Nathaniel Branden
When we bury our feelings, we also bury ourselves. It means we exist in a state of alienation. We rarely know it, but we are lonely for ourselves.Collection: Lonely
Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender -not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.Collection: Happiness
The first love affair you must consummate is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.Collection: Love Yourself
Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.Collection: People
Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.Collection: Integrity
Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person.Collection: Love
It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.Collection: Creativity
The higher our self-esteem, the stronger the drive to express ourselves, reflecting the sense of richness within. The lower our self-esteem, the more urgent the need to "prove" ourselves or to forget ourselves by living mechanically and unconsciously.Collection: Self Esteem
Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.Collection: Pain
We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered.Collection: Truth
A depression is a large-scale decline in production and trade...there is nothing in the nature of a free-market economy to cause such an event.Collection: Events
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.Collection: Love Is
In a world in which we are exposed to more information, more options, more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we must choose the values by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own intelligence-to look at the world through our own eyes-to chart our course and think through how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to continuous questioning and learning-to be, in a word, self-responsible.Collection: Philosophy
If you feel inadequate to face challenges, unworthy of love or respect, untitled to happiness, and fear assertive thought, wants, or needs- if you lack basic self trust, self-respect, and self-confidence- your self-esteem deficiency will limit you, no matter what other assets you possess.Collection: Self Esteem
If you are terrified of making mistakes, you will be reluctant to acknowledge them when you do make them-and therefore you will not correct them.Collection: Mistake
For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage.Collection: Marriage
The real basic power of an individual isn't what he or she knows; it's the ability to think and learn and face new challenges.Collection: Real
Even when our life is most difficult, it is important to remember that something within us is keeping us alive- the life force-that lift us, energizes us, pulls us back sometimes from the abyss of despair. True spirituality does not exist without love of life.Collection: Love Life
I believe that earning your living doing something you enjoy is one of the very best ways to nourish yourself. But even if you are employed at something that is not your ideal work, it is important to find ways to take as much pleasure in it as possible. Living in the present moment can make ordinary activities more interesting and joyful; you may be surprised, if you only look, at what you will find. If you try to stay connected with why you are doing what you are doing, for example, then even the parts of your life that aren't especially interesting can become more meaningful.Collection: Meaningful
Some people have a view of self and of the universe that obliges them to struggle for happiness, to yearn for happiness-"some time in the future"-perhaps next year or the year after that. But not now. Not at this moment. Not here. Here and now is too terrifyingly close, too terrifyingly immediate. They suffer from happiness anxiety.Collection: Happiness
Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully realized self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual's worth by his or her external achievements. We admire achievements-in ourselves and others-and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But that is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve.Collection: Self Esteem
If we do have realistic confidence in our mind and value, if we feel secure within ourselves, we tend to experience the world as open to us and to respond appropriately to challenges and opportunities.Collection: Confidence
Of all the judgments you make in life, none is as important as the one you make about yourself. The difference between low self-esteem and high self-esteem is the difference between passivity and action, between failure and success.Collection: Self Esteem
The practice of assertiveness: being authentic in our dealings with others; treating our values and persons with decent respect in social contexts; refusing to fake the reality of who we are or what we esteem in order to avoid disapproval; the willingness to stand up for ourselves and our ideas in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts.Collection: Reality
Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match.Collection: Integrity
If we attach more importance to what other people believe than to what we know to be true - if we value belonging over being - we will not attain authenticity.Collection: Believe
To preserve an unclouded capacity for the enjoyment of life is an unusual moral and psychological achievement. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the prerogative of mindlessness, but the exact opposite: It is the reward of self-esteem.Collection: Life
What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.Collection: Self
Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative.Collection: People
The feeling that "I am enough" does not mean that I have nothing to learn, nothing further to achieve, and nowhere to grow to. It means that I accept myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and respect myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage.Collection: Mean
To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals—to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be—and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know.Collection: Mean
A well-developed sense of self is a necessary if not sufficient condition of your well-being. Its presence does not guarantee fulfillment, but its absence guarantees some measure of anxiety, frustration, or despair.Collection: Frustration
There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.Collection: Confidence
Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.Collection: Children
Set goals that don't feel all that easy, that challenge you, stimulate you, and give you a chance to stretch and push yourself. That is where the power of growth lies.Collection: Lying
A goal without an action plan is a daydream.Collection: Goal
In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learnCollection: Learning
The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.Collection: Self Esteem
Your life is important. Fight for it. Honour your highest potentials.Collection: Self Esteem
It is true that people are sometimes hit by adversities beyond their control. But those so affected are better helped when they are awakened to the resources they do possess than when they are told they don't have any.Collection: Adversity
Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.Collection: Spiritual
It's not that achievements prove our worth but rather that the process of achieving is the means by which we develop our effectiveness, our competence at living.Collection: Mean
To accept struggle as part of life, to accept all of it, even the darkest moments of anguish; to be motivated by love rather than fear, by confidence rather than insecurity: these are the benchmarks of high self-esteem. The wish to avoid fear and pain is not the motive that drives the lives of highly evolved men and women; rather, it is the life force within them, thrusting toward its unique form of expression-the actualization of personal values.Collection: Pain
The tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their sense of who they are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness. So they are drive to find ways to sabotage it.Collection: Happiness
The lies most devastating to our self-esteem are not so much the lies we tell as the lies we live.Collection: Self Esteem
Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence.Collection: Love
Suppose you feel you cannot accept some fact about yourself. Then own your refusal to accept. Own the block. Embrace it fully. And watch it begin to disappear. The principal is this: Begin where you are-accept that. Then change and growth become possible.Collection: Block
There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at allCollection: Reality