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Vironika Tugaleva Quotes

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Famous Vironika Tugaleva Quotes

“If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea—uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can’t you sail that voyage and explore yourself?”

“Self-discovery changes everything, including your relationships with people. When you find your authentic self, those who loved your mask are disappointed. You may end up alone, but you don’t need to stay alone. While it’s painful to sever old connections, it’s not a tragedy. It’s an opportunity. Now, you can find people who understand the importance of looking for truth and being authentic. Now, you can find people who want to connect deeply, like you’ve always wanted to, instead of constant small talk and head games. Now, you can have real intimacy. Now, you can find your tribe.”

“Who will you love if not yourself? Other people? How can you love someone for anything but their raw, naked humanity? How can you say you love someone if it is not for their flaws and quirks, snorts and hurts, triggers and tears? Anything else is not love. It is idealization. And, as long as you do it to yourself, you will do it to everyone. You will not love anyone or anything until those eyes in the mirror soften up and embrace the beauty that is already within.”

“There is no way to genuinely, powerfully, truly love yourself while crafting a mask of perfection. I know, you know, we all know—it's hard to let your pimples and your flaws be seen. It's hard to stumble and bumble. It's hard to not know the right things to do or say. It's hard to not look like TV. Sometimes, it's really hard for me to be the awkward mess that I am when I'm authentic, instead of having runway authenticity—all natural, but flawless. But every time I allow that to be okay, not just around myself but around others—I affirm something to myself. I affirm, to myself more than anyone else, that I am lovable and acceptable unconditionally. I affirm that it's okay to take on and take in all the flavours and hues of human experience, and not just the ones that are acceptable in this culture, in this time, in this place. And that kind of acceptance, that kind of love—that's the kind of love that creates miracles. That's the kind of love I really need. That's the kind of love that makes approval taste like cardboard.”

“There are, literally, thousands of people all around the world who need nothing more than to meet someone just like you. To spend your time pretending to be someone else is just as senseless and fear-driven as spending your time speaking to people who don’t understand you. Find your tribe. Let yourself be seen. You are already someone’s hero.”

“When you begin to walk your own journey, to have your own unique conversation, you will naturally stop feeling envious of others. Not because you’ll realize your desires are different from theirs, but because they are so similar. You’ll discover the difference between doing well and pretending to do well, between being happy and pretending to be happy, between healthy relationships and staged ones. You’ll see just how many obstacles lie on any path. You’ll realize that it takes the same amount of effort to work on building up the quality of the conversations in your life as it does to broadcast to the public, constantly, that those conversations are already perfect. You can either build up the mask or build up the authentic self. And you, brave and beautiful you, will make the right choice eventually. Be it now or on your deathbed. We all realize soon enough.”

“I believe that the most tragic war of our time is the one within—a war between what we knew as children and what we’ve learned as adults. A war between wisdom and intelligence. A war between the natural colour of our hair and the colour we chemically impose upon it. A war between the manicured hedges and the untouched wilderness. A war between reality and fairy tales. A war between what we could learn about the world and what we are systematically taught. A war that can end in peace.”

“It seems like everyone these days is putting on a mask to feel beautiful, trying to fit into some pre-established norms of how we should look. This isn’t only painful, it’s ignorant. Saying like we know, better than nature does, what is beautiful and what is not is like a two-year-old lecturing an old man about patience. Nature’s been creating beauty for millennia and you are part of that creation process. Stop the madness. Stop fighting who you are. Let the mask fall. It’ll be strange at first, yes. But, over time, you’ll see beyond the temporary discomfort of stepping outside social norms and learn to see the beauty you were born with, the beauty you’ve been taught to ignore and cover up. You’ll see beauty that will take your breath away, like a sunset. That’s how beautiful you are—like a sunset, like a forest, like a million fireflies on a calm warm night lighting up the sky. You are made by nature. Nature is wiser in the ways of beauty than cosmetics companies or magazines. Break the spell. Gain back your sanity. Go find that brilliant beauty within every single part of you. Go find the universe in your eyes. Remove that cloak that’s been pulled over your eyes and see yourself for who you really are.”

“You don’t need to wait for someone else to notice your talents before nourishing them. You don’t need others to accept you to feel accepted. You don’t need to wait. You can begin, at any moment, to work on noticing, nourishing, and accepting yourself. You can work on being a better friend to your reflection. You can start listening to yourself like you wish other people would. You can become curious about who you are. You can begin to learn the language of your mind and body so that you can decode it, understand it, speak it. You can work on understanding yourself instead of always trying to make yourself into someone else.”

“No tree tries to become a certain kind of tree. No flower tries to become a certain kind of flower. The tree and the flower open up to the sun and soak up water. Thus, they grow into themselves. No judgment. No expectations. No commentary. Your task is the same. If you can stop trying so hard to become who you think you should be, and instead commit to understanding and nourishing yourself, you will bloom into whatever kind of person you are.”

“No one's approval is enough to make up for a lack of self-love, which is really a lack of self-awareness. When we feel a desire to be loved, it isn't other people's love we need. It's our own relationship with love that we're longing for, our own awareness of being interconnected with others, our own sense of the magic of our own interwoven existence. To seek the fulfillment of this desire in others' approval is a losing battle. It will never be enough. No one can compliment you enough to supplement for the acceptance that you need from your own self, in each moment. Acceptance for your struggles and your talents. Acceptance for your humanity. Celebration of that humanity. Love is an inside job.”

“Yes, it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to hesitate before plunging from your comfort zone. It’s okay to have scars, pimples, insecurities, moles, cellulite, tremors, debts, redness, regrets, loneliness and uncertainty. It’s okay to have no idea what you’re doing. It’s okay to struggle with some things, while enjoying others. It’s okay to find joy in the beauty in life, even after a great loss. It’s okay to change. It’s okay to move on. And it’s okay to fear changing and moving on. Wherever you are, and whatever you are experiencing, is okay. You didn’t invent the universe and you didn’t invent the human condition. You don’t need permission to live whatever you’re living, even if it looks and feels different from anyone else’s life around you. And it’s okay to feel like you need that permission anyway.”

“Self-love is not the process of ignoring things, paying attention to fewer flaws or forcing yourself to look away from the parts of you that you perceive as ugly or unwanted. Self-love is the process of expanding your awareness, of seeing those flaws and imperfections alongside the incredible potential of the universe flowing within you, alongside the eternal truth of life flowing within your veins in each second, alongside the flickers of creativity and opportunity present within each moment of your existence. Like this, the imperfections persist, but only as lovable quirks, like a bad doorknob on the front door of a cottage in paradise, like a few thorns on a beautiful rose, like a cloud in a sunset. Like this, what was once unwanted becomes essential, memorable, humbling.”

“Leave your hair natural. Let your beard grow out. Leave the makeup in the bag. Wear comfortable clothes. Stop worrying so much about your looks and start looking around you. You have missed so much beauty trying to become beautiful. You have missed your own worth trying to become worthy. Let the mask break open. Let it lie on the floor. Let yourself be seen. Let yourself see.”

“I believe that the best leadership is loud authenticity. That is what the world needs now. We don’t need more plastic, Photoshooped perfection. I don’t want people to look at me and wish they could be me. I want people to look at me and see their own potential. I want people to be more accepting of their own failures, imperfections, and struggles because they watch me accept of my own.”

“There is no greater suffering than constantly measuring yourself and coming up short, except perhaps the realization that your suffering is hurting others. But where do we learn these things? Because, really, they are learned. We don't come crying out of the womb because of our birth weight or because we have no money in this brand new world. We learn to measure and we learn to attach our self-worth to those measurements. These patterns we're stuck in aren't just painful for us, they're also distracting us. Every day, the gap between rich and poor grows while the people of developed societies do nothing, because we are too busy worrying about looking good. We're distracted, but not because we've chosen to be. Being distracted by our illusory inadequacy keeps us from changing the world. And believe me, we all have the power to change the world. If we only make the time. If we only free some head space. If you can't learn to love yourself for yourself (and how could you with such a paradoxical motivation?)... then do it for us. Do it for the world. We need you. We need your mind. We need your attention. We need your thoughts. Change your focus, and you will (not can, but will) change the world. You already matter. You just have to realize it for yourself.”

“Before label yourself and before you decide that there is something irreparably wrong with your thoughts or emotions, ask yourself: “Do I have a caring, unconditionally loving best friend in myself?” If the answer is “No,” then you will not find the solution to your suffering until you address this serious, life-threatening absence of self-compassion. Self-love is not a dinner mint. Self-love matters. Self-love saves lives.”

“There’s all this pressure in our society to be beautiful, to be strong, to be sexy. So we spend our time and money on trying to become these things. We put on the high heels, the suits, the makeup, the mask. Then, we feel more awkward than confident, so we drink away our anxieties. That doesn’t make us look any sexier – it just makes us stop caring about how we look. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is sexy. Everyone is strong. It’s lunacy. We’re all running around trying to become something that we already are. You know what’s really sexy? A person who’s 100% comfortable with themselves. And you know what’s really funny? It is just as time consuming and difficult to learn to accept yourself as it is to pretend to be someone else. The only difference is – with self acceptance, one day, it’s not hard anymore. One day, you feel like your sexiest, strongest self just rolling out of bed in the morning. You’re either going to spend the little time you have in your life on trying to know yourself or trying to hide yourself. The choice is yours. You can’t do both. And you know what’s really amazing about choosing self-love? You’ll be setting an example for all the people around you and all the kids of the coming generation. You’ll be part of a revolution to take back the precious moments of our lives out of the hands of shame-inducing advertisers and back into the hands and hearts of real people like you, like me, like all of us. I know you’ve dreamt about changing the world. So this is your chance. Learn to love yourself, accept yourself, and unleash your strongest, sexiest self. It’s in there. You just have to believe it.”

“It is not depression or anxiety that truly hurts us. It is our active resistance against these states of mind and body. If you wake up with low energy, hopeless thoughts, and a lack of motivation - that is a signal from you to you. That is a sure sign that something in your mind or in your life is making you sick, and you must attend to that signal. But what do most people do? They hate their depressed feelings. They think "Why me?" They push them down. They take a pill. And so, the feelings return again and again, knocking at your door with a message while you turn up all the noise in your cave, refusing to hear the knocks. Madness. Open the door. Invite in depression. Invite anxiety. Invite self-hatred. Invite shame. Hear their message. Give them a hug. Accept their tirades as exaggerated mistruths typical of any upset person. Love your darkness and you shall know your light.”