So long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them. Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself.
Interpretation
True self-ownership comes from within, free from external validation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-approval and the detrimental effects of seeking validation from others. It suggests that as long as we are preoccupied with others' opinions, we allow ourselves to be controlled by them and hinder our personal freedom. Authenticity and self-ownership arise when we no longer rely on external approval, enabling us to live genuinely and autonomously.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-empowerment, you might say, 'Remember, so long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them.'
What you hope, you will eventually believe. _x000D_ What you believe you will eventually know. What you know, you will eventually create. What you create, _x000D_ you will eventually experience. What you experience, _x000D_ you will eventually express. What you express, _x000D_ you will eventually become. _x000D_ This is the formula for all of life.
Fear and guilt are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Do not confuse one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life.
Your whole life is a message. Every act is an act of self-definition . Everything you think, say and do sends a message about you.
Love lets go. Need holds on. This is the way you can tell the difference between need and love. Let go of expectation, let go of requirements and rules and regulations that you would impose on your loved ones.
When you find peace within, you also find that you can do without. This means simply that you no longer need the things of your outside world, and not needing is a great freedom.
Giving up is not the answer. Neither is giving in. Stand your ground. There is a way of doing that without having to be combative. There is a way of hanging on to your true self, and demonstrating it, without resorting to aggression. But giving up and giving in is not the way. Simply and quietly claiming your right to be You is the way.
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, _x000D_ we're tied to that which is infinite.
Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.
I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.
I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair.
She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.
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