My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.
Interpretation
Strive to find the environment where your abilities can flourish in the service of others.
This quote by Hermann Hesse emphasizes the importance of finding the right environment that allows one’s talents and qualities to thrive. It suggests that true fulfillment comes from serving others in a capacity that aligns with one's strengths, highlighting a commitment to both personal growth and altruism as the ultimate goal in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire your team to identify their strengths.
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.
That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.
You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation.
I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.
One interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire you are still not satisfied. The true antidote of greed is contentment.
Be deaf, be blind, be dead to gossip, and it will grow disgusted with you and select a more sensitive victim.
Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it's about earning approval and acceptance.
As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.
I don't think it's a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem.
Don't always try to be popular. It isn't possible for everyone to like you. It's far more important for you to like yourself. And when you respect yourself, strangely, you get more respect than when you court it from others.
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