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The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

Nathaniel Branden

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Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Second
Growth
Steps
Change
Acceptance
Firsts
Step
First
Toward
Awareness
Accepting

More quotes by Nathaniel Branden

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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.
Nathaniel Branden
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In the nature of our existence, we must act to achieve values. And in order to act appropriately, we need to value the beneficiary of our actions. In order to seek values, we must consider ourselves worthy of enjoying them. In order to fight for our happiness, we must consider ourselves worthy of happiness.
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If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, a raise, or help with a project, that is an act of self-assertiveness. You are moving out into life rather than contracting and withdrawing.
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A productive purpose to which you give yourself fully and joyfully is one of the great adventures of life. It is a uniquely human source of happiness.
Nathaniel Branden
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In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
Nathaniel Branden
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The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism.
Nathaniel Branden
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A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him.
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Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
Nathaniel Branden
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For I to become we and yet remain I, is one of the great challenges of marriage.
Nathaniel Branden
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A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.
Nathaniel Branden
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If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity you lack the will to persevere.
Nathaniel Branden
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Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
Nathaniel Branden
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Moved by a passion they do not understand for a goal they seldom reach, men and women are haunted by the vision of a distant possibility that refuses to be extinguished.
Nathaniel Branden
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Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.
Nathaniel Branden
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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.
Nathaniel Branden
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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.
Nathaniel Branden
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To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself.
Nathaniel Branden
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Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence.
Nathaniel Branden
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What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.
Nathaniel Branden
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Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
Nathaniel Branden