L31 · Lens
Purpose and inner order
Bind yourself to a definite aim and inner standard; voluntary commitment creates coherence and freedom.
Use: Aimlessness, low mood, distraction, disorder.
Boundary: Inner order serves a chosen purpose.
Cues
Showing 20 of 24 cues
“Excellence withers without an adversary. It is not what you endure that matters, but how you endure it.”
“If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
“In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.”
“Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.”
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologising to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.”
“It was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world ... The unconscious contents could have driven me out of my wits. But my family, and the knowledge: I have a medical diploma ... I must help my patients, I have a wife and five children ... these were actualities which made demands upon me and proved to me again and again that I really existed.”
“I sacrifice myself for my profession, my wife, my children, or, more properly expressed, I do not sacrifice myself for them, but I find in them my satisfaction and joy.”
“I am less convinced that intimate personal relationships are the only source of health and happiness. In the present climate, there is a danger that love is being idealized as the only path to salvation. When Freud was asked what constituted psychological health, he gave as his answer the ability to love and work. We have over-emphasized the former, and paid too little attention to the latter ...”
“Directions cannot be given for achieving personal excellence, because we are all different. The gifts and potentialities of one person are not those of another. Indeed, each person is unique. His or her gifts and abilities are probably not exactly matched by anyone else on earth. And from this it follows that one person’s excellence is his or hers alone. No one can tell you how to achieve yours.”
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.”
“What does your conscience say? ‘You shall become the person you are’.”
“You need not, and in fact cannot, teach an acorn to grow into an oak tree, but when given a chance, its intrinsic potentialities will develop. Similarly, the human individual, given a chance, tends to develop ... the unique alive forces of his real self; the clarity and depth of his own feelings, thoughts, wishes, interests; the ability to tap his own resources, the strength of his will power ... All this will in time enable him to find his set of values and aims in life.”
“Freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the harness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by yourself, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations or law and of duty.”
“The man whose interests are all outside is never satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after something more and better which, true to his bias, he always seeks outside himself. He forgets completely that, for all his outward successes, he himself remains the same inwardly ... Obviously the outward lives of men could do with a lot more bettering and beautifying, but those things lose their meaning when the inner man does not keep pace with them.”
“To be satiated with the “necessities” [of external success] is no doubt an inestimable source of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his claim, and this can be satisfied by no outward possessions.”
“And life confided the secret to me: behold, it said, I am that which must always overcome itself.”
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologizing to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.”
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.”