Quote

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility.

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
Someone
Toward
Need
Taking
Irresponsibly
Mean
Control
Behaving
Needs
Responsibility
Responsibilities
Understand
Properly
Means
Belong
Else
Boundaries
Ends
Begins

More quotes by Nathaniel Branden

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Our motive is not to prove our self-worth, but to live up to our possibilities.
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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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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.
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For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
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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.
Nathaniel Branden
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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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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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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.
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Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it.
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The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: 'Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.'
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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No one is coming to save you.
Nathaniel Branden
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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.
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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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.
Nathaniel Branden
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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.
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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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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The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.
Nathaniel Branden
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Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
Nathaniel Branden