Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.
Sentence Completions to Facilitate the Art of Living Consciously.
No one owes me the fulfillment of my wishes.
Self-esteem is a particular way of experiencing the self. Its two components are self-efficacy and self-respect. Self-efficacy is the experience of competence in thinking, learning, making appropriate decisions, and responding effectively to the challenges of life. Self-respect is the experience of success, achievement, love, joy, fulfilment – in a word, happiness – are natural and appropriate to us.
No one is coming to save me; no one is coming to make life right for me; no one is coming to solve my problems. If I don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.
Instead of seeking self-esteem through consciousness, responsibility, and integrity, we may seek it through popularity, material acquisitions, or sexual exploits.
Someone who loves us passionately is motivated to know and understand us to a greater depth than someone with whom our relationship is more casual.
Poor self-esteem not only inhibits thought, it tends to distort it.
Men are judged, and are encouraged to judge themselves, by how well they can financially take care of others. Men are socialized to be “servants” fully as much as women; only the forms of culturally encouraged servitude are different. If a man cannot support a woman, he tends to lose stature in her eyes and in his own.
If his or her upbringing is successful, the young man or woman will have evolved out of that dependency into a self-respecting and self-responsible human being who is able to respond to the challenges of life competently and enthusiastically.
Success in life belongs to those who do.
When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes.
The value of self-esteem lies not merely in the fact that it allows us to feel better but that it allows us to live better – to respond to challenges and opportunities more resourcefully and more appropriately.
The greatest crime we commit against ourselves is not that we may deny and disown our shortcomings but that we deny and disown our greatness – because it frightens us.
The protection of self-esteem requires a clear understanding of the limits of personal responsibility.
People with troubled self-esteem are often uncomfortable in the presence of those with higher self-esteem and may feel resentful and declare, “They have too much self-esteem.
We hear a voice that tends to be modulated with an intensity appropriate to the situation and with clear pronunciation.
It is said that the successful organization of the future will be above all a learning organization. It can equally be said that it will be an organization geared to self-esteem.
We are not moved to change those things whose reality we deny.
If we are willing to take responsibility for that which is within our power, I think that frees us to see clearly that which is not, and to understand, therefore, the limits of our accountability. But if we too often fail to take such responsibility and feel vaguely guilty over our avoidance, the paradox is that in our confusion we often end up blaming ourselves for events beyond our control.
The art of being is the art of knowing ourselves, of accepting and existing in harmony with ourselves, and of living out, in action, the highest possibilities of our nature. It includes three basic concepts: self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-assertion.