Anxiety is the gap between now and later.
Frederick Salomon PerlsRead
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dependency on external validation can undermine personal autonomy and self-esteem.
This quote by Frederick Salomon Perls emphasizes the detrimental effects of relying on the approval and validation of others for our self-worth. When individuals seek constant encouragement, praise, and recognition from others, they become enslaved by the opinions of those around them, effectively allowing others to dictate their self-esteem and personal value.
Themes
DependencySelf-EsteemValidationApprovalFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
In a self-help seminar discussing the importance of inner strength over external validation.
More from Frederick Salomon Perls
All quotes →If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins.
Frederick Salomon PerlsRead
Similar quotes
Those who enter the gates of heaven are not beings who have no passions or who have curbed the passions, but those who have cultivated an understanding of them.
William BlakeRead
Study the past if you want to define the future.
ConfuciusRead
Be deaf, be blind, be dead to gossip, and it will grow disgusted with you and select a more sensitive victim.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.
Lewis HydeRead
Nobody but you is responsible for your life. You are responsible for your life. What is your life? What is all life? What is every flower, every rock, every tree? Energy. And you're responsible for the energy you create for yourself, and you're responsible for the energy that you bring to others.
Oprah WinfreyRead
Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.
Leonard CohenRead