Get Selfish - The way is through

Pre-pandemic I managed to devour 127 books in a single year, thanks to the ample reading time afforded by my travels on planes and trains. Nowadays working in much more of a virtual environment, my pace has settled to about one book per week. However, I've come to realise that, despite taking brief notes and highlighting pivotal quotes in the numerous non-fiction works that have taught me to work more efficiently, I seldom share these valuable insights with others.

In this review, I'll be sharing some of my favourite quotes from this book which was recommended to me recently. Quotes that have not only enriched my perspective but also offer a glimpse into Hunter's profound understanding of self-care and personal growth. The author explores the essence of getting selfish in the most constructive and liberating sense, and this book is a useful one for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of modern life with grace and intention

So here's a collection of my favourite key quotes from the book:

"Over the course of many years I've been on a journey of learning how to create happiness in my life... First I thought it was a lack of something - friends, money, fulfilment, directions, IKEA furniture. So I shopped...I had a ton of plans that were all going to happen as if by magic, right after I was perfect - thinner, prettier, younger, smarter. I was miserable but I had one thought that ran on a loop in my head: "There's got to be more to life!" I kept saying it to myself and the universe, until one day the universe began answering back."

"My first step: I decided to get selfish! All by itself it doesn't get you very far. Instead it raised an essential question: What did I need to be noursihed.

"My life was full of stuff but I was still filled with lack. Only we can connect with our own source, only we ourselves can tell when the void is full...only we can find our own answers."

"I was going to have to go through all the layers of conditioning, illusion and defence, all the faulty thinking and false values to find what is true for me and what nourishes me."

"At its basic level its self-care and the strength to finally say 'I am good enough, I am worthy.' It is honouring myself and valuing mysefl, listening and responding to my own needs."

"By the very action of lovingly taking care of ourselves, we become more loving and considerate people to everyone. If we love ourselves it becomes much easier to accept love from others and when we ourselves are nourished, we have more love to give to others."

"Who made other people's needs more important than yours? You did!"

"By that unconscious action of not honouring ourselves or our primary relationship - which is with ourselves - all other relationships in your life are also held to this standard, and reflect the value we give ourselves....When we get angry or feel let down when others dont respect us or consider our needs we complain and grumble to ourselves and others and since complaining is a negative energy things keep going downhill... The guilt stems from a lack inside us, which is the manifestation of fear - mainly the fear of not being good enough. This guilt is the universe helping us by highlighting that something is not right."

"Each time we put other people's needs before our own or feel guilty when we attend to our own needs we are sending a message to the universe that says 'I am not worthy of being listened to or having my needs met' the universe responds accordingly because you've just told it that you're not worth taking care of. As a result we don't get what we need and we operate from a base of nearly empty which in turn creates more lack in our lives."

"We have to understand the truth of what we are: We don't have a soul - we have a body, we ARE the soul. Our bodies are temporary...our minds are subject to filters and belong to the body. Our souls are pure energy and immortal."

"One of the laws of physics states: Energy cannot be created, nor can it be destroyed, it can only change form."

"Get comfortable withs aying no. The word no is giving yourself permission to listen to yourself, to be true to yourself, and heal your primary relationship which is with yourself."

"Being true to yourself is like plugging your own bath. The bath can finally fill. If we plug our energy leaks, the things we do that drain us, the it is inevitable that we will fill up with energy and overflow."

"Align yourself to the truth of you in order to step into the power of you"

"It's often that most brutal of attacks - comparison - that leads the way in our assassinating our own character and validating that we are indeed useless, unworthy, or even unlovable all of which couldn't furthe from the real truth - the real miracle of us."

"Instead of comparing yourself, celebrate your uniqueness. So what if you can't do this or that? Focus on what you can do - somewhere in all that you will find your purpose and your inner joy."

"Give yourself the gift of self-acceptance."

"You will know when you find what is meant for you because it will light you up. Seconds will slip into minutes, minutes into hours without your noticing. There will be a feeling of joy. That's your soul. That's how you speak its language - it lights you up...your soul is saying yes and you are in alignment with who you truly are."

"Ask yourself this: If I wasn't getting paid would I still want to do this? If you answered yes, it's in alignment with happiness, your soul and the truth of you. If you say no, you have your answer."

"When I fully accept myself I am freed from the burdens of needing outside acceptance."

"By the action of saying yes when we mean no we are lying and limiting the energy that can flow to use by contracting our energy...we are in effect punishing ourselves."

"A lot of us have forgotten that our primary relationship in life is with ourselves. From there, all other relationships flow."

"Start to listen to your feelings and respond to that input. By doing this you are listening to and respecting yourself."

"Make a commitment to yourself to accept any and all compliments you get with an open and grateful heart. Take a breath, smile, and just say thank you as sincerely as you can. Accept the compliments and take them into yourself; by doing so you are putting yourself more in alignment with someone who deserves all good things and in the alignment of self-love.

"As human being we spend billions of dollars each year filling the void our insecurities have created within us. Lack of self love is what it really is as well as lack of self-acceptance."

"To know your own love, finally accepting yourself as you are, is the beginning of all good things."

"Our beliefs create our actions and our actions create our results."

"Self-limiting beliefs do exactly what they say on the tin. They limit the energy that can be exchanged or flow to us."

"There are different mirrors. Here are the mirrors we face:

Mirror of desire - we want what she has

Mirror of self - we see ourselves in her

Mirror of avoidance - I will never be like that!

Mirror of memory - fears from your past give voice to what seems like a fear in the present."

"Going through has three key elements: The first element is there has to be a willingness to face the behaviour or issue we want to change. The second element is gaining the knowledge of how to change. (Most people's can't's are really just unmet educational needs, obscuring the practical hows which they can never get to because of the attachment to the cant's") The third element is acceptance (we need to make friends with who we are and accept the warts and all version and situations in our lives."

"Happiness can't happen if you stay stuck in thoughts, feelings and situations that serve unhappiness. This meant that behaviours, attitudes and thoughts that didn't serve happiness needed to go from my life as well as people, places, situations and anything else that did ot align with or serve happiness."

"You either make peace with the things that make you unhappy or you simply move your energy away from the unhappiness and move towards things that light you up and make you feel good."

"Love is the state of abundance and the source of everything while fear is simply a lack of love which creates a void where love should live."

"True empowerment is taking total responsibility for all of me. It's taking responsibility for all my thoughts, all my feelings, all my actions, all my deeds, all of my spoken words, all of my energy - not just part of my energy."

"If you want to go places in your life, make today the day you choose not to let anyone else ever make you feel anything again without your express permission."

"There is no power in disempowered energy or thinking. It just creates more helplessness, more sick and tired of being sick and tired, more of the need to complain, more of the victim whose life is miserable. If you don't want to be in that place, make a commitment to yourself to change the thoughts that created it."

"Hit the emergency brake on your excuses on why you can't show up larger in your own life."

"It's your choice what to think and therefore how to feel."

"Loving yourself enough to take ownership and find a solution is the way."

"It's about taking personal responsibility and recognising that the bad stuff is just fear and knowing it is you that ultimately empowers your fear."

"There's always a choice. People may do many things to us but our minds will always remain our own. That is the true nature of free will; your ability to choose one thought over another."

"Like energy attracts like energy."

"Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you will get that reality. There can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics."

"Speak like you already have it - the universe responds to your energy vibration."

"You only have to believe, to know you are going to receive. Trust the universe, what you've asked for has to become a knowing, a certainty within your belief system."

"Whatever reason you are not receiving, the cause is always fear. Nothing vanquishes fear like love. Look inside yourself and love. Connect to your own source of abundance. That removes all the blocks so that the only result can be delivery."

"You have created your current reality. If you don't like the reality you've got, it just means you've been creating by default - that robotic state of being without conscious thought, intention and understanding."

"If you don't like the current reality you are experiencing, forgive yourself. Don't make it another opportunity to bash yourself. Instead, love yourself. You were doing the best you could with the information you had. Build a bridge over self-pity falls and move swiftly along. You have new information and you can do better now; it's just a choice away."

"Your life is serving you and giving you tailor-made opportunities to know who you really are. Opportunities to know your own goodness, strength, to find a fountain of inner peace so abundant that you will never run out, to connect with the source of all light so bright it will shine in every corner of your life and in the lives of those you encounter."

"Everything is teaching us and expanding us and there are no bad lessons."

"When faced with a challenge in my life, I now ask 'What is this teaching me?"

When I look in the mirror, I love the person I see, because I have fought hard to become her and you know what, she's pretty awesome."

"The simplest and easiest way to align yourself with the creative and connective power of the universe and therefore your own soul is to feel gratitude."

"Gratitude is the super highway to feeling good."

"Start by finding ten things each day to be grateful for, even if they seem really little, because this will powerfully draw in more things to be grayeful for. The goal here is to simply feel good."

"The trick here is to feel the gratitude. It is not enough to just say it; there needs to be a feeling with it to make sure it puts you on the vibration of gratitude and love."

Additional Quotes quoted by Joanna Hunter.

"Believe nothing no matter where you read it or who has said it not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense" - Buddha

"The world can only be free when men are content in themselves and each draws on his own foundation" - George William Russell

"Look within, within us is the fountain of good and it will ever bubble up if thou will ever dig" - Marcus Aurelius

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." - Rumi

"You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Christopher Columbus

"The soul always know what to do to heal itself, the challenge is to silence the mind." - Anon.

"It is important when pursuing our self interest we should be Wise Selfish not Foolish Selfish. Being Foolish Selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow short-sighted way. Being Wise Selfish means taking a broader view and recognising that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Wise Selfish means being compassionate." - Dalai Lama

"I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health" - Voltaire

"I am mine before I am ever anyone else's" - Nayyirah Waheed

"We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth." - Iyanla Vanzant

"As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." - Marianne Williamson

"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body." - C.S.Lewis

"Above all else to thy own self be true." - William Shakespeare

"You cannot serve from an empty vessel." - Eleanor Brownn

"To make the right choices in life you have to get in touch with your soul." - Deepak Chopra

"By being yourself you put something wonderful into the world that was not there before." - Edwin Elliot

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserves your love and affection." - Buddha

"Your time is limited, do not waste it living someone else's life." - Steve Jobs

"We only accept the love we think we deserve." - Stephen Chbosky

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance" - Oscar Wilde

"When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you." - African proverb

"You cannot control the wind, but you can direct the sail."

"Since everything is a reflection of our minds...everything can be changed by our minds." - Buddha

"Whatever we put our attention on will grow stronger in our life." Mahavishi Mahesh Yogi

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Anais Nin

"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostil world. Everyone you meet is your mirror." Ken Keyes Jr

"Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event."

"The quickest way to acquire self-confidence is to do exactly what you are afraid to do." - Anon

"Believe you can and you're halfway there." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Happiness can exist only in acceptance" - George Orwell

"Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself."

"Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around." - Henry David Thoreau

"Love is what we are born with, fear is what we learn." - Marianne Williamson

"Love liberates" - Maya Angelou

"Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy." - Anon

"The primary cause for unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it." - Eckhart Tolle

"What we dwell on is who we become." - Oprah Winfrey

"I do not fix my problems, I fix my thinking then my problems fix themselves." - Louise Hay

"Shallow men believe in luck and circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You've got to kick fear to the side, because the pay-off is HUGE." - Mariska Hargitay

"When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve." - Napoleon Hill

"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, thinks in terms of energy, frequency and vibration." - Nikola Tesla

"When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears." - Anthony Robbins

"May your choice reflect your hopes not your fears." - Nelson Mandela

"Your power is in your thoughts, so stay awake, in other words remmeber to remember." - Rhoda Bryne

"If you change the way you look at things, you will change the things you see." - Wayne Dyer

"If all you did was just look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyous, spectacular life." - Abraham Kicks

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melody Beattie

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