C. Terry Warner > Quotes

“Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Some things are only real because they represent what we think. When we learn the truth and think it, the old reality is no longer real to us and loses its hold on us. The truth sets us free.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Did I love what I was doing, or did I love myself in doing it?”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“It takes real feelings to create the illusion that others have power to offend and anger us.
Projecting such interpretations upon everything around us is in many ways like living in a box of our own making... you might think of these walls as a falsification of reality-- a distorted way of seeing, feeling, and thinking about other people that makes them seem offensive or malicious or otherwise untrustworthy. Remember, the people are really there, but we all ourselves off from the truth about them by the false way we picture them...
Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Who we are is how we are in relation to others”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“When we actively relate to people as rivals or enemies, we foster the false belief that we and they stand independent of one another. The truth is that we bind ourselves to them as if by an invisible tether, and we do so by our negative thoughts and feelings."

"Who we are is who we are with others. How they seem to us is a revelation of ourselves.”
― C. Terry Warner

“If we do not suspect ourselves of having been in the wrong, our search for what is right won't be completely sincere. Sincerely asked, the question, "What is right to do?" includes the question, "Might I be in the wrong?" With either of these questions we ask the other; we pull ourselves up short and start over. This is the key: Even in asking this question, if we ask it sincerely, we begin to change in our way of being; we begin to become the kind of person capable of doing the right thing without counterfeiting it.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“When it comes to seeking a change of heart, our starting place must include our present situation, with the people we live with right here and now. It is with these very people that we must learn to forgo all taking of offense.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Personal growth is not like the development of a skill. It does not take place in observable increments that can be measured and charted. Indeed, as we have seen, when we're growing in sensitivity, generosity, and compassion, we're not aware of it, because we're not focusing on ourselves. The recovery of emotional freedom simply does not have the quality, for most of us, of a controllable sequence of transformations. It's more a career of discovering futher and further weaknesses and shedding them in turn.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Fable: When we're stuck in troubled feelings we believe that all our feelings are true-- that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments about what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry.

Fact: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“Living in the box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free

“Still is just the right way to be. You rise in the morning to go about your day. You remember a friend who has troubles. You don't quibble with yourself about whether to call her; you don't write a reminder on your Palm Pilot or in your planner to make the call tomorrow. You just call. Simple.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“There is no better means of promoting another person's change of heart than allowing our own heart to be changed.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Self-betrayal occurs when we do to another what we sense we should not do or don't do what we sense we should. Thus self-betrayal is a sort of moral self-compromise, a violation of our own personal sense of how we ought to be and what we ought to do.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Who we are is who we are with others. How they seem to us is a revelation of ourselves.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“. . . we dedicate ourselves to finding evidence that we're acceptable and worthwhile. Whatever our particular outward style, from self-disparaging or fawning to arrogant or angry, we live as if we were defendants in a trial. The jury is composed of all of the people whose opinions we think are important; they're the ones we've got to convince. Unsettled by our insecurities, we await their judgement.

But the jury members never come back with a final verdict. They forever hold us in suspense. Every hour or so, it seems, the foreman of the jury returns with a demand for more evidence. So we try again to win the jury's favor or at least to be found acceptable in their eyes, but nothing we can do will satisfy them once and for all.

Why? Because from their individual points of view, THEY are the ones on trial. They are as concerned to have us validate their self-image as we are to have them validate ours. WE sit on THEIR jury. Therefore what they want from us is not evidence that will establish our acceptability but evidence that will establish theirs. They can't give us their final stamp of approval because they never fell completely approved of themselves.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“When we criticize people, their consciences console them. When we love them, their consciences indict them.”
― C. Terry Warner

“In a self-betraying condition, how we present ourselves unavoidably becomes of the focus of our concern, and we mistakenly confuse it with how we really are.”
― C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves

“We influence others most profoundly when we do not seek to change them at all, but simply go about straightforwardly doing the right and loving thing.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Three aspects of the self betrayer's conduct always go together: accusing others, excusing oneself, and displaying oneself as a victim.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Blame is the lie by which we convince ourselves that we are victims. It is the lie that robs us of our serenity, our generosity, our confidence, an our delight in life . . . For it is the act of blaming that can't co-exist with self-responsibility -- or with freedom from inner agitation and strained relationships. Abandon the practice of blaming, and we see the fear melt away that we have associated with being honest about ourselves and taking the full measure of responsibility for our emotional and spiritual condition.”
― C. Terry Warner

“honor our sense of right and wrong-- our sense of what others need from us and how we ought to act towards them... Because we go against this sense-- because we fail to act as we feel we should-- that we grow resentful and feel alienated. We convince ourselves that others are making our lives intolerable. On the other hand, when we treat them as we feel we should, we have no occasion to feel this way. We can care openly for them because caring, not selfishness, is our "natural" condition (in computer jargon, our "default setting"). We alienate ourselves from theirs when we compromise our integrity, and we care for them when we don't.”
― C. Terry Warner

“There are two different ways of being a person. One of these precedes the change of heart, and the other follows it. The first is fearful, anxious, resentful, and alienated from other people; the second, open resonant with others, buoyant, straightforward, and secure.
To the extent that we live the second way, we care about others. We do not see them merely in terms of our own interests, as helping or hindering us. They are real to us; we are as sensitive to their feelings and hopes and needs as we are to our own.

On the other hand, when we feel alienated, we engross ourselves in our own agenda. We pursue wealth, power, personal perfection, pleasure, distraction, or some other protection from emotional pain. We divide people into two categories-- those who will help us in our self-seeking projects and those who won't, and the latter we fear or hate as our rivals or enemies. We use people or abuse them. We look at people guardedly and stand ready to resent them whenever they cross us. Their own hopes and needs aren't real to us.”
― C. Terry Warner

“The very fact that we need to struggle for approval proves that we do not approve of ourselves. Having to convince ourselves of something means we do not really believe it. That is why we contort ourselves grotesquely, lose sight of who we really are, and tangle ourselves pathetically in a complicated falsification of our lives.”
― C. Terry Warner

“For to the extent that we act toward others as we feel we might, we open ourselves to their inner reality, and their needs and aspirations seem so important to us as our own. We hope their hopes will be fulfilled and need to see their needs satisfied. Their happiness makes us happy, and we are pained to see them hurt. We resonate with them and delight in their prosperity.”
― C. Terry Warner

“A responsible step in loosening the grip of any lie we might be living is to ask ourselves, solemnly and seriously, this momentous question: "Might I be in the wrong?" What gives this question its power? The answer can be stated very simply: Just to ask the question seriously, even without answering it, is already to undergo a change of attitude.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Vivimos en una sociedad obsesionada con la conciencia de uno mismo, la autoestima, el placer y otras maneras de centrarse en el individuo.”
― C. Terry Warner, Ataduras que liberan (Educación y familia)

“Our insensitivity as self-betrayers is best described not as attending to ourselves rather than to others, but rather as attending to others for our sake rather than for their sake.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Honest self-understanding liberates us from our stuck emotions.”
― C. Terry Warner

“Living in the box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is our projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended.”
― C. Terry Warner