The Self-Acceptance Project Quotes

“In fact, a study by Leah B. Shapira and Myriam Mongrain showed that speaking to oneself as a good friend for seven days straight lowers depression for three months and raises happiness for six months.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“So if we love ourselves and we care about ourselves, we are going to want to do everything we can to reach our full potential, just like a mother wants her daughter to reach her full potential. That’s how compassion, support, love, and kindness become a resource for motivation.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“They don’t realize that self-criticism makes us anxious, stressed, afraid of failure, and puts us in the worst possible mindset to do our best. Our culture supports self-criticism as a way to motivate ourselves.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“Working with meditation students, I also saw how self-judgment kept people from taking risks. It often felt like a lid that people used to keep themselves safe, small, contained, and under-potentiated. And this was painful to see — how sensitive, good-hearted human beings often focus on what they supposedly lack instead of their beauty, strength, possibility, and power to create. I started to see “unconditional self-acceptance” — being kind to ourselves no matter what is happening in our lives — as an immensely powerful life skill that most of us have not been taught. I started to see that being kind to ourselves is actually a human capacity that changes everything. It changes how we treat ourselves day to day, how we take risks, how we love, how we create, and how we make space for what seems “unacceptable” in others.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“Happiness is, therefore, a choice. It is not some passive state we fall into, but a state we can choose to cultivate. There’s a nice phrase in Buddhist teaching that’s rarely used in the West: gladdening the mind.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke has a profound line: “I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“While it seems like we’re constrained and confined by our physical space, even at a very young age, we come to be aware that isn’t the case. Much of the time, we find ourselves in the space between — the inter-subjective. That’s relevant because we often seek out people who are going to try to make us feel better. I don’t think that’s so helpful. It’s helpful to seek out people who will support us in feeling more.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“We discover that self-acceptance is a nonissue, but that cultivating a capacity for an unconditional accepting of all that arises in our awareness is a path that will continue as long as we live.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“What a relief, to be unconditionally kind to the messy, confused humans that we are, giving up any fantasy of resolving our worth or identity.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

“You can do this in a slow way, almost like a mini-meditation, or you can do it very quickly. Sometimes these memorized phrases arise spontaneously, like a mantra: This is the moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need. When combined with a physical gesture, this can be incredibly powerful.”
― Tami Simon, The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation