<aside> 🌳 These Notes are not intended to depict a complete representation of the content of the book. They are simply a collection of the sentences and concepts that resonated the most with me.

</aside>

• TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Part 1 — Speaking Personally

Chapter 1 | "This is Me"

This chapter begins with the author telling a bit about his story. It then continues with a list of some learnings Rogers found significant for himself during his life and practice as a psychotherapist. Below are some of those learnings that I found the most resonating.

In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not.

• In fact, it seems to me that most of the mistakes I make in personal relationships can be accounted for in terms of the fact that I have, for some defensive reason, behaved in one way at a surfaced level, while in reality my feelings run in a contrary direction.

I find I am more effective when I can listen acceptantly to myself, and can be myself.

• It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function.
• It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change. ... we cannot change, we cannot move away from who we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.

I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand another person.

• I believe this is because understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. which is why our first reaction to most of the statements we hear is an immediate evaluation, or judgment, rather than an understanding of it.

I have found it highly rewarding when I can accept another person.

• Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself. So I find that when I can accept another person, which means specifically accepting the feelings and attitudes and beliefs that he has a real and vital part of him, then I am assisting him to become a person: and there seems to me great value in this.

The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to "fix things".

• Yet the paradoxical aspect of my experience is that the more I am simply willing to be myself, in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.

One of the basic things which I was a long time in realizing, and which I am still learning, is that when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing.

Very closely related to this learning is a corollary that, evaluation by others is not a guide for me.