Guy Finley Quotes

Self-sabotage is the proverbial hammer over the head that finally wakes us up, demanding that we pay attention. For most of us, it takes something devastating to crack us open, to get us out of our minds and into our hearts.

Remember: You are the common denominator in all your relationship problems. Wherever you go, your pesky repeated issues go - until you shed a blazing light of insight upon them.

My methods produce lasting behavioral change without unpleasant consequences, because the change does not come from an effort of will. It comes from examining your deep-rooted beliefs of who you are and how the world functions. As you examine these beliefs and make changes in them, you literally become a different person.

A lot of people say they want to get out of pain, and I'm sure that's true, but they aren't willing to make healing a high priority. They aren't willing to look inside to see the source of their pain in order to deal with it.

What I had to learn was, that I'm only responsible for my perception of things. The world's not out to get you. That's not the way it works.

You change your life by changing your heart.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

As you become more conscious of your cruelty, of your violence, gross and subtle, you start becoming more and more compassionate. Not that you cultivate compassion. Just by becoming aware of your cruelty, violence, ugliness... the very awareness brings new changes in you. And the energy that was involved in cruelty, in violence, starts changing. The same energy becomes purified, the same energy becomes compassion.

We can’t change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.

Everyone is acting from his own level of consciousness. This is all we can ask of ourselves or anyone else. However hurtful someone is, he is doing the best he can, given the limits of his consciousness.

People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.

If you are willing to change your thinking, you can change your feelings. If you change your feelings, you can change your actions. And changing your actions - based on good thinking - can change your life.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life's too short to worry about what other people do or don't do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.

Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what's not working.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier.

Instead of always asking yourself why so-and-so acts this or that way, learn to ask: "What's inside of me that wants to hurt itself over how anyone else acts?"

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.

I'm always asking people to do something in their mind [first]. So if they're gonna do one exercise, it would be to ask themselves what they want to change about themselves in the next 12 weeks. Once they solve that, the body will follow.

Perspective. You start looking at things differently, like everything's not so important. You don't take things so personally. Everyone changes, becomes better people. We all should get that chance.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.

You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.