The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.
Interpretation
Being less self-aware can enhance your authenticity and technical skill.
Flannery O'Connor suggests that true mastery and expression come from an innate connection to one's craft rather than overthinking it. When a person is less self-conscious and lets their instincts and experiences guide them, they can achieve a more genuine and technically proficient outcome in their work.
In practice
An artist discussing their creative process at a gallery opening.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people donβt realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
When you lose the ability to step up and hit the ball as hard and as far as you want, that also affects your ability to will the ball to go where you want it to go, if you know what I mean.
Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. Great faith must have great trials.
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
The definition of the good life is doing creative things, whether making music, trying to figure out how to do a particular piece of code, or putting together investments.
Maybe it's just in America, but it seems that if you're passionate about something, it freaks people out. You're considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.
Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars.
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