Moving On And Focusing On Yourself Quotes

The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm - the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you're wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind. ~ M. L. Stedman - The Light Between Oceans

You get to a place where you begin to be guided by something greater than yourself. You stop fighting and striving (indeed the need to expend this type of energy is often a strong indicator that you are not in flow and where you are meant to be) and instead, surrender to your higher purpose and be guided from there, allowing things to happen, trusting in source, focusing on your why and letting go of the how ... ~ Wayne W. Dyer

People come, people go – they'll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The Unavailable Available Pattern." It's where you convince yourself (and others) that you are available for relationship, but you always find a way to stop short. That stopping short can manifest in many ways: choosing unavailable people, looking for excuses to run, focusing on a lover's imperfections rather than their appealing qualities, getting lost in the excitement of ecstatic possibility until the first glimpse of real vulnerability sends you packing. It's the addiction to possibility and the fear of intimacy all rolled into one. ~ Jeff Brown

If you can manage to see yourself from the outside and accept yourself as a vulnerable organism within the biosphere, rather than focusing on the narrowness of your own needs and considering yourself the center of reality, you will be amazed at how the world positively overflows with suffering beings, each with needs and appetites of their own. Something odd occurs when one has that experience: Suddenly, the soul is filled with deep compasion for the world. This is the only attitude adequate to the task of scaling the dark mountain of the ecological catastrophe we face: without any illusion that it is possible to change human beings based on the strenght of better insights. But with full-fledged empathy for this creation, among which things are so hard precisely because it is creation. And with equally strong gratitude for this creation beneath a graciously warm sun and its affirmative light: where we have already been given everyhing we need to live, before we ever thought to desire it. ~ Andreas Weber

UNDERLYING NEED "COPING" MECHANISM To have support in figuring out your talents Getting stoned to avoid thinking about it To be loved, held, appreciated Negativity, pessimism to "control" expectations To have feelings received Overeating as an attempt at self-soothing To be recognized as mattering Overwork to prove worth To forgive yourself Becoming perfectionistic to try and avoid mistakes To avoid punishment or disapproval Focusing solely on the needs of others so you don't take care of yourself by exercising Rest and rejuvenation Drinking alcohol to excess, "rewarding" yourself with fatty or sweet foods Solitude and contemplation Picking fights so you end up alone Stability in chaos Worrying as a way to feel in control A sense of purpose Overspending in an attempt to find meaning in material things ~ M.J. Ryan

The greatest joy comes from giving and serving, so replace your habit of focusing exclusively on yourself and what's in it for you. When you make the shift to supporting others in your life, without expecting anything in return, you'll think less about what you want and find comfort and joy in the act of giving and serving. ~ Wayne Dyer

Weekly Check-Ins

Instead of focusing on your anxiety all the time, try scheduling a weekly check-in session with yourself. Clients who have been coming to sessions weekly often just put that same day and time aside. Instead of meeting with me, they meet with themselves. You can do the same.
Pick a time and place that will work for you to do your weekly check-in. Start a notebook (or use the note-taking app on your phone) in which you can record things you might want to address during your weekly check-in. When it comes time for your check-in, use the list as your agenda. If you have lots of issues that come up during the week and end up with a long agenda, just pick the one or two that seem most important to work through.
This process will allow you to take some time to focus on any anxiety-driven issues that occurred during the week that you didn't get a chance to deal with as they happened or where you tried something but it didn't seem to do the trick. Remember to include behavioral traps, like overworking or avoidance coping, if these have occurred during the week.
For each issue, go back to what seems like the most relevant chapter and try a solution from that chapter. For example, if you noticed yourself ruminating about a problem but didn't take problem-solving action (meaning you didn't move from thinking about the problem to taking a behavioral action), you might try defining your problem, generating a list of your best three to six options ~ Alice Boyes

Stop allowing yourself to focus on depressing life circumstances - including focusing on being depressed about your weight. All this negative focus will only lead you to feeling bummed and wanting to pig out. Instead, consciously focus on happy life circumstances you enjoy doing, and create more of them! ~ Karen Salmansohn

The two biggest things to understand when you're tracking the ball as a defensive back is your position on the field and understanding that once the ball is in the air you become the receiver. Too many young defensive backs worry about the receiver catching it or what the receiver is doing instead of focusing on what they should be doing. Just go out and make the play yourself, don't worry about him. Know where the ball is and attack it. Put yourself in position to bat it or catch it and make the play. ~ Antonio Cromartie

Love yourself as you are! Instead of focusing too much on the outer beauty, one must always choose to value the inner beauty. Your skin and the hair color doesn't really matter, none of them defines who you truly are! ~ Jyoti Patel

Depression is focusing on yourself; on your troubles and what is not right. You can't be depressed if you are focusing on others. It's impossible. ~ Elizabeth Bourgeret

The Words of an Angel

As I sit in a world of darkness
I look around to see no one
The cold wind has filled my soul
The rivers have poured inside my body
And the weight of the waters holds me back from seeing the light of day
What should I do?
I feel helpless,
Paralyzed in my own fears
And lost with no directions or roads to take
Suddenly, a felt a laser of energy bolt though my body
I yelled, "I'm so tired of feeling this way, I need help"
Suddenly, gold light appeared
And a man stood before me
You foolish man,
You choose this path the moment you chose to give up and wallow in your sorrows
I cannot help you
You need to help yourself.
There are no rivers in your soul holding you back from light of the world
The strength lies within you
Look in my eyes and tell me what you see
The lost man looked into the angels eyes and said, I see a man who gets his strength from helping others
He does not waste time focusing on useless matters
If you dig deep enough my child
You will find precious gift inside yourself
Gifts you never knew you had
Learn from others
Then help yourself
Once you helped yourself
Go out and help the world around you
Because many people feel as you do
The angel suddenly disappeared
The lost man was no longer lost
He was determined to waste no time
He was going to use his time to help others< ~ Stacey Chillemi

You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny. ~ Rick Warren

There is a very dark and painful side to life, but that is natural. People in our culture think they should never be unhappy. They think that being unhappy is unnatural. They try to make it go away. They take pills or they go to therapy to "fix" themselves. They blame themselves or others for their suffering. We need to understand that sadness is as much a part of life as joy. It would be easy just to get bitter and cold while focusing on the dark side, but there is also an amazing, wonderful side of life. If you look for it, there is true magic all around us. Maybe that sounds trite to the hardened, self-protective modern ego, but there is magiv in this miraculous life. If you open yourself up, you do make yourself vulnerable to pain but the deeper the pain you experience, the deeper joy you have. ~ Mark Ryden

When you feel distracted, engage in self-talk. Ask yourself: "What am I focusing on?" Return to the present moment. What do you need to accomplish? Check into what you need and check out of what you do not need. Talk ~ Mike Cernovich

Imagining success can be a great motivation technique. The more you view yourself as successful, the better you will feel about yourself and the job at hand. Focusing on the positives can breed success. ~ Andy C.E. Brown

Holistic, unconditional love, agape, is the unity in which duality disappears. It is as if a certain internal boundary has vanished. With agape what we love is ourselves, the way a mother loves her child as herself. This is the meaning of loving another as yourself – transcending our phenomenal borders and experiencing ourselves in another and the other in, not apart from, us. Eventually, if love is comprehensive, it unites us with everything and allows us to know that we are everything. Therefore, how can we support the illusion of this isolated, separate self that is threatened by and defends itself from everything outside? Love returns us to the unity that is actually Reality. Reality is not the isolation, suspicion, envy, selfishness, and fear of loss that we have come to accept as normal; it is that we are all part of one Life. The same Spirit moves in us all. You come to know this better when you realize that we all have the same kinds of feelings, the same wish to be known and respected, to share ourselves and let down our defenses. We are continually faced with a choice between personal achievement, personal security, and comfort on the one hand, and working for the whole and helping everyone and everything toward perfection on the other. We are faced with a choice between looking out for ourselves and contributing wholeheartedly to a common good. We are faced with focusing on self-love or increasing our love of all Life. (p. 191) ~ Kabir Edmund Helminski

Behavioral Shifts to Overcome Excessive Hesitancy

Important: So far we've been focusing on how tweaking your thinking can help shift your behavior. This is important, but it's only half the story. People are usually quite good at identifying how changes in thoughts or feelings may lead to changes in behavior, such as "When I have more energy, I'll do more exercise" or "When I have more ideas, I'll take more action." However, people tend to underestimate the impact of changing their behavior on their thoughts and feelings, such as "When I exercise more, l'll have more energy" or "When I take more actions, I'll have more ideas." Don't make the mistake of thinking you need to wait for your thoughts to change before you try behavioral shifts. Mental and behavioral shifts go hand in hand. When you start making changes in your behavior (even subtle ones), you'll notice that all kinds of thoughts, including your view of yourself, start to shift. Changing your behavior, without waiting for you thoughts to always shift first, is one of the best and fastest ways you can reduce your anxiety. That's why a cognitive behavioral approach focuses on both thoughts and behaviors. ~ Alice Boyes

You may find that you have been telling yourself that practicing optimism is a risk, as though, somehow, a positive attitude will invite disaster and so if you practice optimism it may increase your feelings of vulnerability. The trick is to increase your tolerance for vulnerable feelings, rather than avoid them altogether.
[ ... ]
Optimism does not mean continual happiness, glazed eyes and a fixed grin. When I talk about the desirability of optimism I do not mean that we should delude ourselves about reality. But practicing optimism does mean focusing more on the positive fall-out of an event than on the negative. ... I am not advocating the kind of optimism that means you blow all your savings on a horse running at a hundred to one; I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers. ~ Philippa Perry

Do you want to hurt yourself?'
'No. I'm trying to get a grip. Have a more normal life.' Scribble, scribble.
'The number of suicides in the area has recently escalated,' she commented.
'The train track suicides. Yes, I know. And yet, here I am. Thrilled to be in counseling. Weren't we supposed to be focusing on a healthy expression of my grief?'
Scribble. 'You seem disoriented. Have you been drinking?'
'I have too few brain cells naturally to waste any on a temporary buzz.'
Scribble. 'Drugs?'
'Just write See Above-the same philosophy applies. Look, I had a really lousy lunch. Food poisoning of epic proportions. Its messed me up.'
'I'd like to get a urine sample.'
'Give me your coffee cup.'
Scribble, scribble, scribble. ~ Shannon Delany

Mindfulness is being aware of yourself, others, and your surroundings in the moment. When consciously and kindly focusing awareness on life as it unfolds minute by precious minute, you are better able to savor each experience. Also, being closely attentive gives you the opportunity to change unwise or painful feelings and responses quickly. In fact, being truly present in a mindful way is an excellent stress reducer and, because of that, can be seen as consciousness conditioning, a strengthening workout for body, mind, heart, and spirit. ~ Sue Thoele

But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history. ~ Jim Wallis

Do the Tao Now Copy the following words and apply them to yourself: I came from greatness. I must be like what I came from. I will never abandon my belief in my greatness and the greatness of others. Read these words daily, perhaps by posting them conspicuously where you can see them. They will serve to remind you of the truth of your own greatness. Meditate for ten minutes today, focusing on your inner greatness. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

As you work toward your goals today, tune into your underlying motivations and ask yourself: Am I focusing all my energy on a happy tomorrow to the detriment of today? ~ Lori Deschene

Focusing on others will give you more influence and power than focusing on yourself. ~ Kevin Eikenberry

The key is to just focus on the spots where the love is real, because you can just drive yourself crazy focusing on the negativity, focusing on the relationships that are irreparable and just aren't going to work, trying to convince the haters that you are indeed lovable. So much of that is wasted energy. ~ Amanda Palmer

I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.
That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been booing on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
...
So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to thing to yourself, 'The man can't possibly be that stupid!'
But yes. Yes, he can.
Our innate strengths just aren't the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we're lost and need to figure out how to get where we're going. That's how impair ~ Jim Butcher

I cannot control what goes on in another lane and this is how I focus on the Games. There is no point in being nervous of other swimmers. It's just about focusing on yourself and what you need to do in order to perform at your best. ~ Cameron Van Der Burgh

Stress, worry, and anxiety simply come from projecting your thoughts into the future and imagining something bad. This is focusing on what you don't want! If you find that your mind is projecting into the future in a negative way, focus intensely on NOW. Keep bringing yourself back to the present.
Use all of your will, and focus your mind in this very moment, because in this moment of now there is utter peace. ~ Rhonda Byrne

When you know you're ENOUGH!

When you stop focusing on all things that you're not.
When you stop fussing over perceived flaws.
When you remove all imposed and unbelievable expectations on yourself.
When you start celebrating yourself more.
When you focus on all that you are.
When you start believing that your perceived flaws are just that - perception... ~ Malebo Sephodi

To me, business isn't about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It's about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials. ~ Richard Branson

Over the last several days, I'd done a fair amount of practiced focusing on my present state of "lesness" - homelessness, joblessness and relationshiplessness. Less was not more. Less was an unstable, uncomfortable place to be. ~ Penny Reid

It is certainly good to have fans but I am always focusing on the next thing and continuing to do good work. Onward and upward. ~ John Magaro

Evaluate wins and losses objectively, focusing more on effort and execution than on the outcome of the game ~ Morgan Wootten

Marketing and press kicks up dust. It gets in your eye, and then you're not focusing on the product. ~ Jan Koum

Feminism will be just as oppressive to women as the media if it compels us to change who we are. The ends will not justify the means. It is like a corset that, although originally intended to make us feel good, about ourselves, has been pulled so tight that we are not left with enough room to breathe. Feminism often seems to be looking down its nose at us these days, as it militantly tells us how to behave- focusing on appearances according to a male dominated society. Have they forgotten that it is the societal viewpoint which needs to be changed? Somewhere along the line this movement got off track.


After all, we are constantly being told how to look, how to age, how to eat, how to act. Can't we at least think what we want? ~ Nancy Madore