A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOMMany people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
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Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
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Specialness as a primary mode of death transcendence takes a number of other maladaptive forms.
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To the best of my knowledge, every acute inpatient ward offers some inpatient group therapy experience.
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Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence. . . and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas.
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Life as a therapist is a life of service in which we daily transcend our personal wishes and turn our gaze toward the needs and growth of the other.
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A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche’s message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally
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If you want to choose the pleasure of growth, prepare yourself for some pain.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
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I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.
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Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM