the destruction of the egos, and alchemical transformation. — Belsebuub

But as we mature and begin to grasp that we are often the cause of our own difficulties, we begin a process of compassionate self-observation leading to deeper self-knowledge - denial gives way to authenticity as the light of awareness penetrates our shadow. We come to accept ourselves (and others) as we are rather than as we might want ourselves (or them) to be. And as we embrace the full scope of our humanity, we open the way to genuine growth and transformation. — Dan Millman

...obscurantist feature in social scientists trying to combine pluralism with environmentalism. They are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious, that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals. Nonetheless, as Goldberg explains, the self-described pluralist and prominent psychologist Gordon Allport went out of his way in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) to reject stereotypes as factually inaccurate as well as socially harmful. For Allport and a great many other social Scientists, nothing is intuitively correct unless it is politically so. — Paul Edward Gottfried

Pondering the legitimate modern day problem of intellectual bullies. Self-proclaimed smarties attacking the innocent.

They revel in being politically correct, all-loving and open-minded while not applying these principles to themselves.

The ultimate double standard in the name of truth and acceptance. It's sad.

This is not a post about anyone in particular. This is an observation over years.

Have you seen it? Call it out when you do.

The offender won't know what to do because they know that you know their game. — Richie Norton

Judging by informal observation, most young Americans burn up their spare time buffing their emotional IQ and self-esteem with social media and non-stop texting. That's great for eye-thumb coordination, but what about the satisfaction of actually making something? — Seth Shostak

Because economists go through a similar training and share a common method of analysis, they act very much like a guild. The models themselves may be the product of analysis, reflection, and observation, but practitioners' views about the real world develop much more heuristically, as a by-product of informal conversations and socialization among themselves. This kind of echo chamber easily produces overconfidence - in the received wisdom or the model of the day. Meanwhile, the guild mentality renders the profession insular and immune to outside criticism. The models may have problems, but only card-carrying members of the profession are allowed to say so. The objections of outsiders are discounted because they do not understand the models. The profession values smarts over judgment, being interesting over being right - so its fads and fashions do not always self-correct. — Dani Rodrik

We do not need to attend classroom training programmes for everything. Observation opens the windows of knowledge around us — Sukant Ratnakar

Self-observation helps us to refocus within, to balance ourselves and to be in the present moment ... — Jacqueline Ripstein

G. I. Gurdieff, "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"
So-and-so-and-so-must-be; do-not-do-what-must-not-be.
Mullah's favorite saying. p. 598 — Gurdieff

I don't feel myself that I Know it all, but I have enough conceit to be successful. That observation was made by a businessman in his 30s who was making notable headway, although his path bristled with difficulties. Business places no premiums on shrinking violets. Employers prefer men who have self-assurance, forcefulness, go-aheadness, men who know their jobs and know that they know it. — B.C. Forbes

In the example of the navigator, no writing was essential to draw the meaning of observing the object at a distance from the ship. In the real the
observation has been noted and that is enough to give it a meaning, a subjective meaning, a meaning exclusively important for the navigator himself. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

We 'rid ourselves of conceptual thought' when, by persistent observation, we recognize the unreality of our self-centered thoughts. Then we can remain dispassionate and fundamentally unaffected by them. That does not mean to be a cold person. Rather, it means not to be caught and dragged around by circumstances. — Joko Beck

Given that you desire to change things in your life much bigger than particles, how long do you maintain your observation and how much mental power do you invest in observing those things? — Ilchi Lee

We gain knowledge about the interworking of our personal mind through observation of the external world and personal introspection. Contemplation requires a degree of stillness, the willingness to consider deep thoughts. — Kilroy J. Oldster

What does introspection mean? It means you're looking in the wrong direction. — Marty Rubin

Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Recalibration of the mind means clearing our perceptions and recovering our capacity for pure observation. — Ilchi Lee

Title: Teaching Writing Based on Journaling Concepts of Thoreau Thesis: Information processing generates active students. My thesis is to engage in remembering place. Through my own experience of basing my newest novel entitled The Passing Light on my own travel diary, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau. My students create E- journals as primary sources for essays. Writing based on keen observation and self discovery is a part of learning to write. — Maryann Diedwardo

When we play, we sense no limitations. In fact, when we are playing, we are usually unaware of ourselves. Self-observation goes out the window. We forget all those past lessons of life, forget our potential foolishness, forget ourselves. We immerse ourselves in the act of play. And we become free. — Lenore Terr

Distractions, or changes in the demands of the task at hand. Key Words: Begin and Maintain Behavior. Flexibility: They can exercise the ability to be adaptable, think strategically, and solve problems by creating solutions as things change around them, shifting attention and plans as needed. Key Words: Adapt, Think, and Solve. Execution and Goal Attainment: They exhibit the ability to execute the plan within the limits of time and other constraints. Key Words: Execute within Time. Self-regulation: They use self-observation to monitor performance, self-judgment to evaluate performance, and self-regulation to change in order to reach the goal. Key Words: Monitor, Evaluate, Regulate.* — Henry Cloud

How then can we change being? By applying the knowledge of the Work through self-observation to ourselves. And remember that you do not change by being told what to do. You only change through seeing what you have to do when you realize what your being is like. — Maurice Nicoll

Matter is energy. In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia. — Graham Chapman

I might never have realized who I really was or have gotten answers to the relentless questions that had driven me to the Cove without those quiet hours spent with Fairlight in the mountains. I do not know why it is that an intimate contact with wildlife and a personal observation of nature helps so much in this self-discovery. But that it is so, I have seen in other people's lives as well as my own ... even a few bricks and macadam are a shield between us and the wisdom that nature has to give. — Catherine Marshall

Another way to speak of the anxiety is in terms of the gap between information and knowledge. A barrage of data so often fails to tell us what we need to know. Knowledge, in turn, does not guarantee enlightenment or wisdom. (Eliot said that, too: "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?") It is an ancient observation, but one that seemed to bear restating when information became plentiful - particularly in a world where all bits are created equal and information is divorced from meaning. The humanist and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford, for example, restated it in 1970: "Unfortunately, 'information retrieving,' however swift, is no substitute for discovering by direct personal inspection knowledge whose very existence one had possibly never been aware of, and following it at one's own pace through the further ramification of relevant literature." He begged for a return to "moral self-discipline. — James Gleick