Difficulties Motivational Quotes

Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.

You have come a long way and have won many battles. Whenever you’re faced with a difficult or challenging situation, you’ll overcome it. Yes, you can.

Difficulties and adversities viciously force all their might on us and cause us to fall apart, but they are necessary elements of individual growth and reveal our true potential. We have got to endure and overcome them, and move forward. Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

Without being push to the wall, we will have remained in our comfortable zone. But this circumstance challenges us to find the courage to move on.

Without hope we fail to exist.

What you fear is what you must conquer.

The only real difficulty with becoming disciplined is when you buy into the notion that happiness comes at the price of sacrifice. The reality is this: Discipline becomes freedom when you are doing what you love.

The gift of life, gives you the greatest opportunity to live and chance to rise above any situation. With hopeful attitude you can overcome any struggle.

To everyone battling a difficulty or under attack right now, smile, keep your head up, keep moving and stay positive, you'll get through it.

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.

We all face difficult times. It is only the grace of God that gives strength to endure.

Adversity quickens the mind, awakens the spirit and strength the soul.

Don’t be discouraged by life’s difficulties. With hope and determination, you can triumph over any difficulties.

Every discovery in science and art, is due to the trained power of seeing things ... Keep your eyes open, your ears open ... Trace difficulties.

Sometimes I feel proud of myself, not because of any success I’ve achieved, but because I’m aware of all the difficulties that I have suffered or went through. I’m an eyewitness at all the fear, weakness, frustration, failure, depression, refraction and bad luck moments that I’ve been through alone and which affected significantly but never was able to beat me for so long. This is why I’m proud, because I’m here now stronger that yesterday, I'm still able to stand and continue on my way, still following up my dreams, still trying my best to build better future for me and my family and I will never ever give up!

Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life. I know that your life is hard; I know that your work is hard; and hardest of all for those of you who have the highest trained consciences, and who therefore feel always how much you ought to do. I know your work is hard, and that is why I congratulate you with all my heart. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

Many young people strangely boast of being "motivated"; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to discover what they're being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. The coils of a serpent are even more complex that the burrows of a molehill.

Challenges are part of life; We weaken our spirit, when we act in fear and lose hope. But we strengthen our spirit, when we fearlessly with faith and hope, rise up to meet and conquer the challenges.

Be strong and courageous. Fear not! God will grant you the strength to overcome any adversity.

Life is so much better when we dwell on awe-inspired thoughts.

Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and therefore, not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself. There is this element in all the conquerors, great or small. Just because he had great gifts, greater than those of any emperor before him, he had greater difficulty in stifling the disapproving voice within him. The motive of his ambition was the craving to stifle his better self.

Positive mind-set is vital for surviving hard-times.

When push to the wall. You have to develop strategies to scale over the wall.

Every adversity is the fuel for the soul. The greatest self-realization occurs during the greatest adversity.

God’s grace is strong enough to hold me steady through every difficulty.

In the midst of the turbulence, we hang onto hope.

With positive attitude, you can graciously overcome every adversity.

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.

Hope is the believe that the promised will be fulfilled.

Whatever happens to us, God gives grace to endure and overcome the situation.

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

I have seen times of plentiful and times of scarcity. I enjoy the times of prosperity and endure the times of difficulty.

Life’s challenges are inevitable. We have to prepare mentally by renewing our mind with inspiration daily to be able to cope when the situation arise.

What happens to us are tiny matters compare to us response to any situation.

In every situation, may we find the grace of endurance.

Changing a Habit is Never Difficult. Difficult is to Address Your Unwillingness to do it

A fulfilling long-term relationship is not accomplished by just finding the one. It is rather a co-operation between two passionate and highly motivated partners working together, figuring out every single situation holding hands. If there is trust at the root of the relationship, if the partners make an effort to keep it interesting, if difficulties are handled tactfully and if you can appreciate every single deed of your partner no matter how insignificant it is, the flames of love would never burn out and your love can truly live happily ever after.

If certain individuals fall in love from motives of convenience, they can be contrasted with plenty of others in whom passion seems principally aroused by the intensity of administrative difficulties in procuring its satisfaction.

This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some greater change, that she did not experience some of those exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is, and when those who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, for something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when the heartstrings, which contentment has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, however rough, even if it should break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty won the right to indulge without let or hindrance in its own desires and woes, would gladly fling the reins into the hands of imperious circumstance, however cruel.

Trying not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp since it's motivation is the same, my urgent desire to save my self from a difficulty. I can not get rid of this desire since it is one and the same desire as the desire to get rid of it.

If you can plan ahead into the future, you will also be able to detach yourself from minor difficulties today.

Life is as incomplete and imperfect without difficulties, as a rose without a staircase of thorns.

In the storm’s of life, you can survive by grace, faith and hope.

Do not quit. Hang on the wings of hope.

Maximum motivation occurs when facing a challenge of just manageable difficulty. In psychology research this is known as the Yerkes–Dodson law, which describes the optimal level of arousal as the midpoint between boredom and anxiety.

I think one of the biggest reasons people have difficulty believing in God is because they do not understand Him. I often hear doubting comments like “if there is a God then why this and why that?” and “how could He allow…?” Perhaps if people were to invest true effort getting to know Him, they would discover a mindful Father who remains with us every step of the way through trials and tribulations that, though painful, are crucial experiences meant to teach and mold His children for a higher purpose.

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had not; and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning for this world is not concerned exclusively with the problem of pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to...For myself...the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.

People will try to frustrate you in life. But you have to decide to stay determined.

The living has a great hope, we have life to bounce back from any difficulty. The dead had no hope.

The limitations in life do not necessary limit you.

Impossible and extremely difficult are as unalike as the desert and the ocean.

Reconcile with all the types of fears and learn to forgive yourself in times of difficulty.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

May you find strength to survive life.

Flow wherever you go. You can’t be limited. Dare to rise above all limitations and become better than you were. Strive to arrive at the top.

Be daring, be passionate and persistently pursue your dreams.

The most successful people, the evidence shows, often aren’t directly pursuing conventional notions of success. They’re working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.

People who have happiness as their goal get locked into the pain/pleasure motivation cycle. They never do what causes them pain, but always do what brings them pleasure. This puts us on the same thinking level as a child, who has difficulty seeing past his or her fear of pain and love of pleasure.

When faced with difficulties, a humble, understanding, appreciative and selfless person finds it easy to win a friend. On the other hand, a temperamental, egoistic, condensing, self-absorbed, self-conceited and narrow-minded person who lacks the basic sense of humility easily loses friends when in distress.

Difficult roads can lead you to beautiful destinations; and the beauty of humanity is in our shared mutuality and intrinsic reciprocity, you are never alone in your difficulty, we are all made of the same stardust! The essence of spirituality and the bigger picture is to uncover who you truly are and share in that hard-won individuality; to be a force of good aligning with your gifts, talents and special qualities that we all grow from. We can transmute and transition every seemingly negative thought, emotion, and circumstance for our greater good and those around us.

The Dialectical Dilemma for the Patient The borderline individual is faced with an apparently irreconcilable dilemma. On the one hand, she has tremendous difficulties with self-regulation of affect and subsequent behavioral competence. She frequently but somewhat unpredictably needs a great deal of assistance, often feels helpless and hopeless, and is afraid of being left alone to fend for herself in a world where she has failed over and over again. Without the ability to predict and control her own well-being, she depends on her social environment to regulate her affect and behavior. On the other hand, she experiences intense shame at behaving dependently in a society that cannot tolerate dependency, and has learned to inhibit expressions of negative affect and helplessness whenever the affect is within controllable limits. Indeed, when in a positive mood, she may be exceptionally competent across a variety of situations. However, in the positive mood state she has difficulty predicting her own behavioral capabilities in a different mood, and thus communicates to others an ability to cope beyond her capabilities. Thus, the borderline individual, even though at times desperate for help, has great difficulty asking for help appropriately or communicating her needs. The inability to integrate or synthesize the notions of helplessness and competence, of noncontrol and control, and of needing and not needing help can lead to further emotional distress and dysfunctional behaviors. Believing that she is competent to “succeed,” the person may experience intense guilt about her presumed lack of motivation when she falls short of objectives. At other times, she experiences extreme anger at others for their lack of understanding and unrealistic expectations. Both the intense guilt and the intense anger can lead to dysfunctional behaviors, including suicide and parasuicide, aimed at reducing the painful emotional states. For the apparently competent person, suicidal behavior is sometimes the only means of communicating to others that she really can’t cope and needs help; that is, suicidal behavior is a cry for help. The behavior may also function as a means to get others to alter their unrealistic expectations—to “prove” to the world that she really cannot do what is expected.

Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hither-ward from the gray Dawn of Time! Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of Difficulties Conquered. Difficult? You must try this thing. Once try it with the understanding that it will and shall have to be done. Try it as ye try the paltrier thing, making of money! I will bet on you once more, against all Jo'tuns, Tailor-gods, Double-barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever!

How to teach again what has been taught correctly it incorrectly 1000 thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How to render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold.

Though not everything is so easy in doing, ponder before you say something is far difficult to do! When you think of the difficulty in getting it done, think and think again; you may have spent the same time you should have used for the utmost preparations that could have made the difficulty you look at but cannot see the panacea on something else, or you are not finding the necessary time, wit, courage, tenacity and the will power to release your whole and true self to master the very act and art of making difficult things easier!

What’s the point of complaining about your tragedies, obstacles, and scars? What’s the point of playing the role of victim? What’s the point of revealing your misery to others no matter how close they are? No one will ever feel your pain or how much it hurts. No one will understand your fears or why you suddenly couldn’t hold on anymore. It’s your road, you’ve walked it barefoot among all the difficulties! I am sure too that you know your way, and your heart will guide you to the best destination if you only trust the light within...

Greatness emanates through endurance and triumph over the difficulties in life.

Lord gives even more grace, so you can endure the test of time.

The inner peace can block any windy weather.

Challenges will come, but success is proof of challenges conquered and difficulties overcome.

In situation, we must adapt, survive and strive.

You will conquer every mountain.

Any training is initially difficult, but with persistence practice, we can master the art.

The focus on the desired outcome will push you through every difficulty.

To every complex challenge, there exist a define solution.

The difficulties and challenges in your life are the lessons you need to learn to grow and development.

Endured pain is a power gained.

No matter the situation, stay hopeful.

With the spirit of endurance, we shall strive in any situation.

Study the lives of highly successful people from any corner of life, across history, in any environment, and you will discover they share one trait: They keep moving forward. Sometimes slowly. Often with great difficulty. Frequently after painful mistakes, defeats, or failures. Success is less about talent and opportunities, and more about commitment and motivation.

We are all part of a God factory. Gods are what come off the production line at the end of an eons-long, protracted, dialectical process designed to overcome every possible obstacle, trial, setback, difficulty and ordeal. You need to be a God to survive the dialectic. It takes you to hell and forces you to confront the Devil. The Devil is you. The Devil is your Shadow. Only Devils can become Gods. That is the law of the dialectic.

If certain individuals fall in love from motives of convenience, they can be contrasted with plenty of others in whom passion seems principally aroused by the intensity of administrative difficulty in procuring its satisfaction.

You know you are getting old when yesterday turns out to be a fading memory you have difficulties recollecting, when today becomes a challenge that is hard to grasp and when tomorrow promises an uncertainty that you dread encountering.

If the sleep disruption is repeated night after night, the actual measured impairments do not remain constant. Instead, there is an escalating accumulation of sleepiness that produces in adults continuing increases in headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, forgetfulness, reduced concentration, fatigue, emotional ups and downs, difficulty in staying awake during the daytime, irritability, and difficulty awakening. Not only do the adults describe themselves as more sleepy and mentally exhausted, they also feel more stressed. The stress may be a direct consequence of partial sleep deprivation or it may result from the challenge of coping with increasing amounts of daytime sleepiness. Think how hard it would be to concentrate or be motivated if you were struggling every day to stay awake. If children have

Life Contains Inevitable Difficulties Life is not only short, but difficult. There are times of great joy, love, triumph, and delight, moments when we are beside ourselves with happiness. But there are also times of inevitable sorrow: of sickness and loss, of grief and despair. There are also incomprehensible amounts of unnecessary sorrow: of senseless oppression and torment, slaughter and suffering. None of us escapes life unscathed. It is crucial to recognize this and not gloss over the inevitable difficulties of life, because “If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.” This is why religious scholar Jacob Needleman concluded, from his survey of world religions: The perception of the suffering inherent in the human condition, the perception of man’s inhumanity to man: this moment of awareness has been spoken of in all traditions as a tremendous moment. It is a tremendous moment because it is the recognition of suffering—both ours and the world’s—which gives birth to both compassion and the urge to awaken. These motives propel us to spiritual practice and thereby eventually allow us to escape suffering and to relieve the suffering of others. Our

Do not let difficulties overcome your true purpose; overcome difficulties with your true purpose. Show difficulties what you can do with your life and do something with your life to difficulties. Awake! Arise! Dare to realize who you truly are and what you can truly do! You can do it! Awake and do something!

This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue to its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel.

Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive. When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with.

THE MAN OF TRUTH never departs from the divine principles which he has espoused. He may be threatened with sickness, poverty, pain, loss of friends and position, yea, even with immediate death, yet he does not desert the principles which he knows to be eternally true. To him, there is one thing more grievous, more to be feared and shunned than all the above evils put together, and that is—the desertion of principle.

Where you are in life is temporary. But where you end up in life is permanent. And how you get from here to there is entirely up to you. So don’t give up. Sometimes when things go wrong it’s because they would have turned out worse if they would have gone right. So don’t let unexpected stymies prevent you from moving forward. Accept them as lessons that are helping you to reach your goals. There is opportunity within every difficulty.

In accepting as two primary texts, Singer's Animal Liberation and Regan's The Case for Animal Rights--texts that valorize rationality--the animal defense movement reiterates a patriarchal disavowal of emotions as having a legitimate role in theory making. The problem is that while on the one hand it articulates positions against animal suffering, on the other hand animal rights theory dispenses with the idea that caring about and emotionally responding to this suffering can be appropriate sources of knowledge. Emotions and theory are related. One does not have to eviscerate theory of emotional content and reflection to present legitimate theory. Nor does the presence of emotional content and reflection eradicate or militate against thinking theoretically. By disavowing emotional responses, two major texts of animal defense close off the intellectual space for recognizing the role of emotions in knowledge and therefore theory making. As the issue of caring about suffering is problematized, difficulties with animal rights per se become apparent. Without a gender analysis, several important issues that accompany a focus on suffering are neglected, to the detriment of the movement. Animal rights theory offers a legitimating language for animal defense without acknowledging the indebtedness of the rights-holder to caring relationships. Nor does it provide models for theoretically engaging with our own emotional responses, since emotions are seen as untrustworthy. Because the animal advocacy movement has failed to incorporate an understanding of caring as a motivation for so many animal defense activists, and because it has not addressed the gendered nature of caring--that it is woman's duty to provide service to others, while it is men's choice--it has not addressed adequately the implications that a disproportionate number of activists are women motivated because they care about animal suffering. Animal rights theory that disowns or ignores emotions mirrors on the theoretical level the gendered emotional responses inherent in a patriarchal society. In this culture, women are supposed to do the emotional work for heterosexual intimate relationships: 'a man will come to expect that a woman's role in his life is to take care of his feelings and alleviate the discomfort involved in feeling.' At the cultural level, this may mean that women are doing the emotional work for the animal defense movement. And this emotional work takes place in the context of our own oppression.

It is the punisher’s mind-set where everything must be changed. The difficulty of this is explored in the superb book The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (2014) by Morris Hoffman, a practicing judge and legal scholar.31 He reviews the reasons for punishment: As we see from game theory studies, because punishment fosters cooperation. Because it is in the fabric of the evolution of sociality. And most important, because it can feel good to punish, to be part of a righteous and self-righteous crowd at a public hanging, knowing that justice is being served. This is a deep, atavistic pleasure. Put people in brain scanners, give them scenarios of norm violations. Decision making about culpability for the violation correlates with activity in the cognitive dlPFC. But decision making about appropriate punishment activates the emotional vmPFC, along with the amygdala and insula; the more activation, the more punishment.32 The decision to punish, the passionate motivation to do so, is a frothy limbic state. As are the consequences of punishing—when subjects punish someone for making a lousy offer in an economic game, there’s activation of dopaminergic reward systems. Punishment that feels just feels good.

I have talked with many pastors whose real struggle isn’t first with the hardship of ministry, the lack of appreciation and involvement of people, or difficulties with fellow leaders. No, the real struggle they are having, one that is very hard for a pastor to admit, is with God. What is caused to ministry become hard and burdensome is disappointment and anger at God. We have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with the peacetime mentality. Permit me to explain. The fundamental battle of pastoral ministry is not with the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is not the struggle with resistant people who don't seem to esteem the Gospel. It is not the fight for the success of ministries of the church. And is not the constant struggle of resources and personnel to accomplish the mission. No, the war of the pastor is a deeply personal war. It is far on the ground of the pastor’s heart. It is a war values, allegiances, and motivations. It's about the subtle desires and foundational dreams. This war is the greatest threat to every pastor. Yet it is a war that we often naïvely ignore or quickly forget in the busyness of local church ministry. When you forget the Gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations and relationships of ministry what you already have been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meeting, and purpose. These things are already yours in Christ. In ways of which you are not always aware, your ministry is always shaped by what is in functional control of your heart. The fact of the matter is that many pastors become awe numb or awe confused, or they get awe kidnapped. Many pastors look at glory and don't seek glory anymore. Many pastors are just cranking out because they don't know what else to do. Many pastors preach a boring, uninspiring gospel that makes you wonder why people aren't sleeping their way through it. Many pastors are better at arguing fine points of doctrine than stimulating divine wonder. Many pastors see more stimulated by the next ministry, vision of the next step in strategic planning than by the stunning glory of the grand intervention of grace into sin broken hearts. The glories of being right, successful, in control, esteemed, and secure often become more influential in the way that ministry is done than the awesome realities of the presence, sovereignty, power, and love of God. Mediocrity is not a time, personnel, resource, or location problem. Mediocrity is a heart problem. We have lost our commitment to the highest levels of excellence because we have lost our awe.

Simple answers to the most difficult questions: 1. Why do humans find it difficult to express themselves? To relate to the movies and books, later. 2. Why do humans make everything look so big, beautiful & complicated? Ego feels good. 3. Why do humans want to protect the nature? Because they can't even protect themselves. Moreover, they are guilty conscious. 4. What is romance? It is complicated as far as humans are concerned. 5. What is love? The complicated part of the fourth question. 6. What is unconditional love? Not there yet. 7. Who is God? Sixth leads you to the seventh. 8. Who am I? Ask yourself. 9. What is loneliness? Potential energy wasted on learned answers. 10. What is happiness? All of the above.

It is frequently urged that it is necessary to create a public feeling in favour of the full and unchecked mental development of women. Such an argument overlooks the fact that 'emancipation,' the 'woman question,' 'women's rights movements,' are no new things in history, but have always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. It also largely exaggerates the difficulties men place in the way of the mental development of women, especially at the present time. Furthermore it neglects the fact that at the present time it is not the true woman who clamours for emancipation, but only the masculine type of woman, who misconstrues her own character and the motives that actuate her when she formulates her demands in the name of woman. As has been the case with every other movement in history, so also it has been with the contemporary woman's movement. Its originators were convinced that it was being put forward for the first time, and that such a thing had never been thought of before. They maintained that women had hitherto been held in bondage and enveloped in darkness by man, and that it was high time for her to assert herself and claim her natural rights. But the prototype of this movement, as of other movements, occurred in the earliest times. Ancient history and medieval times alike give us instances of women who, in social relations and intellectual matters, fought for such emancipation, and of male and female apologists of the female sex. It is totally erroneous to suggest that hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development of their mental powers.

My request to gain access to Mme de Guermantes’s collection of Elstir paintings had been met by Saint-Loup with, “I’ll answer for her.” And, unfortunately, it was he and he alone who did the answering. We find it easy enough to answer for other people when we set little images of them in our mind and manipulate them to suit our needs. No doubt even then we are mindful of the difficulties that arise from other people’s natures being different from our own, and are ready enough to resort to whatever means are powerful enough to influence them—self-interest, persuasion, emotion—and will cancel out any inclination to oppose our wishes. But these differences in other people’s natures are still conceived by our own nature; the difficulties are raised by us; the compelling motives are measured by our own standards. So, when we want to see the other person actually perform the actions we have made him rehearse in our mind’s eye, things are quite different, we encounter unforeseen resistances that may be insuperable. Perhaps one of the strongest of these is the resistance that can grow, in a woman who is not in love, from the unconquerable and fetid repulsion she feels for the man who loves her: during the long weeks when Saint-Loup still did not come to Paris, his aunt, to whom I was certain he had written begging her to do so, did not once invite me to call and see her Elstirs. I

The greatest difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters, is that to us it is primarily a performance; to them it was real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code or, at best, a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether. They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ "living in" them. Mere moral reformation will hardly explain the transformation and the exuberant vitality of these men's lives -- even if we could prove a motive for such reformation, and certainly the world around offered little encouragement to the early Christians! We are practically driven to accept their own explanation, which is that their little human lives had, through Christ, been linked up with the very life of God. Many Christians today talk about the "difficulties of our times" as though we should have to wait for better ones before the Christian religion can take root. It is heartening to remember that this faith took root and flourished amazingly in conditions that would have killed anything less vital in a matter of weeks. These early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literal sons of God; they were pioneers of a new humanity, founders of a new kingdom. They still speak to us across the centuries. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we might achieve what they achieved.

Kathy’s teachers view her as a good student who always does her homework but rarely participates in class. Her close friends see her as a loyal and trustworthy person who is a lot of fun once you get to know her. The other students in school think she is shy and very quiet. None of them realize how much Kathy struggles with everyday life. When teachers call on her in class, her heart races, her face gets red and hot, and she forgets what she wants to say. Kathy believes that people think she is stupid and inadequate. She imagines that classmates and teachers talk behind her back about the silly things she says. She makes excuses not to go to social events because she is terrified she will do something awkward. Staying home while her friends are out having a good time also upsets her. “Why can’t I just act like other people?” she often thinks. Although Kathy feels isolated, she has a very common problem--social anxiety. Literally millions of people are so affected by self-consciousness that they have difficulties in social situations. For some, the anxiety occurs during very specific events, such as giving a speech or eating in public. For others, like Kathy, social anxiety is part of everyday life. Unfortunately, social anxiety is not an easily diagnosed condition. Instead, it is often viewed as the far edge of a continuum of behaviors and feelings that occur during social situations. Although you may not have as much difficulty as Kathy, shyness may still be causing you distress, affecting your relationships, or making you act in ways with which you are not happy. If this is the case, you will benefit from the advice and techniques provided in this book. The good news is that it is possible to change your thinking and behavior. However, there are no easy solutions. It takes strong motivation and time to overcome social anxiety. It might even be necessary to see a professional therapist or take medication. Eventually, becoming free of your anxiety will make the hard work well worth the effort. This book will help you understand social anxiety and the impact it can have on your life, now and in the future. You will find out how the disorder is diagnosed, you will receive information on professional guidance, and you will learn ways to cope with and manage the symptoms. Becoming an extroverted person is probably unlikely, but you can become more confident in social situations and increase your self-esteem.