Najwa Zebian Quotes

These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.

To the heart in you, don’t be afraid to feel. To the sun in you, don’t be afraid to shine. To the love in you, don’t be afraid to heal. To the ocean in you, don’t be afraid to rage. To the silence in you, don’t be afraid to break.

Whatever you do, do it with purpose. Being focused is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be proud of. When you know what are you are doing and have a clear vision of where you are going, you will not need to chase opportunities. Opportunities will seek you. Happiness will chase you. And, instead of being a choice, you will be the one choosing.

If you ever get the chance to treat them the way they treated you, I hope you choose to walk away and do better.

Today I decided to forgive you. Not because you apologized, or because you acknowledged the pain that you caused me, but because my soul deserves peace.

If they don't appreciate your presence, they may never recognize your absence.

I broke my soul trying to mend yours.

Broken wings are a sign of struggle. And strength.

You were my home for so long. Now I realize that humans cannot be homes. If homes can leave, then they are not homes.

You don't need to explain why you're protecting your soul from harm. You really don't.

Don't see the worst in a person and expect them to see the best in you.

My heart aches in corners I did not know existed.

For the to see you shine, you must stay far way, for you are like the sun; when you’re too close, your light make them blind. And when you’re too far, they seek you. So let them seek you. They’re getting your light regardless, but appreciating your presence is different from recognizing your existence. If they don’t appreciate your presence, they may never recognize your absence.

I Deserve It. I'd rather be disappointed by the truth than satisfied with a lie. Respect me, not because I respect you, but because I deserve your respect. How pleased would you be if you found out I respected you only because I wanted you to respect me back or because I wanted something in return? I respect you because you deserve it. Don't listen to me just because I listen to you. I listen to you because you deserve to be heard. Don't be nice to me just because I'm nice to you. I'm nice to you because you deserve to be treated right. Don't show me that you care just because you know I care. I care for you because your heart needs care. If your thoughts and feelings are not genuine, point them in a direction other than mine. If I only give you what you deserve, at least keep me away from what I don't deserve.

Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth. It may hurt, but it definitely won’t hurt more than the feeling that I was told something out of pity, not out of honesty. If you mean it, say it. If you don’t, keep your words until the right person is standing in front of you. If words are said too many times, they become cheap, and I only deserve to hear what is valuable

You love too hard," he said. "It's the only way to love," I replied. I am tired of every person coming my way telling me that I am too needy for love. I am not needy for love. I just love.

The mistake most of us make is that we build our homes in other people in the hope that they will deem us worthy of being welcomed inside. We feel so abandoned and empty when people leave, because we’ve invested so much of ourselves in them.

Broken Wings              Don't break a bird's wings and then tell it to fly. Don't break a heart and then tell it to love. Don't break a soul and then tell it to be happy. Don't see the worst in a person and expect them to see the best in you. Don't judge people and expect them to stand by your side. Don't play with fire and expect to stay perfectly safe. Life is about giving and taking. You cannot expect to give bad and receive good. You cannot expect to give good and receive bad. Does it happen? Yes, but don't make that an excuse for you to keep doing what you know is wrong. Don't blame life for what you do. That is so selfish and ignorant on your behalf.

I spent more time getting over you than I spent falling in love with you.

Life is not fair, but we can choose to be fair humans even if life or other humans choose to be unfair to us.

Here's the thing about people with good hearts: They give you excuses when you don't explain yourself. They accept the apologies you don't give. They see the best in you. They always lift you up, even if that means putting their own priorities aside. They will never be too "busy" for you. They make time, even when you don't. And you wonder why they're the most sensitive people, the most caring people, why they are willing to give so much of themselves with no expectation in return. You wonder why their existence is not so essential to your well-being. It's because they don't make you work hard for the attention they give you. They accept the love they think they deserve - and you accepted the love you think you're entitled to. Don't take them for granted. Fear the day when a good heart gives up on you. Our skies don't become grey out of nowhere, our sunshine does not allow the darkness to take over for no reason. A heart does turn cold unless it's been treated with coldness for a while

I fell in love with you the day you showed me your soul. And I spent days, months, and a year and part of a year realizing that you covered your soul again because you could not handle the love that I was touching you with.

Reflecting is essential, but regret should not ground you in the past. It should make you grateful that you have a conscious mind that realized right from wrong. It should give you strength to wisely use your present to make your future better.

To you, it is much easier to not say a word. To me, I choke on my words if I do not say them. What truly hurts me is that you know that your silence infects a storm in my mind yet you choose it oh so easily.

When pain knocks on your door, welcome it. Let it in. Sit with it. Have tea with it. Understand it. Then let it leave.

The reality you live in is partially up to you. The fantasy you live in is entirely up to you.

You may be a disaster for a day, a month, or a year. Just don't be a disaster forever.

Self-love is loving yourself exactly as you’d love the person you love the most. And that love actually feels like love and looks like meeting your own needs.

... don't invest your feelings in things. Don't invest them in people. Don't be good, considerate, honest, generous, and compassionate to others because you are investing in them as people, meaning because you expect something in return. If you do, you will be, and most likely you already have been, brought to deep disappointment. Be good to people because you are investing in goodness, consideration, honesty, generosity, and compassion, because those qualities have never failed to be rewarding.

I thought that I needed your apology to move on. I really needed to forgive myself first.

I am broken beyond repair. There is no going back to the person I was before. There is rebirth, rebuilding, reinventing, and soul stitching with gold that needs to happen.

Don't tell me there's no place for innocent hearts in this world. Don't tell me I need to accept what I don't believe in. I respect it. Don't confuse my values for my stubbornness, although I am stubborn. Don't confuse my positive attitude for being naive. Allow me to wrap my heart around you for a moment. Listen to this. Innocent hearts may not belong anywhere in this world but they are big enough for any heart in this world. Innocent hearts belong in innocent hearts. Innocent hearts belong in the hearts of those who genuinely want happiness.

You turn your back on yourself when you allow every closed door to stop you from moving on to the next one. Sometimes we choose to stand at a closed door and hope that it will somehow open, although that may defy logic and although we may know deep down that no goodness will come from it. We wait. We choose to wait. We choose to have hope, and we're always scared that the door will open the second we walk away. We claim ownership over what we do not have and fear losing it, although it really never was ours.

We had a moment once when I felt that we were one, in the same feeling, in the same soul. But I've come to learn that these moments can imprison us for years when they were only moments followed by many more that were not the same.

If you gave them once the love that they did not deserve, they will come back for more.

You will tell me that you wish I would give you another chance. And I will tell you that I wished you never walked away when you walked away. But you still walked away. You will tell me that you were not yourself when you walked away. And I will tell you that I was not myself when I thought that you were the one.

Stop dwelling in the past. No, you could not have known better. No, you would not do things differently if you went back. No, they would not have treated you differently if you had acted, looked, or cared differently. They are who they are regardless of who you are.

Being a leader is about leading your own mind's logic and leading your heart's reason. Be cognizant of the decisions that your mind and heart make, and your life will be much more meaningful and rewarding.

Letting go does not mean that you are giving up ir that you are weak. It could just mean that you are no longer allowing what hurts you to control you.

The truth can be seen, but it is not believed until it is openly said.

How can a mother sacrifice years of her life, put her career aside, make her dreams wait, without waiting for a paycheck at the end of the month? Would a paycheck bring her the same kind of happiness anyway? Not. Even. Close. We don’t make ourselves compassionate; we are born compassionate.

Change You can draw a path for your life and have all of your goals set. You can change yourself as much as possible and change things around you just to reach those goals. Here’s the catch. Never underestimate the power of fate. It can knock down the highest of goals that seem guaranteed in your life. Plan, yes, and decide, yes, but be prepared for plans not to work. If they don’t work despite your hardest efforts, there must be a reason. You may not be able to see the reason at the time, but you will one day, maybe even years later. Did your efforts go to waste? If you don’t learn from them, then yes, they did go to waste. Even after changing yourself and your surroundings for the sake of reaching that one goal, you may realize that it was waiting for you at the place where you started, when you were the true you who did not need to change or be changed. Change for yourself, not just for a goal.

Keep your heart beautiful. The world needs that.

I may have been successfull at giving, but I never know when to stop.

You stayed a short while, but you made me want to write about love, not heartbreak, again. Thank you.

Don't let your want replace your need, because a day will come when you will lose what you need to get what you want.

See yourself through the eyes of those who love you. They see all of the goodness in you when you fail to see it. They see the best in you when you see the worst. They are always ready to lift you up even before you fall down. They see every reason why you deserve happiness, love, and joy when you may feel that you're the furthest thing from deserving all of that goodness. Learn to care about those who care about you before you try to make those who don't even notice you turn your way. If you can't see happiness in what you already have, you're fooling yourself if you think that getting what you want will make you happy. If you can't see happiness in the simplest of things, you won't be able to see happiness in what's bigger. If you can't see the beauty of the stars, you may never appreciate the beauty of the moon.

The biggest mistake we make is that we build our homes in other people. We build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and respect that makes us feel safe at the end of the day. We invest in other people, and we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. But what many don’t realize is that when you build your home in other people, you give them the power to make you homeless. When those people walk away, those homes walk away with them, and all of a sudden, we feel empty because everything that we had within us, we put into them. We trusted someone else with pieces of us. The emptiness we feel doesn’t mean we have nothing to give, or that we have nothing within us. It’s just that we built our home in the wrong place.

This is when you realize that sometimes, just sometimes, you need to close your door so others can knock on it. Sometimes you need to stop shining so others can notice your existence. Sometimes you need to stop answering unasked questions so others can start wondering.

Don’t worry about what people think of you or about the way they try to make you feel. If people want to see you as a good person, they will. If people want to see you as a bad person, absolutely nothing you do will stop them.

He never loved you, but he loved the reflection of the man he saw in your eyes. But listen to me, my friend. You never loved him either. You just loved being the queen. You loved being the sun. You loved being the woman behind a great man. You never loved him. You loved having something to give. Someone to fix. Someone to please. You see, in love, you don't get what you want. You get what you think you get.

You see, in love, you don’t get what you want. You get what you think you get.

They do everything to dim your light, and then they ask you why you’re not shining.

Do you know what it feels like to be wounded and told that you caused the wound to yourself by choosing to be where the harm landed?

You are highly sensitive and you take on people’s emotions as if they’re your own,

The foundation is built from two things: self-acceptance (you must feel worthy of the foundation) and self-awareness (knowing who you are).

If you ever come back, I will tell you: The sun is closer to you than I will ever be. So burn, if you wish. You will not see the shadow of me even if you become the sun yourself.

The moments that you choose to be silent when someone's soul is screaming at you, begging you to say, "My heart is with you," those moments leave scars on our souls that no amount of excuses can erase. If you love someone, you love them. You don't allow your pride to stop you from expressing your love to them. If you expect them to understand your love through silence, don't be surprised when their soul slips out of your hands in silence.

I was no longer me. I was in transition between who I was and who I needed to become. And my body couldn’t accept either version of myself, so I just became an empty shell, desperately gasping for any ray of life to inhabit me. I was homeless.

Take Responsibility Don’t rely on others to make your life better. You may seem like a puzzle piece that fits nicely into their plans at one point, but what happens if they change their minds? So be it. You have a mind to lead you by logic and a heart to lead you by reason. You choose your fate by taking responsibility and by taking the lead in your life. Don’t make yourself part of others’ plans. Make your own plan and be part of it.

Letting go does not mean that you are giving up or that you are weak. It could just mean that you are no longer allowing what hurts you to control you.

What you tell your mind to avoid is what your heart is truly seeking

I am so proud of the warrior that I have created from the ashes that were meant to bury me.

Be good to people because you are investing in goodness, consideration, honesty, generosity, and compassion, because those qualities have never failed to be rewarding. Treat people righteously because you are investing in the righteousness of yourself, and, trust me, you will get something in return. You will be happy. You will be content. You will be truly free.

You are not confused. You are experiencing a confusing situation. Separate the confusing situation from who you are. If you say “I am confused,” you are implying the confusing situation is part of you. It is not. It is part of what you are experiencing. The answer to the confusion does not lie in the confusion itself. Rather it lies in the ability to step outside of it and see that you are experiencing it instead of it being you. The answer lies in you.

My heart crumbles into my aching soul because I know that I will never get the answer, but all I want to ask you is: Why did you ask me to love you when you had no intention of loving me?

If you cannot appreciate what you don’t have before you have it, you will not appreciate it after you have it. Period. We thrive on the idea of being able to change our surroundings to suit our needs, and we promise ourselves to change so many things once we finally get that one wish.

Take responsibility. Just as you can't deny that you can feel love and hate, happiness and sadness, anger and ease of mind, or tiredness and relaxation, you can't deny that you have a fate that, sometimes, you can't control. That doesn't mean that it takes control over you. You can't deny that you have words that need to be spoken. You can't deny that you have a choice. You can't deny the ability that you can say no. You can't deny the ability that you have the freedom to make a decision and defend it. You can't deny injustice when you see it, unfairness when you feel it, oppression when you witness it. Stop blaming the world around you for wronging you. Take responsibility for the nos you could have said but chose not to, the words you could have said but didn't, instead wrapping your mouth with your own hands and remaining silent against what needed to be addressed. Take responsibility for the choices you could have made but restrained yourself from making.

I am not better than you because of my religion, color, culture, education, status, wealth, etc. I am not, and neither are you, I must accept, and so should you, that there are differences between us that we were born into. Why do we focus on these differences? Put your hand in mine and let us accept that our differences should not come in the way of us uniting for the basic human values that we share: compassion, peacefulness, respect, honesty, innocence, humbleness and sympathy. Does a baby born here smile differently from a baby born anywhere in the world? Do they cry any differently? We may not speak the same language and we may not live the same lifestyle, but a smile I put on my face when I see you puts a smile on your face before you can even think of it. Now, THAT is powerful. I hope that every sense of arrogance or greed in my heart is deviated to a sense of humility, so the wall of ignorance to the real issues in the world can be shattered by the common rights that I share with all of my brothers and sisters in humanity.

We base our happiness on events that may happen in the future: If this happens, I will be truly happy. What about now? What about all of the things happening in your life now? Are they really not good? Or just not good enough? Reflect, reflect, reflect. Don’t be quick to judge how regretful or amazing your past was, how good or bad your present is, or how great your future will be. Be content with now. Anticipate a better, rather than anticipating a good.

The late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani wrote: “The female doesn’t want a rich man or a handsome man or even a poet, she wants a man who understands her eyes if she gets sad, and points to his chest and says ‘Here is your home country.’ 

Stop waiting for something to happen. Stop waiting for someone to save you. Stop waiting for answers. Stop waiting for love. Stop waiting for the right moment, for the right situation. Stop waiting for relief. Stop waiting for clarity. To bring this to a practical level, how many times do you find yourself scrolling through your phone aimlessly, waiting for something to happen? Or spending every moment you’re not working, studying, or doing whatever it is that you do, in texting, calling others, watching a show, and so forth? And it all feels like the feeling you get when you’re continuously eating but not getting nourished. You’re ingesting so much that it overwhelms you, but you still feel empty. This happens when you’re subconsciously waiting for something to happen that will take you out of the situation you’re in, whatever that situation is.

You enter the Forgiveness room for your own sake, not for anyone else. No one else is allowed in this room but you. Do not seek a cure from the person who caused you pain. Do not wait for their apology to give yourself permission to feel the pain.

Do not focus your healing on making sense of why someone would want to cause you pain. You will never know their true intentions or whether they actually intended to hurt you or not. It’s better to aim to accept instead of to decode, dissect, or justify what happened. Getting stuck on trying to make sense of it is a form of resistance to feeling it or an escape from it. And all that is a distraction from doing the real work. From going back to the root and extracting the pain from the source.

Instead of saying “How could he have lied to me?” you say, “I feel hurt when someone lies to me, because it makes me feel like I’m not worthy of being told the truth.” Instead of saying “He’s not even explaining why!” you say, “I feel sad when someone doesn’t try to resolve an issue, because it makes me feel like I’m not worthy of being fought for.” The “I” statement has three elements: I felt/feel ________ (insert emotion) when ________ (recount the event that happened) because ________ (insert what it made you think of)

To all the people I pushed away while I was healing: Forgive me for not being able to welcome you when I really wanted to. I was scared. I was scared you’d judge me. I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I was scared you’d ask me how I couldn’t have known better. I was scared you’d push me away and remind me of all the reasons I don’t deserve to be loved. I was scared. Everyone I welcomed before you either lied or left or took more than what I had to give. Everyone I welcomed before you only stayed as long as I was who they wanted me to be instead of who I actually am. I’m sorry I made you feel I couldn’t trust you when the truth was I couldn’t even trust myself.

I felt so lucky that a man like you wanted me in a kingdom like yours. And when the gates opened and I entered inside, I saw nothing that pleases the eye. You see, you worked so hard to build your fort, but forgot to tidy what's inside. The years had tainted your every corner with the torture that you inflicted on every visitor. And now I look back and think what a fool you were to think that you could conquer a queen's kingdom like mine. What a fool.

My biggest moments of confusion led me to the best decisions of my life in terms of doing what honors building a home within myself. Being unable to decipher people’s behavior—one day welcoming me into their lives and the next day making me feel like a stranger—led me to feel confused. Because, let’s be honest, confusing behavior in others makes you question yourself. You question your own sanity, your own recollection of events…your own understanding of the events…of the person…of yourself…

You came to me with broken wings. I helped you heal your wounds by pouring love into the broken pieces of your soul. You flew away when your wings were healed. You left me here, chained to the ground, trying to remove the shards that got stuck in my own wings as I took them out of yours. Where did gratefulness go? I will not let your deception make me not want to help more broken wings out there. Your lack of gratitude will not make me not give. I do not give just to be thanked. But it does not mean that it does not hurt.

Don’t let your want replace your need, because a day will come when you will lose what you need to get what you want.

Fall asleep tonight with nothing but love and forgiveness in your heart. What’s meant for you will be for you tomorrow or the day after. Trust your journey. Rest your soul.

You made him king, but there was no kingdom to rule. You put suns in his sky, but the night was his home.

You seek pain as if  it’s going to save you.  You dip into sadness  as if it’s going to bring you joy.

Please don’t make me grieve you while you’re still alive.

I loved the person that you once were, not the person that you are today.

Little do you know that, while you’re envying a person’s beauty, money, or success, they may be battling to live. Those things that they have that you don’t have may be a way of helping them cope. Those things may be a way of proving to them that perfection does not exist. It cannot exist. Just because people don’t complain to you doesn’t mean that they don’t have problems. It means that they’ve learned to accept their problems and deal with them without wanting you to worry. They think of how to keep you happy while you wonder how they could be so happy.

As I attempt to describe this pain, words crumble before they can be written on paper. It felt like someone had walked me all the way up to the top of a mountain and pushed me off with all their force. At the same time, I felt numb. Perhaps it was denial. Shock. Disbelief. Or maybe the pain was so deep I couldn’t feel its intensity anymore. I felt a tingling sensation all over my body. Like I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t cry. I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t yell. I guess what I really wanted was to change this ending. But I couldn’t. This was the end of the fight. I felt so helpless.

According to this theory, there are are four major styles of attachment that people form early in life and carry into adulthood: secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant. A secure person is an at-home person; they’re comfortable with connection and don’t base their worthiness on external sources of validation. An anxious person is the complete opposite; they’re in constant need of validation and come from a place of fear of abandonment. An avoidant person may come across as secure, but they avoid connection out of fear of abandonment. And an anxious-avoidant is a combination of the previous two.

Whatever your brain is looking for, your eyes will see. If you are looking for the positive, you’ll see it. And if you’re looking for the negative, you’ll see it. It’s a matter of what you choose to see.

Women are often conditioned to believe that motherhood is the mark of womanhood... that it's the most important achievement a woman could ever accomplish. While it's okay to believe that, it's also okay not to.

You say that I mean ⁣ nothing ⁣ to you, ⁣ but you search for my eyes ⁣ in the face of every woman ⁣ you meet. ⁣ You search for my warmth ⁣ in the soul of every woman ⁣ you seek. ⁣ You think that ⁣ if time and circumstance ⁣ forced you to force me ⁣ out of your life, ⁣ that time and circumstance ⁣ owe you ⁣ a woman like me. ⁣ Search, my darling. ⁣ Search. ⁣ I do not come ⁣ twice ⁣ in the eternity that passed⁣ nor in the one to come.

Somewhere along the way of trying different things that we think will help change us, we may be misunderstood to be trying too hard, to be fake, and to be different than what we really are. Compare this to the metamorphosis of a butterfly. Halfway through, it looks nothing like what it ends up being. It is your choice to either stay halfway through or to continue your journey once you start it, to reach that destination of the person you know you can be.

I see how hard you’re trying. I see how hard this is on you. You are making progress. I’m proud of you. You are getting stronger every day, and you will get to the point where you can trust yourself in the decision you need to make.

Even when change is the logical solution that will get you the inner peace you desire, your body will resist it. That’s because your body quite literally feels safer in the presence of the source of pain than when it’s disconnected from the source of pain.

The people you welcome into your home, who you allow to sit at your table, are those who will listen without judgment, without the immediate need to respond, criticize, or analyze. Those who practice, not just show, compassion. Those who, even when they disapprove of your actions or what led you here, will tell you “It must be so hard. I can’t begin to imagine feeling what you’re feeling.” Not people who will say things like “But how did you not see this or that?” or any statement that makes you feel your problem is nothing compared to what they or others are going through.

-Part 2- Worry not about the future. You might not go there. Live not in the past. Its doors are locked. Its keys are in the skies. But remember this: Your heart is a castle. Guard it with a cage of gold. Only he who is destined to enter it will seek the key. Your mind is a kingdom of grace. Keep its gates high and mighty. Keep it guarded with your faith. Befriend silence. It never betrays you. You are the master of your journey. You are the owner of your path. You are a bird, but unless you fly, you are not free. Only after your wings are broken will you realize that freedom is in your hands. So be free.

Here is an example I’m sure you can relate to on some level. Say you really liked someone who doesn’t like you back. Maybe you were in a relationship with this person and maybe not. The focus of your whole being might be on their unwillingness to give you love. If their love is the only source of love you see, you won’t see the love that might be coming to you from family, friends, colleagues, and even potential love interests. Because you’re not looking for that love. You’re not seeing it as a source of love. So, indirectly, you are blinding yourself to the love around you. You might believe you’re not worthy of love, and you’ve supported that belief with evidence from your past, plus evidence from your current situation. If that’s the case, your mind is going to search for every piece of evidence that further proves the story you believe about yourself, or what you make something that happened mean about you. You might see that story referred to as the “ego,” which is simply the Latin word for “I.” From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, your ego is looking for proof that reinforces what you believe about yourself. You walk around constantly trying to make everything mean something about you.

You think that time will change them. It won’t. You think that they’ll realize their mistakes with time and run to you for forgiveness. They won’t. They will not. They. Will. Not. Let it sink in. Narcissists always believe that they are right. Once you become nothing to them, you are absolutely nothing. And after you expose their true colors, they start seeing you as the devil and run the other direction when you should be the one running away, further making you feel like you’re not worthy of their presence. It will bother you that they can be so heartless when they are the ones at fault. But remember: At least you have a heart. At least you can feel.

All my heart could say then was Why can’t I have that? That wasn’t the gifts. It wasn’t the clothes or the candy. That was the love. The warmth. The connection. The feeling of relevance, worth, and importance. . . . Like I actually belonged somewhere. At such a young age, I wasn’t able to label my feelings with these words. The only word I could put to what I was missing, to what I wanted, was that.

Don’t Lose Track I don’t live in your heart or in your mind, so I cannot judge your intentions or your beliefs. Although your actions may give me a good impression of who you really are as a person, and although I may learn some lessons from your mistakes, I have no right to openly judge you because my purpose in life is not to criticize other people’s lives but to be respectful and considerate of them along my own path to reach my end vision in life. My path may cross with yours, and I may believe that you are on the wrong track, but if I lose track of my path because I’m too busy judging yours, I will waste my time and yours. Who I am and what I believe in are mine to keep, and who you are and what you believe in are yours to keep. They are yours to strengthen, change, or even keep the same. As long as we can be true to ourselves, stay away from hypocrisy, and be respectful toward one another, we will be happy along our paths to reach our dreams. One day, you will realize that there is no one more worthy of your attention or your criticism than yourself. Imagine putting all of the effort and energy you spend criticizing others and exposing their mistakes toward bettering yourself. Wouldn’t you be much more content and happy?