personal development on Self-Importance

In his poem Cocktail Party , T. S. Eliot captures a fundamental truth about human nature and the source of much hurt in the world. People’s actions are rarely driven by outright malice—intended t...

Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day.

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.

Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and com...

The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Historical Clue The superscript of Psalm 51 gives us a historical clue about the composition of this Psalm, “A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophe...

[These thoughts come from a journal entry of about 10 years ago when I was experiencing a deep and dark night of faith] I have found insight and wisdom for my journey with Christ in the writings of J...

God of the common and of the uncommon. You meet us in the ordinary routines of life–when we play and when we rest, while we work and while we worship. And You reveal yourself in the extraordinary, too...

Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery.

The people I know who are the most concerned about their individuality, who probe constantly into motives, who are always turned inwards toward their own reactions, usually become less and less indivi...

The person striving for superiority is “always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinion of others ​and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgm...

If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST ...

When we accept ourselves for what we are, we decrease our hunger for power or the acceptance of others because our self-intimacy reinforces our inner sense of security. We are no longer preoccupied wi...

To know oneself, is above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against the Truth, and not the other way around.

With vainglory, we crave notice of our achievements with pride, we take full credit for the progress we have made and do not think that God has been involved at all, let alone been our indispensible h...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

Know Thyself-but don’t tell anyone.

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our wo...

Self-judgment may be the greatest barrier to self-understanding.

If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I?

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

The final mystery is oneself.

I must register a certain impatience with the faddish equation, never suggested by me, of the term identity with the question, “Who am I?” This question nobody would ask himself except in a more or le...

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

Perfection....it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.

Gracious God, can I truly say that you’re my glory? In a way, yes. I do derive my sense of worth from you, at least in part. And I do seek to live for your glory, at least some of the time. Yet, I’m a...

Thomas Merton once said, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self, This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. A...