Wayne Dyer Quotes

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing they have to be the thing they have been made. Children go crazy. Really, even children go crazy, believing the shape of the life they must live is as small and mean and broken as they are told.

Self-doubt is the greatest enemy of any new good habit.

Excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don't like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don't know how to change. InExcuses Begone! I review 18 of the most common excuses people use, such as "I'm too busy, too old, too fat, too scared or it's going to take too long or be too difficult."

Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.

Our future will be shaped by the assumptions we make about who we are and what we can be.

Mirabelle is not affected by a man’s failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place.

Fear and self-doubt have always been the greatest enemies of human potential.

The boundaries of your life are merely a creation of the self.

- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.

Because psychologists have been able to discover, exactly as in a slow-motion picture, the way the human creature acquires knowledge and habits, the normal child has been vastly helped by what the retarded have taught us.

Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the parent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.

We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.

I believe, when in my behavior or in relationships or in the way I react to something, that I'm still dealing with some leftover stuff from my childhood, but the good thing is now, because I have learned so much from the Bible, I can tell when I'm behaving wrong and when I'm not, and it doesn't take me very long to realize that's out of fear, or that's because I was controlled as a child, and I can make a conscious decision to behave the way I know I should behave.

Once we start thinking of ourselves as polluted, there is not much incentive to behave well, and the trip down the slippery slope is likely.

If you believe you can only go so far, it is an obstacle.

What we believe as human nature in actuality is human habit.

Most people tell themselves these excuses - I've always been this way, how can I possibly change, this is my nature, I can't help it - that are just memes

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

"The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the "I", not of the Self. Really, he becomes aware first of the "thou". The child first becomes aware of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself. First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on the Self. "

The main cause of poverty is self-inflicted fear and ignorance.

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you'll find in this world.

Habits start out as off-hand remarks, magazine advertisements, friendly hints, experiments - like flimsy cobwebs with little substance. They grow with practice, layer by layer - thought on thought - fused with imagination and emotion until they become like steel cables - unbreakable. Habits are attitudes which grow from cobwebs into cables that control your everyday life. Self-discipline alone can make or break a habit. Self discipline alone can effect a permanent change in your self image and in you. Self-discipline achieves goals. Self discipline is not 'doing without,' it is 'doing within.'

It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

No one can remember himself as an unpleasant child.