Why am I important?

Unless you find out the essence of who you really are, you are just a mind activity, repetitive unconscious compulsive thoughts and emotions that go with it in a bundle so called ego. A bundle of habitual thoughts that tell your story.

--Eckhart Tolle

Why am I important?

Knowing oneself means gaining increasing insight, intellectually and effectively, in heretofore secret parts of one's psyche. It is a process which may take years for a sick person who wants to be cured of his symptoms and a lifetime for a person who seriously wants to be himself. Its effect is one of increased energy because energy is freed from the task of upholding repressions; thus the more man is in touch with his inner reality, the more he is awake and free.

--Erich Fromm

Why am I important?

Our readers collectively know far more than we will ever know, and by responding to our posts, they quickly make our coverage more nuanced and accurate.

--Henry Blodget

Why am I important?

The Matrix had it wrong. You’re not the battery power in a global, human-enslaving AI, you are slightly more valuable. You are part of the switching circuitry.

--Ryan Holiday

Why am I important?

Roughly speaking, a person builds up an idealized image of himself because he cannot tolerate himself as he actually is. The image apparently counteracts this calamity; but having placed himself on a pedestal, he can tolerate his real self still less and starts to rage against it, to despise himself and to chafe under the yoke of his own unattainable demands upon himself. He wavers then between self-adoration and self-contempt, between his idealized image and his despised image, with no solid middle ground to fall back on.

There is, to mention only one other factor, the alienation from self that robs a person of his motor force. He can still be a good worker, he may even be able to make a considerable effort when put under external pressure, but he collapses when left to his own resources. This does not only mean that he cannot do anything constructive or enjoyable with his free time; it means nothing less than that all his creative forces may go to waste.

--Karen Horney

Why am I important?

When a person feels that he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make sense of it in terms of the life of his children. But one is bound to fail within oneself and for the children.

The average person has a sensitivity toward his bodily processes; he notices changes, or even small amounts of pain; this kind of bodily sensitivity is relatively easy to experience because most persons have an image of how it feels to be well. The same sensitivity toward one's mental processes is much more difficult, because many people have never known a person who functions optimally. They take the psychic functioning of their parents and relatives, or of the social group they have been born into, as the norm, and as long as they do not differ from these they feel normal and without interest in observing anything. There are many people, for instance, who have never seen a loving person, or a person with integrity, or courage, or concentration.

"Having faith" in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change. In the same sense we have faith in ourselves. We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable and which persists throughout out life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings. It is this core which is the reality behind the word "I," and on which our conviction of our own identity is based. Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feelings of identity is threatened and we become dependent on other people whose approval then becomes the basis for our feeling of identity. Only the person who has faith in himself is able to the be faithful to others, because only he can be sure then he will be the same at a future time as he is today and, therefor, that he will feel and act as he now expects to. Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise, and since, as Nietzsche said, man can be defined by his capacity to promise, faith is one of the conditions of human existence. What matters in relation to love is the faith in one's own love; in its ability to produce love in others, and in its reliability.

--Erich Fromm

Why am I important?

Why am I important?

Why am I important?

Well if you can't get what you love
You learn to love the things you've got
If you can't be what you want
You learn to be the things you're not
If you can't get what you need
You learn to need the things that stop you dreaming
All the things that stop you dreaming
--Passenger - Things That Stop You Dreaming

Why am I important?

Because everyone of us has a special task and responsibility that only he or she can fulfil.

Only when the right position in mosaic is found, when every unique "I" fits into their unique places endless beauty can be seen. Only when every "I" finds its unique timing the greatest symphony of life can be heard. Only when every "I" places the right question the most unthinkable would be understood.

Go find your self - find your unique place, time and wisdom. No one else can do it for you. Every one matters. What is it for a mosaic with missing parts? What is it for a symphony with missing notes? What is it for a wisdom with blind spots?

--unknown source

Why am I important?

For unless you like your Self you cannot like anybody else. Unless you fell that you are important, nothing can be important to you. You must make yourself worthy of yourself to be worthy of your fellow man and of God. If you don't take yourself seriously, if you take yourself as an accident that might just s well not have happened, then you are lost; you cannot fulfill the meaning of your life.

--Robert S. Hartman

Why am I important?

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.

--J.K. Rowling

Why am I important?

Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one instilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the "individual differences" did not "blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. ... You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

--Viktor E. Frank

Why am I important?

Sometimes what's difficult about the situation has a whole lot more to do with what's going on inside you than what's going on between you and the other person. In that case, a conversation focused on the interaction isn't going to be very illuminating or productive, at least until you've had a longer conversation with yourself.

Only when you're fully aware of your thoughts can you begin to manage them and focus on the other person.

--Douglas Stone + Bruce Patton + Sheila Heen

Why am I important?

Also sword is not sharpened on the thick side.

Go find and sharpen your strengths and learn to accept your weaknesses. Both are essential parts of you.

--unknown source

Why am I important?

When we don't see our selves we borrow sense of self from outer world and reflect on it.

--unknown source

Why am I important?

The most essential thing in the world to any individual is to understand himself. The next is to understand the other fellow. For life is largely a problem of running your own car as it was built to be run, plus getting along with the other drivers on the highway.

The most man can do for his neighbor is to understand and inspire him. The most he can do for himself is to understand and organize his inborn capacities.

We are prone to judge every one by ourselves.

--Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

Why am I important?

The best way to be happy with someone, is to learn to be happy alone. That way the company would be a matter of choice... and not necessity.

--unknown source

Why am I important?

You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.

--Johnny Depp

Why am I important?

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

--African proverb