Best Quotes by Nathaniel Branden (Top 10)

  1. The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.
  5. 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.
  6. Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
  7. 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.
  8. Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

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