Gretchen Rubin Quotes

Right now the way I define beauty is individuality and wisdom, which I think creates a certain inner confidence. And not confidence in a way that's only on the surface, but a deep-down knowing of yourself or settling into who you are.

...Listen to your own thoughts and feelings very carefully, be aware of your observations, and learn to value them. When you're a teenager—and even when you're older—lots of people will try to tell you what to think and feel. Try to stand still inside all of that and hear your own voice. It's yours and only yours, it's unique and worth of your attention, and if you cultivate it properly, it might just make you a writer.

My problem with the search for the badge of real is that it trades your goals and your happiness for someone else's.

One of the key elements is the ability to be honest with yourself.

I think the better you know yourself as a person, the better an actor you can be.

How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me?

Always search for your innermost nature in those you are with, as rose oil imbibes from roses.

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

First and foremost, you do not have to live up to or emulate the lives of any of your predecessors. But at the very least, you should know about them. You will have your own life, interests, and ideas of what you want or do not want in life. Do what you enjoy doing. Be honest with yourself and others. Don't think of satisfying anyone: your elders, peers, government, religion, or children who will come after you. Develop meaningful ideals, and become conscious of others, their existence, and their lives.

Be really, really true to yourself. That to me, has been key to me in understanding how I want to live the second half of my life.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowled

Be Sure you Are Stepping to the Music you Hear - No Matter what Other People Think.

I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.

When I take a role I wonder how I can use it to find out who I really am. I don't think I'm so rare a person.

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.

I don't think a person should take herself seriously unless she is alone.

I think over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't.

Success is doing the right thing for who you are.

I think I'm one of those people that needed to be seen by someone else to see myself. But then on the other hand, the way I do my work, I always try to only completely focus on my work, so when I do my work I'm only interested in my character. So I don't have an idea of what it means for my career. So this is why I don't feel like I need to be discovered, because I feel like even without being discovered, I will be fine.

Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge-and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.

Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot

I would rather be an expert on me than on Cicero

It's important to be self-aware about what people are saying about you, but even more so, be very aware of who you actually are, and to have that be the main priority.

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

Who knows, maybe I'm just a stubborn jerk? Maybe the other people who do stuff they don't want to do, maybe they're doing the right thing. Who am I to say? I'm just doing my thing and being myself, and I've been given the incredible, fortunate opportunity to play roles that I frickin' care about and enjoy playing. And it might not last forever. That's okay. That's what it is.