7 & 7: Confident vs. Insecure

REFLECTION:

To believe in yourself is to believe in your self – your uniqueness, your special view of the world, your difference, the place you fill today, the spot you will fill tomorrow. You are you. Who else can make that claim? No other has the right to diminish you. You are in control. If you let your head hang, it’s your neck going loose – not someone pushing down – to fault. The first friend and most important one to you is you. So go gentle on the criticism. Don’t exaggerate your faults. To believe in yourself, you must approve of yourself. Who’s going to vote for you, if you won’t vote for yourself? If you value yourself, so will others. If you say and believe you’re inferior, you are; if you say and believe you’re not, you’re not. It’s as simple as that. Drop the dread. Drop it now. The longer you hold on, the more damage done. Drop the fear of the unknown, chasing someone else’s dreams, illusions that were never really yours anyway. Accept the unknown. You’re a candle to be lit. There are rooms out there for you to light up. Everybody and everything has problems built in. You just can’t see them because they are so well hidden. You don’t know what others say to themselves in their private prayers. There’s only one person who can lick you. That’s you. But there are many people who will love you, if first you’ll love yourself.

MUSES:

If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
Yiddish proverb

Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy, and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.
Satchel Paige

Be a friend to thyself and others will be so too.
Thomas Fuller

Never exaggerate your faults; your friends will attend to that.
Robert C. Edwards

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval
Mark Twain

If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured the world will not raise your price.
Anon.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve developed a new philosophy – I only dread one day at a time.
Charles M. Schulz

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
Voltaire

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.
John Lennon

Neither do we light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Matthew 5:15

People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.
Sa’Di

There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
Montaigne

I have seen boys on my baseball team go into slumps and never come out of them, and I have seen others snap right out and come back better than ever. I guess more players lick themselves than are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself.
Connie Mack