Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

I have had to learn and to understand that sometimes I can't be always be at my best.

As a therapist, I know that when you're vulnerable, the best way to move on is to admit your vulnerability, don't beat yourself up for it, and try to find a way to analyze your vulnerability. Pull up your socks and try to do better for you and your family.

Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

You have to try your best to have peace of mind, and whatever happens you know you did your best

The more seriously we work on our own imperfections, the less we are judgemental of the imperfections of others.

No matter where you are in life, no matter what you’ve contributed to creating, no matter what’s happening, you are always doing the best you can with the understanding and awareness and knowledge that you have. And when you know more, you will do differently, as I did

To err is human; to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.

If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.

The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience.

Have an open mind and an open heart. I'm not this bad person. I'm just doing what I have to do.

I try my best to learn from other people's mistakes. I have a lot of respect for people who can change.

I am the age that I am and I am trying to do the best with what I got.

I am doing the best I can given what I have today.

people are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.

You're not perfect, but you're not your mistakes.

You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.

We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?

I'll never be a non-stumbler. I'll be a forgiven stumbler, but never a non-stumbler.

I just have to be myself. I'm not perfect, and I'm going to make mistakes; I might say the wrong thing. I have to be responsible to my community, and I feel like I am, but then I have to not be so hard on myself.

I'm hard on myself, so I'm working on shifting perspective toward self-acceptance, with all my flaws and weaknesses.

I can live with myself.

Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming.

Self-hatred is OK. I have self-hatred, too. It's OK. What's bad is if you don't know how to get out of it, don't know how to manage it. Self-hatred is, in fact, a good thing if you can clearly see the mechanism of it, because it helps you to understand others.

Sometimes you're only human and you learn.

I want people to learn from me, see I'm human, and understand that I make mistakes just like they do, but it doesn't have to consume you. You've got to walk through the raindrops, and that's totally what I am trying to do.