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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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Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Self
Done
Reproach
Guilt
Otherwise
Possible
Moral
Wrong

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To attain success without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure.
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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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Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
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Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs-and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match up, we have integrity.
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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.
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Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.
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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.
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It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.
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For I to become we and yet remain I, is one of the great challenges of marriage.
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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.
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It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.
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Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative.
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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.
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Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
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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.
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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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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.
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The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.
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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.
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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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