The Art of Talking to Yourself QUOTES

1 " When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to under-stand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way? "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

2 " When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to understand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way? "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

3 " Remember that when things don't go according to plan, they go according to truth. No matter how painful the reality, it is reality nonetheless. There is dignity in facing the truth without trying to cut it down to a more manageable size. There is honour in acceptance. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

4 " It all comes back to curiosity. We live in a society that objectifies us as sexual objects and status symbols. We learn to flatten ourselves and others into little words: good and bad, ugly and pretty, right and wrong, lovable and unlovable. Then, we try to discover who we are through these labels. It doesn’t work. Because a human being is more than a signpost onto which we can plaster our judgments. A person is more than a sack of flesh to lose, keep, or throw away. A human being cannot be packaged into a stale idea. A person must be experienced to be known, and this knowledge ends the moment you stop looking. Each one of us is a mystery. And the more aware you become, the more mysterious it gets. The reward for seeking truth is not the truth itself. The gift is wonder. The gift is love. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

5 " Some people engage in retail therapy, buying new things to make themselves feel more secure, and others engage in knowledge therapy, amassing new ideas to make themselves feel like they know something. We consume for comfort. We rely on certainty to shield us from the pain of confusion. The truth is staggering, colossal, unfathomable, so we cling to our bite-sized lies. We organize knowledge into bulleted lists and line graphs while the wisdom of the present moment sits patiently at the doors of our perception. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

6 " No tree tries to become a certain kind of tree. No flower tries to become a certain kind of flower. The tree and the flower open up to the sun and soak up water. Thus, they grow into themselves. No judgment. No expectations. No commentary. Your task is the same. If you can stop trying so hard to become who you think you should be, and instead commit to understanding and nourishing yourself, you will bloom into whatever kind of person you are. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

7 " As you dig your teeth into your assumptions, your teeth become sharper. You can dig deeper. You become what the world needs simply by helping yourself. It’s not easy, but it is worth it. The truth, as they say, hurts. But they also say it sets you free. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

8 " One particularly harmful idea carried by our cultural narrative is that you need to find someone who will love you. Imagine if we believed this about any other basic need: food, water, oxygen. If you needed another person to provide you with those, you’d be considered dependent—if not disabled. Yet we so willingly put ourselves in this state with love. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

9 " I believe that the most tragic war of our time is the one within—a war between what we knew as children and what we’ve learned as adults. A war between wisdom and intelligence. A war between the natural colour of our hair and the colour we chemically impose upon it. A war between the manicured hedges and the untouched wilderness. A war between reality and fairy tales. A war between what we could learn about the world and what we are systematically taught. A war that can end in peace. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

10 " Some people say they don’t believe in God, but they believe in an energy that moves through all living things. Others say they do believe in God, and they claim God is an energy moving through all living things. Some people believe in a holy book, and their faith gives them the same feeling of certainty that sustains people of other faiths as well as non-believers. Over this, we start wars. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

11 " One thing is for sure—you will make mistakes. Learn to learn from them. Learn to forgive yourself. Learn to laugh when everything falls apart because, sometimes, it will. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

12 " Self-understanding is a lifetime endeavour. It is not a weekend seminar. It does not come in capsule form. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

13 " Trying to fix ourselves while pretending to love ourselves doesn’t work. We don’t heal through objectification. We heal through understanding. We need to feel appreciated by the people who help us—ourselves included. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

14 " When we listen to ourselves with callous objectivity—trying to diagnose and eradicate our problems with effective solutions—this “listening” rarely works. Think of the people who treat you this way: those who can’t see beyond their labels and judgments of you. Those who only “listen” for long enough to decide which advice to give you. It feels horrible. This same attitude prevents us from hearing our inner conversations. When we feel like someone has an agenda, we resist. Trying to fix ourselves while pretending to love ourselves doesn’t work. We don’t heal through objectification. We heal through understanding. We need to feel appreciated by the people who help us—ourselves included. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

15 " If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea—uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can’t you sail that voyage and explore yourself? "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

16 " Hope for the future lies in each of us looking within. By learning to feed your hunger, you can overcome the tempting illusions all around you. By discovering who you are, you can stop basing your self-image solely on other people’s ideas about you. By connecting to your inner strength, you can stop cycling between idealistic illusions and self-hating disillusionment. By taking responsibility for yourself, you can stop relying on others to take responsibility for you. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

17 " There’s a reason it takes multi-million dollar budgets to sell carbonated drinks, while water sells without a marketing team. The truth endures. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

18 " Only you can allow yourself to explore the person in the mirror. Only you can coax yourself into a daring adventure to find your untapped potential. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

19 " To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself

20 " You don’t need to wait for someone else to notice your talents before nourishing them. You don’t need others to accept you to feel accepted. You don’t need to wait. You can begin, at any moment, to work on noticing, nourishing, and accepting yourself. You can work on being a better friend to your reflection. You can start listening to yourself like you wish other people would. You can become curious about who you are. You can begin to learn the language of your mind and body so that you can decode it, understand it, speak it. You can work on understanding yourself instead of always trying to make yourself into someone else. "

― Vironika Tugaleva , The Art of Talking to Yourself