I often notice—in myself, and in the clients I work with—a feeling that it is too hard to continue on this self-healing journey through self-awareness.

This is because it can feel hard.

It takes guts to look at our own neuroses and challenges. It takes nerve to see how we can grow, change, and transform for the purpose of being our best selves, so that we can serve the planet in the short time we are here.

Actually, it takes more then guts and nerve, it takes courage, perseverance, and ability to get back up and try again after we have been knocked down.

It also takes guidance.

In the end, we are the only ones who can “do” our own journey. But there are wise people out there who can point us in the right direction.

These wise ones lift us up when we have fallen to the ground and have decided we are going to stay there forever pretending we’ve never cared about our self-healing journey anyways. The wise ones remind us that our own healing journey is the most selfless thing we can do, and therefore that we need to keep doing it.

Thank goodness for these people who have given their lives to teaching us.

Below are nine quotes that remind us how important our own inner guidance and self-awareness is. These quotes take us to the heart of the self-awareness journey and help us to feel its steady beat. I hope they encourage you on your own path, to whatever beautiful place that path is going.

“To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.”
~ Dalai Lama

“So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart is closed has global implications.”
~ Pema Chodron

“When stress is the basic state of mind, even good things stress us out. We have to learn to let go.”
~ Sakyong Mipham

“As long as our habit patterns are hidden backstage, they will remain unchanged. As soon as we bring them up onto the stage of our mind and shine the spotlight of awareness on them, they will inevitably change.”
~ Jan Chozen Bays

“If you don’t have garbage, you have nothing to use in order to make compost. And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the afflictions in you. Since they are organic, you know that you can transform them and make good use of them.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh-

“People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.”
~ Pema Chodron

“As we become wiser we realize that fixing the flow of feelings doesn’t work. Primary feelings are simply feelings, and every day consists of pleasant, painful and neutral moments… Our painful experience does not represent failure.”
~ Jack Kornfield

“As far as inner transformation is concerned there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
~ Eckhart Tolle

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
~ Tom Robbins

For more:

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Relephant Read:

30 Lao Tzu Quotes for Reflection & Healing.

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Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Toby Israel

Image: Camila Cordeiro/Unsplash // SnapbyThree MY/Unsplash

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