"We have all a better guide in ourselves,
if we would attend to it,
than any other person can be."
-- Jane Austen
Believing in ourselves, and in our own wisdom to guide our own lives, even ignoring or discounting what others tell us makes all the difference in how we flow through life and in our work. As a sales manager for over 40 years, it is personal confidence that has always set the good sales person from the mediocre regardless of other factors in my own experience. As a result, it is the quality that I tried my best to instill in others for their own benefit and ultimately everyone else's.
I love how Jane says it so well. Swami Vivekananda takes it a step or two further in saying, "If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished." Another author, e. e. cummings fills in some color by saying, "Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
I've seen firsthand what that calm, confidence looks and acts like, and it is rather like even forgetting oneself because the confidence level is such that there is no need to focus there; almost as if it is a given. Joseph Campbell captured that thought this way: "When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness."
This is where I've been heading all my life and I am beginning to feel that as an experience. I have found that it is not a destination, but a journey and the journey IS the destination.
I'll leave this post with one of my favorite quotes on this subject:
"If We Did All The Things We Are Capable Of, We Would Literally Astound Ourselves." -- Thomas A Edison
Spread Some Joy Today--by being YOU!
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