Whatever you think someone else should give to you, you need to be able to give yourself first.
Jay ShettyRead
I see my whole 20s as a massive experiment. So were my teens. I think the problem is that we're not encouraged to experiment; we're encouraged to decide and choose, be singular and focused. You can't be that until you experiment. You don't know what's going to work until you try it.
Interpretation
Embracing experimentation in life fosters growth and discovery.
This quote highlights the importance of viewing life as an ongoing experiment, particularly during formative years like oneβs teens and twenties. It suggests that societal pressure to make definitive choices often stifles the natural process of exploration and discovery. By encouraging experimentation, individuals can uncover what truly resonates with them, ultimately leading to more informed and fulfilling decisions in the future.
In practice
During a career workshop, I shared the quote to emphasize the value of trying different paths before settling on a career.
Whatever you think someone else should give to you, you need to be able to give yourself first.
Expectations are not based on reality. They are observations, expected realities, or beliefs of what you think will happen. Expectations of others stop us from acting as our highest selves and reaching our full potential.
We think we have to become something else to be satisfied, not realizing that being ourselves is the only thing that can satisfy us.
If we don't choose to intentionally and consciously slow down and stop being in a rush, your body and mind will force you to do it anyway.
When I became a monk, it didn't feel like I was giving up that much. I actually felt like I had made the best decision, because anyone who hadn't focused on building themselves up was the one losing out.
Real love is figuring out how someone wants to be loved and loving them in that way.
Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.
But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other, and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest desire to learn.
It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.
For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.
Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.
I know the two great commandments, and I'd better get on with them.
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