Self-Directed Behavior Quotes

Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or condition. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.

Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.

There are two types of people: One strives to control his environment, the other strives not to let his environment control him. I like to control my environment, because I feel if I have my physical space in order, then I'm free to dream.

Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something.

It would be very hard for me to do things somebody else's way.

A writer writes what interests him and what he can manage, and what he can make live, as Flannery O'Connor said. So my reaction to someone saying "You must!" or "You should!" or even "Hey, why don't you?" is basically to sort of shrug and politely walk off and do whatever I want to do. It's nobody else's business, really, and even if I happened to agree with one of those "musts" or "shoulds" what would I do about it, if my heart wasn't in it?

We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.

...Many of us are perpetual reactors. We let other people determine our actions and attitudes. We let other people determine whether we will be rude or gracious, depressed or elated, critical or loyal, passive or dedicated.

I believe we've been given free will, and we can take responsibility for our own lives and for creating our own environments - which I think at times can be a little much for people to deal with.

What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.

Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.

Self-will seems to be the only virtue that takes no account of man-made laws.

Everybody does what they want to do for their own specific reasons.

No highly evolved being would ever seek to control the thoughts of anyone, or cause anyone to think or act involuntarily. More along the lines of inspiration and invitation. As when one suddenly experiences an insight, or says, "I've just had a great idea." They can accept it and act on it, or reject it out of hand. There's no "control" involved.

Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.

But what I do I do because I like to do.

I have talked about choosing rather than acting from compulsion. When you feel that you have to live according to someone else's direction or live so that you never disappoint or hurt anybody, then your life is a continual assessment of whether or not you please other people.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

Then it was like a genie out of the bottle and it began to walk all on its own and in directions I did not want.

This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.

A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred the human law in himself, his own individual will.

I cannot go and tell women what to wear and what not to wear; you have to decide on your own.

When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.