The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
Carl RogersRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of deeply appreciating others as a means of fostering their growth.
Carl Rogers suggests that truly appreciating individuals, much like one appreciates a beautiful sunset, is not only fulfilling for oneself but also promotes personal growth in the other person. This appreciation reflects a profound understanding and validation of the individual, enhancing their self-worth and encouraging their development.
In practice
During a motivational speech on personal growth and relationships.
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
The kind of caring that the client-centered therapist desires to achieve is a gullible caring, in which clients are accepted as they say they are, not with a lurking suspicion in the therapist's mind that they may, in fact, be otherwise. This attitude is not stupidity on the therapist's part; it is the kind of attitude that is most likely to lead to trust.
I prize the privilege of being alone.
Though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership.
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?
In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.
No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
Everyone disliked their partners at some time or another, she knew that. But she’d spent her hours in the dark wondering whether she’d ever liked him. Would it really have been so much worse to spend those years alone? Why did there have to be someone else in the room while she was eating, watching TV, sleeping?
I never understood that when I heard people retire - they said they missed being around the guys. I don't have a need to make a play in the ninth inning of a game anymore. But being on the inside and being part of a team is something that you really do value and you really do miss.
Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.