When you try to bring about behavioral change by an effort of will, you actually do violence to yourself, and the chances are very good that you will not succeed. This is so universally true that you can actually make money from it.
Interpretation
Forcing change through sheer willpower can be detrimental and often ineffective.
This quote emphasizes that trying to change one's behavior solely through willpower can lead to inner conflict and ultimately result in failure. Instead of pushing against oneself, a more gentle and understanding approach to change may yield better outcomes, highlighting the importance of emotional alignment and acceptance in the process of personal transformation.
In practice
In a self-help seminar to discuss personal growth strategies.
I believe that if you don't derive a deep sense of purpose from what you do, if you don't come radiantly alive several times a day, if you don't feel deeply grateful at the tremendous good fortune that has been bestowed on you, then you are wasting your life. And life is too short to waste.
When something happens to you, suffering doesn't begin. Suffering begins at the instant you label a bad thing - as something that is wrong.
When you label so much of what happens to you as 'bad,' it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And - this is key - labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you'll experience it as such.
If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf, That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold.
The slower but consistent tortoise causes less waste and is more desirable than the speedy hare that races ahead and then stops occasionally to doze. The Toyota Production System can be realized only when all the workers become tortoises.
Through discipline, and determination one can change anything and everything about him - his habits, his outlook on life
These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.
After a century of trying, we declared that healthcare in America is not a privilege for a few, it is a right for everybody. After decades of talk, we finally began to wean ourselves off foreign oil. We doubled our production of clean energy. We brought more of our troops home to their families, and we delivered justice to Osama bin Laden.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.