79 Quotes by Elaine N. Aron

Envy can wake us up to one of two truths: We want something and better do something about it while we still can, or we want something and just cannot have it.[…]If your envy is strong and you decide you want to do something, you probably can.

Some of you may be struggling with discovering your vocation and feeling a little frustrated that your intuition is not helping you more. Alas, intuition can also stand in your way because it makes you aware of too many inner voices speaking for too many different possibilities.

Yet another form of rest, perhaps the most essential, is “transcendence” – rising above it all, usually in the form of meditation, contemplation, or prayer. At least some of your transcendent time should be aimed at taking you out of all ordinary thinking, into pure consciousness, pure being, pure unity, or oneness with God.

And while a difficult past may seem at first to hamper our living our life's purpose, sometimes it serve the purpose, too. Or it is the purpose—to fully experience and understand a certain kind of human problem.

With sensitive children, physical blows or traumas aren't required to make them afraid of the dark.

How discouraging to watch your friends enjoying something you are too afraid to try. Do not underestimate such discouragement. It can be just as present in adulthood as you see friends taking on careers, travel, moves, and relationships that you would fear. Yet deep inside you also know you have the same or more talent, desire, and potential.

The ideal personality is embodied, in Mead's words, in "every thread of the social fabric–in the care of the young child, the games the children play, the songs the people sing, the political organization, the religious observance, the art and the philosophy." Other traits are ignored, discouraged, or if all else fails, ridiculed. What is the ideal in our culture?

You were born to be among the advisors and thinkers, the spiritual and moral leaders for your society. There is every reason for pride.

Or as one friend of mine put it, 'In the first twenty years we are given our curriculum. In the next twenty we study it.