Quote

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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Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Means
Paying
Doe
Analysis
Mean
Presence
Much
Endless
Something
Requires
Subjecting
Love
Loving
Simpler
Relationship
Noticing
Attention
Consciously

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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.
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As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.
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Accepting does not necessarily mean liking, enjoying, condoning. I can accept what is-and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.
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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.
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Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.
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If my aim is to prove I am 'enough,' the project goes on to infinity-because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.
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Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality.
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The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.
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Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.
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We tend to feel most comfortable, most at home, with people whose self esteem level resembles our own.
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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.
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A goal without an action plan is a daydream.
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The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
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Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.
Nathaniel Branden
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If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.
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The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
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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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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.
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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 all
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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