Anthony de Mello Quotes

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don't have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.

My methods produce lasting behavioral change without unpleasant consequences, because the change does not come from an effort of will. It comes from examining your deep-rooted beliefs of who you are and how the world functions. As you examine these beliefs and make changes in them, you literally become a different person.

If someone decides they're not going to be happy, it's not your problem. You don't have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

I learnt one thing in the past or in my life: the only person you can change is yourself, and it has to come from within.

I was trying to change things on the outside and you can't. You've got to feel it on the inside and everything else will change.

You cannot see the changes that you're dreaming about, because they're internal.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Stop blaming the world—look inside!

My moms always told me, 'How long you gonna play the victim?' I can say I'm mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

However unchristian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.

I'm so tired I never want to wake up again. But I've figured out now that it was never them that made me feel that way. It was just me, all along.

People who are angry at themselves sometimes blame others. It's a sign of immaturity.

Remember that any time you're filled with resentment, you're turning the controls of your emotional life over to others to manipulate.

...Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else.

Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.

I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest.

Most people would rather complain about some painful life pattern than dare to meet the level of their own consciousness responsible for its repeated appearance... and therein do the work needed to change it once and for all.

The minute I started addressing my feelings, I actually came out of very negative situations.

When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself.

All I worried about was what Owings was doing to me, instead of what I was doing to him. When you start worrying about that stuff, you're going down the wrong path.

Happy people build their inner world; unhappy people blame their outer world.

When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you.

it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction.