Don Miguel Ruiz Quotes

It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

I think I'm a shy, self-conscious person who thinks he's being looked at and tries to look okay. Not in a hottie, narcissistic way necessarily.

I've given up trying to understand what people think about me.

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.

...and yet I am what they think I am.

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

Sometimes I think I spend my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in.

I never thought of myself as being that good looking, I was an actor, people saw me on television, and then they start to think you're good looking because of that presentation. I was no better looking before the show, than after - and before the TV show I couldn't get a date to save my life. So what changed? Did I suddenly become more good looking? No. I got lucky, I got a TV show. That's what happened.

I think it's bad for human beings to be artists. It's awful. You want to do something but you're constantly trying to decide what you want to do. Let's just say it's no place like Hawaii.

What does bother me is that I have to spend time and energy dealing with the ramifications of what people do think about me.

It's very hard to be good. It is self-destructive thinking to think that there is too much good.

I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that.

A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.

The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

It scares me to speak my mind, it might sound self-absorbed, I don't say half of what I think, I wonder what I'm thinking for

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

Sometimes, I think we're afraid to admit we want certain things. Especially things that contradict the image we have of ourselves.

We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that’s who we are. We mistake the openness of our being—the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment—for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer.

I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself.

We live our lives based on who we think we are.

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

I've always been taught to care what other people think. My grandmother and mother taught me to project a positive image of myself.

No matter what anybody says, what matters most is what you think of yourself.

I'm trying to make you think I'm a decent person. Telling you I saw you naked while I was another species does not help my case