Carl Rogers: "Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself...

Growth occurs when individuals confront problems, struggle to master them, and through that struggle develop new aspects of their skills, capacities, views about life.

Carl Rogers

skills struggle views

We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

Carl Rogers

empathy real thinking

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.

Carl Rogers

orange sunset hands

When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. . . . When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

Carl Rogers

empathy confusion responsibility

When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.

Carl Rogers

confused hurt believe

As no one else can know how we perceive, we are the best experts on ourselves.

Carl Rogers

perceive know-how experts

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

Carl Rogers

hypnosis change appreciation

A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning

Carl Rogers

facilitate teach persons

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

Carl Rogers

change healing relationship

The way of being with another person which is termed empathic...means temporarily living in their life, moving abut in it delicately without making judgment... to be with another in this way means that for the time being you lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter the other's world without prejudice...a complex, demanding, strong yet subtle and gentle way of being.

Carl Rogers

strong mean moving

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Carl Rogers

journey inspirational life

People only seriously consider change when they feel accepted for exactly who they are.

Carl Rogers

accepted feels people

The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others.

Carl Rogers

blame persons inspirational

I realize that if I were stable, prudent and static; I'd live in death. Therefore I accept confusion, uncertainty, fear and emotional ups and downs; because that's the price I'm willing to pay for a fluid, perplexed and exciting life.

Carl Rogers

emotional confusion pay

When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me".

Carl Rogers

eye real thinking

If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.

Carl Rogers

flavor communication emotional

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

Carl Rogers

education motivational inspirational

I think my deepest criticism of the educational system . . . is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not.

Carl Rogers

educational mistake thinking

What you are to be, you are now becoming.

Carl Rogers

be-you becoming growth

I have come to think that one of the most satisfying experiences I know — and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person — is just fully to appreciate this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.

Carl Rogers

sunset clouds hands

"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The creative process is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual."