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Quotes for self development: Life is a gift, a beautiful venture, an excitement to be a part of. As always there are ups and downs, some of them which make us feel completely exhilarated and some which make us feel down and on our knees. But in the end, it is a beautiful cycle, sort of like a pendulum which hits its equilibrium point where it is most stable and smooth.

I think we all go through that and at times we all need a push. For those moments, here is a collection of quotes for self development. With each of these quotes, we have shared a few thoughts that make sense to us. Of course, the truth of a quote is always subjective to our individual experiences. We would love it if you share your views so that our readers can benefit the most from this post.

What is self-development?

Personal development or self-improvement is a series of activities that improve our capabilities and potential. The core aspect of self-development is to focus on creating more opportunities for ourselves to reach our dreams and aspirations. No one is born perfect. It is an egoistic view to be ignorant and think that our talent is innate and doesn’t need any finesse.

Self-development encourages us to improve our skills and develop continuously to be able to accomplish tougher challenges in life. Personal development is a long, never-ending process. Sometimes, we take help from coaches and mentors to help develop our personality further – Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_development

Quotes for self development

Here is a gallery of quotes for self development. You can view a larger size image of these quotes by clicking on to them.

The Past Can Hurt But You Can Either Run From It or Learn From It

This is one movie I have always been extremely fond of. It perhaps was one of the first cartoon movies I watched and was highly impressed with the emotional content in the movie. The story of Simba and the emotional journey he goes through being constantly haunted by a responsibility of guilt which he did not commit.

But I think there is sense to it when it says, what has happened has already happened. There is no way we can go back and change it to the way we want. The only thing we can do is accept it and define what we make out of it. Everything else would be just a wish and that hardly leads us anywhere doesn’t it?!

The Past Can Hurt But You Can Either Run From It or Learn From It

Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere

Worry is a very interesting thing, sometimes beautiful, sometimes a fair warning and many times a fearful cry from within. It is in our nature to worry about things we are not certain about, it is in our nature to anticipate what can go wrong with our expectations so that we are prepared. But that doesn’t mean that we can afford to spend most of our time in it.

Although a negative thought has something sensible in the end, the more we spend time on it, the more it sucks us deep – kinda like the quicksand. And very little benefit is going to come out of it most times. The choice is not to say that I will be a person who will never worry in life, but the choice is in conscious selection of thoughts and using them in a clever manner in order to make the most of the situation.

Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away doing the exact opposite

Advices, I think that is one thing that is available in plenty. But not all of it makes sense though. And even if it does, it doesn’t necessarily mean the timing is right or we are ready to take in the advice. So yeah, it is a very tricky thing about listening to advices.

Having said that, it is quite impossible to avoid people completely from giving you advice. The moment we retaliate, it usually comes back to us in a different way and somehow the advice never seems to stop. So our advice is ;) what G.K. Chesterton says – listen to them patiently, you never know what good is going to come out of it. But don’t rely on it completely because it is your life and your decisions which matter the most – the 6 types of people who advise you

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away doing the exact opposite

– G.K.Chesterton

You control your destiny, you don’t need magic to do it. And there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems

We get it, life is pretty hard some times and it is never easy, especially when we have challenges thrown right in front of us. And when we speak of problems it so happens that sometimes there are quite a lot of them to worry about.

But unfortunately, there is no easy way to get out of these problems. The only way I can think of is through them. We have to face them head on sometimes, even if it means it is going to hurt us. Sometimes we gotta be ready to face the small pain in order to solve the bigger issue. We cannot let the small challenges deviate from the big ones and I guess that is what the quote means by destiny. There sure is no magical way, but we gotta stay in control.

You control your destiny, you don’t need magic to do it. And there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems

Venture Outside Your Comfort Zone, The Rewards Are Worth It

We really enjoyed discussing getting out of our comfort zone in our previous post. I think there is something remarkable out there when we step out of our comfort area. Of course, it is a pleasant feeling to be in a zone where there are few challenges, life is much in control and at the pace we desire.

But there is a flip side to it as well in the sense that it makes us a bit stagnant. The only way we can garner new skills and improve our life is by adding new capacities. And of course none of these are going to be in the comfort zone and we have little choice but to venture out to make it more meaningful.

Venture Outside Your Comfort Zone, The Rewards Are Worth It

– Disney’s Tangled

If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve

I personally love this quote – mostly because it is about setting up life to the standards we desire. I think we all have fair amount of expectations for ourselves. The moment anything goes below that, it is imperative that we get anxious about where life is headed.

I think it is a beautiful thing to have high standards because it makes us stretch and go out there to be doing things which are necessary to achieve the quality of life we desire for ourselvses. Sometimes it becomes a bit easy to fall back on standards just because it doesn’t take extra efforts from us. But the moment we allow that, we step into the danger of that happening again. It helps to be conscious about who we really are so that we can set up a game to win.

If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve

– Tony Robbins

Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity

I have always enjoyed quotes by Will Smith, quite sensible and at the same time they have a sense of romanticism attached to it, the romanticism which makes you work hard, the romanticism which makes you believe that although things seem unreal, they are still possible, a romanticism which makes you want to go out of your way and reach for the stars. And this is one such quote – most people ask you to be realistic when you tell them your dreams and passions.

Very few of them actually tell you that you have to go beyond the limits of realism in order to achieve the surreal thing that is going to set you free. It is easy to constrain ourselves and rationalise as to why some things are not possible. The harder thing to do is stand your ground and fight and if you are willing to do that, maybe your dream deserves you after all :)

Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity

– Will Smith

An optimist, is someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it is Cha Cha

Well, I’d say this fits in the fun segment on quotes on self development. I think there are different schools of thought when it comes to optimism and pessimism. In fact, you might remember our debate about The 10 Things to Know About A Pessimist where we talk in length about the difference in the schools of thought and why choose one over the other.

I think there is some sense in looking at life as a set of bright colours. Not that it is going to make the problem any smaller, but it is going to keep us energetic and enthusiastic about the goals we have and the way we want to approach them. It is pretty easy to stay a bit lazy and find reasons why some things cannot work, but you can do the same with the reasons as to why something can work. The difference always boils down to a choice.

An optimist, is someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it is Cha Cha

– Robert Ersolt

I Always Prefer To See The Best Of Everybody,It Saves So Much Trouble

I think being critical is something that comes naturally to most of us. In fact it is one of the easiest things to find fault with someone or something they do and cast them away as wrong. Truth be told, we all are wrong and will be wrong at some walks of our actions. There is no way we can avoid that.

The more we focus on the mistakes, the more cynical we become. A saner thing can be to look at the good in the world and believe that the world is a better place to live in and create one as such. It is so easy to make it a bad place and reduce our opportunities of enjoying it. But then, the choice is whether you want a better life or an easy one!

“I Always Prefer To See The Best Of Everybody,It Saves So Much Trouble”

Rudyard Kipling

These were our 9 favourite quotes for self development, please do share your thoughts on them and your favourites if you think we have missed any. Very happy to enrich the list with your thoughts.