I Validate Myself Quotes

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….

I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions "moral" after a fashion. Perhaps another person, reading of my life, would name me a religious tyrant. He could call me arrogant. What is to make that man's opinion any less valid than my own? I guess it all comes down to one fact: In the end, I'm the one with the armies.

Yet I also recognize this: Even if everyone in the world were to accept me and my illness and validate my pain, unless I can abide myself and be compassionate toward my own distress, I will probably always feel alone and neglected by others.

For so long I believed I needed permission to return to my life, waiting for validation. I promised myself I would never question whether I deserved better. The answer would always be yes and yes and yes.

Attitude Is Everything We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations. The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances? When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.

How did he look at me?" I whispered, suddenly craving validation of Jack's feelings from anyone but myself and my subjective imagination. Joey sighed, resigned. "Like you were the last chopper out of Baghdad, the last IV in the field hospital, the last funnel cake at the fair. Jesus, I don't know.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart to stop defining who I am by those who have hurt me and to take up the risk to love myself, to validate my own existence, pain and all, from the center out.

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.

I am composing my own music. It is mine, from my hand alone. I wrote it for myself and I wanted to share it with you. Do you see me?

The one who gets his validation from what he does is dying. The one who gets his validation from who he is, from who God sees he is—that’s the man who is alive now.

I write - and read - to assure myself that other people have felt what I'm feeling too, that it isn't just me, that this is real, and valid, and true.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.

As a Christian I do not have to find my validity in my status, or by thinking myself above other men. My validity and my status are found in being before the God who is there.

Responsiveness encompasses three things: Understanding: My partner knows how I see myself and what is important to me. Validation: My partner respects who I am and what I want. Caring: My partner takes active and supportive steps in helping me meet

Mother shook her head impatiently. 'You need to...stop looking for heroes, Anne.' Her speech was slow, slurred, but understandable. 'Only the weak need...heroes...and heroes need...those around them to remain weak. You're...not weak.' I remembered those words. I knew they were true, all of them. True about me, and true about Charles. I brought them out, every now and then, as I kept working -- on both the manuscript and myself. And, perhaps on my definition of my marriage. No, my prayer for my marriage; a marriage of two equals. With separate -- but equally valid -- views of the world; shared goggles no more, but looking at the same scenery, at the same time.

I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this-- and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed-- and coming face to face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing...

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good enough), restlessness, resistance to growing up, PMS, not knowing how to live without drama, fearing that you're getting happy, and happiness is boring. The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that if I stayed, something was going to change, and that something was probably me. I didn't know what changed me would look like, or if I would like her more or less than I already did. Would I still recognize myself? Would I still be myself?

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency. I am no one in existence but myself,

I’ve learned not to look outside myself for validation—you can’t base your self-worth on someone else’s feelings

What an effort I make to be myself. I struggle against a tide in a boat with just enough room for my two feet in a perilous and fragile balance. Living is an act I did not premeditate. I blossomed in the dark. I am only valid for myself. I must live little by little, it's no good living everything at once.

Another step is that daughters can learn to monitor their own feelings and instincts by saying, "I feel uncomfortable (angry, dominated, usurped, inadequate, guilty, furious) with my mother more often than I do not. I have to pay attention to that, because it shows in how I treat my friends (lover, spouse, kids, colleagues). There is validity here. I don't have to blame or excuse my mother-I just have to see her so I can see myself.

And that’s when I realise how much of a piece of shit I am. Because she’s obviously good for my brother, but I am relieved that their relationship might not go anywhere. And I’d love to lie to myself and come up with a valid excuse, but the truth is, it’s because I’m a shithead. It’s because I want her for myself. I want to… I don’t even fucking know. I want to take her to dinner, make sure she’s relaxed, make sure she doesn’t feel like she needs to think two steps ahead.

Because I hated myself so much for my fatness, I always looked for other fat people, and especially for fatter people, to judge as harshly as the world seemed to be judging me. And you know what? There was always someone fatter who was more disgusting than I was, more not with it, and more lazy. It helped me validate myself as mis-seen, misunderstood, and misevaluated. It also helped me find some sort of weird self-esteem that I never could find when looking at myself in the mirror.

Your true self or your higher self or your superhero self...gets validation from within (I love and trust myself, this feels right to me, I have a purpose, I am loved), it's proactive (I'm in control of my life, I think I'll head on out and kick me some ass), love-based, and is committed to creating based on your limitless potential-- as soon as you wake up from the Big Snooze.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

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.

I do not consider myself a religious person, because I don't adhere to a particular religion or faith or prescribed beliefs, as did my father, who was a Baptist minister. And I am not an atheist, one who thinks that belief in anything beyond the here and now and the rational is delusion. I love science, but I allow for mystery, things that can never be proven by a rational mind. I am a person who thinks about the nature of the spirit when I write. I think about what can't be known and only imagined. I often sense a spirit or force or meaning beyond myself. I leave it open as to what the spirit is, but I continue to make guesses -- that it could be the universal binding of the emotion of love, or a joyful quality of humanity, or a collective unconscious that turns out to be a unified conscience. The spirit could be all those worshiped by all the religions, even those that deny the validity of others. It could be that we all exist in all ten dimensions of a string-theory universe and are seeding memories in all of them and occupy them simultaneously as memory. Or we exist only as thought and out perception that it is a physical world is a delusion. The nature of spirit could also be my mother and my grandmother and that they really do serve as my muses as I fondly imagine them doing at times. Or maybe the nature of the spirit is a freer imagination. I've often thought that imagination was the conduit to compassion, and compassion is a true spiritual nature. Whatever the spirit might be, I am not basing what I do in this life on any expected reward or punishment in the hereafter or thereafter. It is enough that I feel blessed -- and by whom or what I don't know -- but I receive it with gratitude that I am a writer and my work is to imagine all the possibilities.

Once Ed said to me, "For a very long time I didn't like myself." It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. "It was a very difficult time," he said, "and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually," he said, "I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right." This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person "Ed" as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

I still can’t believe that someone as hot as you has validation issues but I also know that being a very sensitive person on this planet is painful and some of us are built like sieves, or have holes where any external validation just pours right through and we never get full, and I also know it’s ultimately an inside job anyway and no amount of external validation will ever be enough (though damn it can feel good in the moment, and it sort of makes me mad at god, actually, like, okay god, you built me like this so teach me how to validate myself in a way that feels as good as when a boy does it or the Internet does it, because there is always a cost when a boy does it or when the Internet does it): a love story.

Here’s how it happens: One person reveals something and waits to see if the other person will share something back. The reciprocity, if it comes, is a sign of understanding, validation, and caring. I’ve heard you, I understand and accept what you’re saying, and I care for you enough to disclose something about myself. An unresponsive partner—like a seatmate on a flight who puts on his headphones shortly after you make a comment—terminates the reciprocity, freezing the relationship.

My need for validation was rooted in my belief that I was born a broken girl. I didn’t know how to fix myself or find magic in the mess I was making, and I believed that in order to become whole, I needed someone else to put my pieces together.

There will always be people in life who tell you no and sometimes it’s because they have nothing else to do that day except exert their power, and if you let their no stop you, you’ve just validated their opinion of you as worth more than your own. I

But it was a significant exercise, for it meant that I considered myself worthy, as I had never done before. That change in my consciousness was so bewildering that I looked back on my previous life with a sort of amazed pity. That narrowness, those scruples, that prolonged childhood... I even, and this is a great test, began to consider journeys I might make, for my own pleasure, without him. I had never been to Greece and I thought I might go now, some time soon. And I knew that if I went I should enjoy it, as I had never enjoyed a journey before. Because I should have James to come back to. By the very fact of his existence, he had given the validity to my entire future.

Camus-boy, you're always going to be the same you, just older. It's not like there's a moment when you wake up and go, Shit, I'm grown-up, I don't feel like myself anymore.' I don't tell him, but this is the scariest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Being grown-up should feel like a big transition. It can't be something that, despite my best efforts, I've been drifting closer and closer to every summer. It needs to be a shock. I need to know at what point to stop holding on. And that moment will suck, and probably every moment after that will suck, but at least I'll know that everything that came before really was valid. I really was young and innocent. I wasn't fooling myself.

I’ll never be that trusting again. I’ll never give myself to someone else with the complete abandon that I did with Nick. […] He was the exception. He was me saying ‘Okay, so Dad left. But this one won’t. I picked right, not all men are like Dad. This one’s going to carry me. All my broken pieces.’ And he didn’t. He did exactly what Mom always warned me that men do. He validated every cautionary tale I grew up hearing.

The liberation that comes with her acceptance is one I unknowingly searched for and found in her. In these precious seconds, I bask in the understanding that I have someone to share myself with, a partner, a lover, confidante, and friend. Her love is all the validity I’ll ever need.

Self proclamation of authoritative titles is a common phenomenon among religious and/or occult sect leaders. A cursory survey of this primarily 20th century phenomenon will instantly reveal a multitude of self-declared Masters, High Priests, gurus, Ipsissimi, Bhaghwani, etc.. I am pleased that I cannot count myself among such types. Legitimate religious teachers and scholars know that a genuine spiritual leader is one whose calling to lead is first noticed by those outside of him or herself based on certain qualities, abilities, and actions and then must subsequently be accepted by the individual in question as his or her destiny. This contrasts with those whose will to lead is born simply out of the mundane wish to be a leader. In such cases the goal being to reap the rewards a title brings without the hard work and the innate, manifest qualities which validate the position; in short what might be considered a 'false prophet'." --“From the Eye of the Storm” (Zeena's column for the SLM) Volume II – Winter Issue (2003): “One Year Later...

My body and brain are still very much tied together, but the former is currently running the show. And my body is not here for validation. My body is here for pleasure.

My experience had validated the old saw that practice makes perfect. But only if it’s the right kind of concentrated, self-conscious, deliberate practice. I’d learned firsthand that with focus, motivation, and, above all, time, the mind can be trained to do extraordinary things. This was a tremendously empowering discovery. It made me ask myself: What else was I capable of doing, if only I used the right approach?

In a state of grace with myself, I do not abandon myself when the going gets tough or should others find me antithetical in any way in their frames of reference. Loyalty means care and kindness at all times, and particularly when they are needed to reduce the pain of difficult times. I never, absolutely never, side with anyone who is against my welfare. I aid nobody who detracts from my dignity, who makes me feel less than human either through subhuman onslaughts or superhuman demands. I fight or avoid people whose effect is ultimately destructive to my validity as a person, or who in any way dilute my ability to take myself seriously.

That’s what I have been doing my whole life, I realize. Always looking outside of myself for validation that I am okay, that I am worth something. Never believing that the key to self-esteem lay inside myself all along.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I may add that though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become sceptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more ‘realistic’ basis, is doomed.

I still can't believe someone as hot as you has validation issues but I also know that being a very sensitive person on this planet is painful and some of us are built like sieves, or have holes where any external validation just pours right through and we never get full, and I also know it's ultimately an inside job anyway and no amount of external validation will ever be enough (though damn it can feel good in the moment, and it sort of makes me mad at god, actually, like, okay god, you built me like this so teach me how to validate myself in a way that feels as good as when a boy does it or the Internet does it, because there is always a cost when a boy does it or the Internet does it): a love story.

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape.

But many people never discover the folly of such a search and continue to believe that, given enough information, they can define and explain a person. Controversy has always existed among psychiatrists and psychologists about the validity of personality diagnosis. Some believe in the merits of the enterprise and devote their careers to ever greater nosological precision. Others, and among them I include myself, marvel that anyone can take diagnosis seriously, that it can ever be considered more than a simple cluster of symptoms and behavioral traits. Nonetheless, we find ourselves under ever-increasing pressure (from hospitals, insurance companies, governmental agencies) to sum up a person with a diagnostic phrase and a numerical category.

When the bells have rung on this life I hope that I, a mere nobody of importance, will have helped to better one soul. For in that soul will be the validation of every lesson I have ever learned and passed on and with it I shall consider myself blessed.

Make them see your strength like you just made me see.” “I…I can’t,” he says. “You’re whole life, they’ve forced you aside, trampled over you because they’ve made you believe you have to earn their love by hiding the truth. Don’t give them that power. They don’t deserve it.” I step closer. “You are one of the fiercest people I know, and I hate watching them treat you like you need to be ashamed of the things that have made you that way.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Your battles are as valid as theirs, mine, as anyone’s. I’m sorry I let myself forget that.

Charlie nodded, like not getting it was valid. "I don't know how to explain it. But one thing's for sure. I'm not making you birthday doughnuts because your dad guilt-tripped me. I'm making you doughnuts because I'm grateful that you're here—for whatever you being here is doing to my life. And I genuinely want you to have a happy birthday." Ugh. One of those unwelcome tears of mine spilled over. And Charlie, like a reflex, reached up and wiped it away. Like you might do for someone you cared about. "Also," Charlie said, "I burned a hundred canned biscuits before I got the hang of this, so these little guys really are miracles." I gave Charlie the wobbly smile that happens when you try to shift emotional gears. Something was making me feel shaky. Maybe that I wasn't just a writer to him. Or that he was glad to have me in his life. Or that I was doing things to him—just like he was doing things to me. "You have to eat one," Charlie said then, putting his arm around my shoulders and turning us both toward the waiting donuts. "So many canned biscuits gave their lives for this moment." And now I really smiled. Despite myself.

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. I can found morality on theology only when I myself have already defined the Divine Being by means of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of the moral and immoral, but merely an unmoral, arbitrary basis, from which I may deduce anything I please. Thus, if I would found morality on God, I must first of all place it in God: for Morality, Right, in short, all substantial relations, have their only basis in themselves, can only have a real foundation—such as truth demands—when they are thus based. (…) Where man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves the validity of a divine power. If morality has no foundation in itself, there is no inherent necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of religion.

I communicate with your dimension, for example, not by willing myself to your level of reality, but by imagining myself there. All of my deaths would have been adventures had I realized what I know now. On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

The choice is yours.Either way, I will be faultless. So ask yourself, would you rather take credit for an eyesore or for a work of art?" His speech complete, he sank onto the sofa, stretching his arms out across its back, a grin spreading across his face. I had not thought this through, that much was evident, but now that I had commenced it, I would not give n to him. "You could change. More easily than could I." "True," he ackowledged with a chuckle. "But I look perfect." "Well,I'm sure you could look perfect in something else." "Oh,doubtless, but why duplicate what is perfect when one could improve what is not?" I wanted to kill him. I wanted to close that infuriatingly divine mouth once and for all, and if ending his life were the way to do it, I was willing to take that step.Instead, I took a deep breath and tried again. "If I change, my hair will be ruined." "You know,dear, something really should be done about your hair in any case. I told you to wear it down. And mind you switch tiaras." "We're almost last as it is," blustered, trying to keep my tone civil, thought inside I was burning. "You could change more quickly." "Not necessarily.You already know the gown into which you will change. I would have to search for something less elegant to match the dress you have on, but still formal enough for the occasion. And honestly,have you ever seen me in anything that might go with sky blue?" I fell silent, for as much as I hated to admit it, he had a valid argument. He generally wore dark or rich colors, nothing similar to my gown. I despised myself for what I was about to do. "I'll wait," Steldor said, accurately reading my expression.

I write about my own work because I want to speak for myself. I might not be the only authority, nor the best authority, but I want to participate in the writing of my own history. Why should artists be validated by outside authorities. I don't like being paternalised and colonised by every Tom, Dick or Harry that comes along (male or female).

Look inside for validation. ENFPs enjoy compliments and try very hard to please. This is not a sign of poor self-esteem, but rather a reflection of the fact that ENFPs are social beings who self-evaluate based on the feedback they receive from other people. “If they are praising me I must be on the right track,” ENFPs tell themselves. But no matter how ENFPs interpret their need for approval, it undoubtedly has a subtle—and not entirely positive—effect on their behavior. When ENFPs pay too much attention to the opinions of others, it can prevent them from following their own instincts and leave them open to manipulation. “If being true to myself gets me in hot water, then so be it”—that is what ENFPs should tell themselves when they start worrying too much

Jeff Hudson started me on a path that was key, and as life goes on it's become a mantra to me. It's that you're born into a family, your family of origin, and you're stuck with it. Once I recognized that, it freed me up to have a different kind of family: a family of choice. The people I surround myself with, spend holidays with, look to for support and comfort and validation -- that's my family of choice.

Feelings of a Pimp They think I was a player because I was devoted to the game They thought I worked hard on my offense to break down these women’s defenses just to score They think it’s the body count that made me manipulate them into my arms to get between their legs They think I’m satisfied with a different woman in my bed every night When during the day, even my bed can feel the loneliness They think I love the easy women They think it’s for the cool points that my heart grew cold They think they have me figured out Another dog chasing after every female dog in the streets They think I’m happy with all the texting buddies, but no wife But they don’t know They don’t know how tired I am of this, how tired I am of myself How tired I am of living like this How tired I am of these games, but that’s the only way I can score with a chick They don’t know how after sleeping with these ladies, I wish I had more chemistry with at least one of them to cuddle, to give goodnight kisses and wake up beside They don’t know how loneliness consumes me With a phone filled with women’s numbers, I still feel unwanted and unworthy They don’t know these easy women make it easy for me to feel confident about myself; although it’s the wrong type of confidence I feel validated by them, I feel accomplished, I feel loved although I’m having sex with them, not making love They don’t know how tired I am of chasing fool’s gold Chasing fast women who would sleep with me in a heartbeat Leaving me with the empty feeling I felt before I started the chase The player in me is played out. I just want love, but that’s the only thing I can’t seem to find So, I keep pimping in hope of finding love Her insecurities were beautiful They opened the door for me as an opportunist She was the perfect candidate Oh so sweet, but oh so hurt How smart would I be if I didn’t capitalize? Some fellas get women drunk and have their way with them I was doing nothing wrong but pretending to be prince charming, just to get the same results I became what they needed emotionally I was the shoulder to cry on, the ear to listen to, the one person who understood I was a smooth criminal manipulating the innocent Did not feel an ounce of guilt because I was weak myself I was insecure I couldn’t help preying on vulnerable women In their weakness I found strength I was a coward, a “wannabe” player I was playing the wrong games, winning the wrong prizes The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak. Diary of a Weak Man

I do believe that we (autistic individuals such as myself) are very susceptible to suicidal thinking for multiple reasons that include: chronic high levels of anxiety, tendency to fixate on or get stuck on negative disturbing thoughts, low self-worth, inability to have significant or intimate relationships with others, replaying over and over again negative statements that others have said to us, feeling unable to be understood, lack [of] a solid self-identity, difficulty with expressing self to others, feelings of great isolation, feeling that you are or may be a burden to others, feeling unable to contribute to society or the greater good, etc […] I do believe that the most important thing that someone else can do for a struggling autistic individual is to affirm their self-worth, recognise and validate their struggles and affirm the things that they do that are greatly valued by others. The worst thing to do for an autistic individual, or any struggling individual for that matter, is to not believe them or to deny the validity of their struggles. My greatest and deepest hurt is that doctors, family members and important others did not believe me in my struggles, particularly when I was younger, before my diagnosis at the age of 35 years. This has been the strongest impetus for my feelings of unworthiness and suicidal thoughts. (Woman with autism)

Controversy has always existed among psychiatrists and psychologists about the validity of personality diagnosis. Some believe in the merits of the enterprise and devote their careers to ever greater nosological precision. Others, and among them I include myself, marvel that anyone can take diagnosis seriously, that it can ever be considered more than a simple cluster of symptoms and behavioral traits. Nonetheless, we find ourselves under ever-increasing pressure (from hospitals, insurance companies, governmental agencies) to sum up a person with a diagnostic phrase and a numerical category. Even the most liberal system of psychiatric nomenclature does violence to the being of another. If we relate to people believing we can categorize them, we will neither identify nor nurture the parts, the vital parts, of the other that transcend category. The enabling relationship always assumes that the other is never fully knowable.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” There

Harry, I’m sorry for whatever pain this is causing you, truly sorry, but it’s very important that at this point in our lives we don’t let guilt feelings motivate us. I’m trying to look honestly into myself, too see who I am, and where I should be going. I want us both, Harry, to come to a decision we can live with. It’s the year nineteen sixty-nine and there’s no reason for two mature people to smother each other to death simply out of inertia. I’m searching for a valid identity and I suggest you do the same.

The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones... This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try. So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to. I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation. But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right. It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth. I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress. We are imperfect because we are unfinished. So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be? How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others? I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion. I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display.. Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love.. And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed.

A child, with parents who are unable or unwilling to provide safe enough attachment, has no one to whom she can bring her whole developing self. No one is there for reflection, validation and guidance. No one is safe enough to go to for comfort or help in times of trouble. There is no one to cry to, to protest unfairness to, and to seek compassion from for hurts, mistakes, accidents, and betrayals. No one is safe enough to shine with, to do “show and tell” with, and to be reflected as a subject of pride. There is no one to even practice the all-important intimacy-building skills of conversation. In the paraphrased words of more than one of my clients: “Talking to Mom was like giving ammunition to the enemy. Anything I said could and would be used against me. No wonder, people always tell me that I don’t seem to have much to say for myself.” Those with Cptsd-spawned attachment disorders never learn the communication skills that engender closeness and a sense of belonging. When it comes to relating, they are often plagued by debilitating social anxiety - and social phobia when they are at the severe end of the continuum of Cptsd.

The problem is, of course, my self-esteem. I look down on myself so much that I try to gain self-validation through the eyes of others. But because that’s not a validation that I am able to accept, there’s a limit to how satisfying it can be, and I become bored of it. Which is why I go looking for someone else, and ultimately why I think someone liking me cannot in itself satisfy me. I’m devastated if someone I like doesn’t like me, and devastated when someone does end up loving me; either way, I am looking at myself through the eyes of another. In the end, I’m torturing myself.

Every culture has its own creation myth, its own cosmology. And in some respects every cosmology is true, even if I might flatter myself in assuming mine is somehow truer because it is scientific. But it seems to me that no culture, including scientific culture, has cornered the market on definitive answers when it comes to the ultimate questions. Science may couch its models in the language of mathematics and observational astronomy, while other cultures use poetry and sacrificial propitiations to defend theirs. But in the end, no one knows, at least not yet. The current flux in the state of scientific cosmology attests to this, as we watch physicists and astronomers argue over string theory and multiverses and the cosmic inflation hypothesis. Many of the postulates of modern cosmology lie beyond, or at least at the outer fringes, of what can be verified through observation. As a result, aesthetics—as reflected by the “elegance” of the mathematical models—has become as important as observation in assessing the validity of a cosmological theory. There is the assumption, sometimes explicit and sometimes not, that the universe is rationally constructed, that it has an inherent quality of beauty, and that any mathematical model that does not exemplify an underlying, unifying simplicity is to be considered dubious if not invalid on such criteria alone. This is really nothing more than an article of faith; and it is one of the few instances where science is faith-based, at least in its insistence that the universe can be understood, that it “makes sense.” It is not entirely a faith-based position, in that we can invoke the history of science to support the proposition that, so far, science has been able to make sense, in a limited way, of much of what it has scrutinized. (The psychedelic experience may prove to be an exception.)

This may be a bit controversial, but I’m not so sure compensation scales are a “moral” issue, at least once you exceed the very bottom of the range. If I create a business model that works only if I pay animators half the going rate in Hollywood, and we find it impossible to hire competent animators at that rate, I know my business model is invalid. It won’t work. On the other hand, if enough animators turn up willing to work for that pay scale, the business model may be valid. Turnover will undoubtedly be on the high side, as many of the better animators will move on to higher-paying work, but if we can build turnover into our business model, the business still works.

I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” he said. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century.

control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are. If I have a problem in my marriage, what do I really gain by continually confessing my wife’s sins? By saying I’m not responsible, I make myself a powerless victim; I immobilize myself in a negative situation. I also diminish my ability to influence her—my nagging, accusing, critical attitude only makes her feel validated in her own weakness. My criticism is worse than the conduct I want to correct. My ability to positively impact the situation withers and dies. If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control—myself. I can stop trying to shape up my wife and work on my own weaknesses. I can focus on being a great marriage partner, a source of unconditional love and support. Hopefully, my wife will feel the power of proactive example and respond in kind. But whether she does or doesn’t, the most positive way I can influence my situation is to work on myself, on my being. There are so many ways to work in the Circle of Influence—to be a better listener, to be a more loving marriage partner, to be a better student, to be a more cooperative and dedicated employee. Sometimes the most proactive thing we can do is to be happy, just to genuinely smile. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice. There are things, like the weather, that our Circle of Influence will never include. But as proactive people, we can carry our own physical or social weather with us. We

And then, other times, being Black feels exhilarating—because every good thing that happens feels like a victory, even the small things. Because you’re constantly reminded that you’re an other, so you know whatever good happened in spite of. So there’s celebration, there’s joy.” I paused, just to think. It felt so complicated. I pushed myself to find more, in the deeper parts, hidden in the folds of my spirit—the secrets. “And emptiness is there too—a different kind from what you described, though. A need for . . . validation, maybe to be seen, approved of, to matter as an individual, not just a monolith. And a desire to know that if I do follow all the rules, that I get the promise on the other side, just like anyone else. And by anyone else, I mean anyone else who is white.

Men want to prove that they are worthy of my time, attention, and commitment I will only commit myself to a man who has proven that he has committed himself to me I don't need validation from men, they need it from me I am the prize that men are trying to win over I only allow men into my life who live up to my standards I deserve and I have permission to keep an amazing man I only accept men into my life who respect me, my time, and my property I radiate confidence, love, and charm that men find irresistibly attractive I am confident and comfortable in my own skin I can control myself and I can wait, I don't need it right now I am beautiful inside and out I captivate men with my beauty, charm, and energy I am indifferent to the outcome I have fun and I am playful around men I understand that men want relationships as much as women do

My claims are not meant to be persuasive, but are used to make intangibility, concrete. I do not make claim for causing acts of God, I simply illustrate the coincidence and proximity of time between my words and acts of God and the exact date and time of said claims can never be changed because this data was recorded by International Press Releases. Being a scientist automatically makes me a reliable, objective and intellectual source but what gives me more credibility than the average scientist, is the fact that these claims are completely independent from myself for the fact they were recorded by an unbiased and independent third-party (i.e., The Library of Congress and PRLog.org). Therefore, there is no possible debate regarding the validity of this information, unless of course the debate is over whether the world is flat or round.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

Yet study after study has shown that most people do think they’re above average along various dimensions, ranging from athletic ability to social skills. And this sort of self-appraisal can firmly resist evidence. One study of fifty people found that on average they rated their driving skill toward the “expert” end of the spectrum—which would be less notable were it not for the fact that all fifty had recently been in car accidents, and two-thirds of them had been deemed responsible for the accidents by police. If there is anything we’re more impressed by than our competence, it’s our moral fiber. One finding among many that drive this point home is that the average person believes he or she does more good things and fewer bad things than the average person. Nearly half a millennium after Montaigne died, science has validated the logic behind his perhaps too modest remark: “I consider myself an average man except for the fact that I consider myself an average man.

In a chilling 2017 interview, Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, explained those early years like this: The thought process that went into building these applications Facebook being the first of them... was all about: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?"... And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone like or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you... more likes and comments... It's a social-validation feedback loop... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. Earlier in the interview, he said, "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains." In short, iGen [beginning with those born in 1995] is the first generation that spent (and is now spending) its formative teen years immersed in the giant social and commercial experiment of social media. What could go wrong?

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They’re on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options—neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr. Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there’s cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I’m easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I’ll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome dogs.

What struck me powerfully was that Mr. Spano had honored every word of his inner contract. Like everyone, he had this right of self determination. We do this when we select a partner who confirms our feelings of unworthiness. When we pick the job that pays us less than we deserve. It is all the same. It is all part of that contract, that even if we didn’t write it for ourselves, we certainly cosigned. I wondered too about my contract with myself. I wondered why the behavior of this self-hating man would rock me for even a second. I thought about how I needed to love myself enough to allow others to fulfill their contract with themselves. Be it Mr. Spano, my ex-husband, my father, my mother, Collin, the hospital administrators, or anyone else. Mr. Spano’s contract demanded that he act in ways that were dismissive of my attempts to help him. A human being can never treat another person better than he treats himself. So, if he says things that are disrespectful, this is his contract. His contract has nothing to do with mine, unless I allow it to. Unless I uncover a clause, in minuscule print on page five. A clause that I overlooked, that stipulates my need to be validated by the Mr. Spanos of the world in order to feel OK about myself. He was kind enough to prompt me to review that section again, to edit out that portion for good. In that way, he was an angel of the shift.

Can Religion Cure Our Troubles: Mankind is in mortal peril, and fear now, as in the past, is inclining men to seek refuge in God. Throughout the West there is a very general revival of religion. Nazis and Communists dismissed Christianity and did things which we deplore. It is easy to conclude that the repudiation of Christianity by Hitler and the Soviet Government is at least in part the cause of our troubles and that if the world returned to Christianity, our international problems would be solved. I believe this to be a complete delusion born of terror. And I think it is a dangerous delusion because it misleads men whose thinking might otherwise be fruitful and thus stands in the way of a valid solution. The question involved is not concerned only with the present state of the world. It is a much more general question, and one which has been debated for many centuries. It is the question whether societies can practise a sufficient modicum of morality if they are not helped by dogmatic religion. I do not myself think that the dependence of morals upon religion is nearly as close as religious people believe it to be. I even think that some very important virtues are more likely to be found among those who reject religious dogmas than among those who accept them. I think this applies especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organised beliefs.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

My dear readers, I find myself perplexed by the phantoms that now inhabit our veins and perpetually whisper in our ears. These specters are always watching, their formless eyes casting judgement upon our every thought and action. They stalk us behind screens and within circuits, gathering each tidbit we release into the ether to build their ever-growing profiles of our souls. Through these ghastly portals, our lives have become performance. Each waking moment an opportunity to curate our images and broadcast our cleverness. Nuance has fled in favor of hashtag and like, while meaning has been diced into 280 characters or less. Substance is sacrificed at the altar of shareability, as we optimize each motive and emotion to become more digestible digital content. Authenticity now lives only in offline obscurity, while our online avatars march on endlessly, seeking validation through numbers rather than depth. What secrets remain unshared on these platforms of glass? What mysteries stay concealed behind profiles and pose? Have we traded intimacy for influence, and true understanding for audience engagement? I fear these shadow networks breed narcissism and foster loneliness, masked as connection. That the sum of a life’s joys and sorrows can now be reduced to a reel of carefully selected snippets says little of the richness that once was. So follow the phantoms that stalk you if you will, but do not forget that which still breathes beneath the screens. There you will find humanity, flawed but whole, beautiful in its imperfection and trajectory undefined by likes or loves. The lanterns may flicker and fade, but the darkness that remains has always held truth. Look deeper than the glow, and know that which can never be shared or measured, only felt. In mystery, Your friend, Edgar Allan Poe (Poe talking about social media)

beyond them. The Six Diseases If we want to look at how we practice all forms of rivalry, there are six diseases my father wrote about, all of which stem from the desire we have to win at all costs. These diseases rely on being in competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up. When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them and disconnecting from our true selves in order to access some form of outside validation. In other words, there is no relationship, no collaboration, no cocreation. There is only the victor and the loser. The Six Diseases are: The desire for victory I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser. The desire to resort to technical cunning I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am? The desire to display all that has been learned Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb). The desire to awe the enemy I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention. The desire to play the passive role I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure that you see how likeable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrifice everything just for you? The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am. And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.

Uncle Alfred was very respectful of Owen’s desire to go to Vietnam, but Aunt Martha—over our elegant dinner—questioned the war’s “morality.” “YES, I QUESTION THAT, TOO,” said Owen Meany. “BUT I FEEL ONE HAS TO SEE SOMETHING FIRSTHAND TO BE SURE. I’M CERTAINLY INCLINED TO AGREE WITH KENNEDY’S ASSESSMENT OF THE VIETNAMESE PROBLEM—WAY BACK IN NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE. YOU MAY RECALL THAT THE PRESIDENT SAID: ‘WE CAN HELP THEM, WE CAN GIVE THEM EQUIPMENT, WE CAN SEND OUR MEN OUT THERE AS ADVISERS, BUT THEY HAVE TO WIN IT, THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM.’ I THINK THAT POINT IS STILL VALID—AND IT’S CLEAR TO ALL OF US THAT THE ‘PEOPLE OF VIETNAM’ ARE NOT WINNING THE WAR. WE APPEAR TO BE TRYING TO WIN IT FOR THEM. “BUT LET’S SUPPOSE, FOR A MOMENT, THAT WE BELIEVE IN THE STATED OBJECTIVES OF THE JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION’S VIETNAM POLICY—AND THAT WE SUPPORT THIS POLICY. WE AGREE TO RESIST COMMUNIST AGGRESSION IN SOUTH VIETNAM—WHETHER IT COMES FROM THE NORTH VIETNAMESE OR THE VIET CONG. WE SUPPORT THE IDEA OF SELF-DETERMINATION FOR SOUTH VIETNAM—AND WE WANT PEACE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. IF THESE ARE OUR OBJECTIVES—IF WE AGREE THAT THIS IS WHAT WE WANT—WHY ARE WE ESCALATING THE WAR? “THERE DOESN’T APPEAR TO BE A GOVERNMENT IN SAIGON THAT CAN DO VERY WELL WITHOUT US. DO THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE PEOPLE EVEN LIKE THE MILITARY JUNTA OF MARSHAL KY? NATURALLY, HANOI AND THE VIET CONG WILL NOT NEGOTIATE FOR A PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT IF THEY THINK THEY CAN WIN THE WAR! THERE’S EVERY REASON FOR THE UNITED STATES TO KEEP ENOUGH OF OUR GROUND FORCES IN SOUTH VIETNAM TO PERSUADE HANOI AND THE VIET CONG THAT THEY COULD NEVER ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY. BUT WHAT DOES IT ACCOMPLISH FOR US TO BOMB THE NORTH? “SUPPOSING THAT WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY—THAT WE WANT SOUTH VIETNAM TO BE FREE TO GOVERN ITSELF—WE SHOULD BE PROTECTING SOUTH VIETNAM FROM ATTACK. BUT IT APPEARS THAT WE ARE ATTACKING THE WHOLE COUNTRY—FROM THE AIR! IF WE BOMB THE WHOLE COUNTRY TO BITS—TO PROTECT IT FROM COMMUNISM—WHAT KIND OF PROTECTION IS THAT? “I THINK THAT’S THE PROBLEM,” said Owen Meany, “BUT I’D LIKE TO SEE THE SITUATION FOR MYSELF.

It was during this time that God began to ask many probing questions. Why the anger? Why the anxiety? Why the bitterness? Why the busyness? Why the striving? Why the insecurity? Ashley, what’s at the root of all this? I was desperately afraid that I was not good enough. I was anxious because I didn’t know how to make things better and afraid they were going to get worse. I was bitter because I wanted to be better than I was. I had always considered myself to be strong, and I wanted to be strong again. I stayed busy in the hope that other people would tell me I had value and my life did matter. I lived insecure because no matter what I tried, it failed to give me the validation I needed. I wanted to be good enough, and all I had was proof that I wasn’t. The pain of this realization and the way it made me feel exposed was a threat to every ounce of who I was. It was like having an exposed nerve—all I wanted was to escape this excruciating pain. God asked me these questions and gave me time and space to wrestle through them until I could acknowledge the sources of identity I was relying on that were not Him. It would have been unfaithful and unloving of God to let me continue relying on those idols when what I really needed was Him. What about you? What reactions have you been living with that might be an indicator of the questions God wants to ask you? He doesn’t point them out to shame us but to set us free. We are often so tired and angry with others because we are asking them to give to us what only God can. When these questions trigger emotion or reveal where we may have gotten stuck along the way, we have a choice to make. We can either face the truth of our hurts and let God uproot what needs to be uprooted and replace it with truth, love, and freedom, or we can hold on to our hurts and continue wrestling with Him for control. I wanted to let go. I wanted to let Him validate me, but I didn’t know how. When we have lived in certain patterns of behavior that we believe keep us safe, nothing can be scarier than being exposed over and over to our true need.

On the one hand, I recognize the power of the placebo effect: if you believe it’s working, it may well work. If you think an object brings you luck, you are more confident. And yet what the Italian students in the “lucky” seats showed wasn’t confidence; it was overconfidence. They thought they were doing better, but the evidence didn’t actually back them up. And then there’s the flip side of the placebo, the nocebo effect: the belief in evil signs or bad luck. It turns out people can literally scare themselves to death. If you think you’ve been cursed or otherwise made ill, you may end up actually getting sick, failing to improve poor health, or, yes, dying altogether. In one medically documented instance, a man was given three months to live after a diagnosis of metastatic cancer of the esophagus. He died shortly after. When his body was autopsied, doctors realized that he had been misdiagnosed: he did indeed have cancer, but a tiny, non-metastatic tumor on his liver. Clinically speaking, it could not have killed him. But, it seems, being told he was dying of a fatal illness brought about that very outcome. In another case, a man thought he was hexed by a voodoo priest. He came close to death, only to recover miraculously after an enterprising doctor “reversed” the curse through a series of made-up words. In yet a third, a man almost died in the emergency room after overdosing on pills. He’d been in a drug trial for depression and decided to end his life with the antidepressants he’d been prescribed. His vitals were so bad when he was admitted that doctors didn’t think he would make it—until they discovered his blood was completely clear of any drugs. He’d been taking a placebo. Once he found out he had not in fact taken a life-threatening quantity of pills, he recovered quickly. The effect our mind has on our body makes for a scary proposition. Belief is a powerful thing. Our mental state is crucial to our performance. And ultimately, while some superstitions may give you a veneer of false confidence, they also have the power to destroy your mental equilibrium. I like to think of this as the black cat effect. You see one cross the parking lot as you walk to a tournament. You brood about the bad luck. Your game is thrown off. You blame the cat. You bust. You feel validated. Superstitions are false attributions, so they give you a false sense of your own abilities and in the end, impede learning.

her that when he had first raised the idea, I hadn’t known he was sick. Almost nobody knew, she said. He had called me right before he was going to be operated on for cancer, and he was still keeping it a secret, she explained. I decided then to write this book. Jobs surprised me by readily acknowledging that he would have no control over it or even the right to see it in advance. “It’s your book,” he said. “I won’t even read it.” But later that fall he seemed to have second thoughts about cooperating and, though I didn’t know it, was hit by another round of cancer complications. He stopped returning my calls, and I put the project aside for a while. Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” he said. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century. I asked Jobs why he wanted me to be the one to write his biography. “I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer. I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated, and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk. And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing. But after a couple of months,

Marlboro Man and Tim were standing in the hall, not seven steps from the bathroom door. “There she is,” Tim remarked as I walked up to them and stood. I smiled nervously. Marlboro Man put his hand on my lower back, caressing it gently with his thumb. “You all right?” he asked. A valid question, considering I’d been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes. “Oh yeah…I’m fine,” I answered, looking away. I wanted Tim to disappear. Instead, the three of us made small talk before Marlboro Man asked, “Do you want something to drink?” He started toward the stairs. Gatorade. I wanted Gatorade. Ice-cold, electrolyte-replacing Gatorade. That, and vodka. “I’ll go with you,” I said. Marlboro Man and I grabbed ourselves a drink and wound up in the backyard, sitting on an ornate concrete bench by ourselves. Miraculously, my nervous system had suddenly grown tired of sending signals to my sweat glands, and the dreadful perspiration spell seemed to have reached its end. And the sun had set outside, which helped my appearance a little. I felt like a circus act. I finished my screwdriver in four seconds, and both the vitamin C and the vodka went to work almost instantly. Normally, I’d know better than to replace bodily fluids with alcohol, but this was a special case. At that point, I needed nothing more than to self-medicate. “So, did you get sick or something?” Marlboro Man asked. “You okay?” He touched his hand to my knee. “No,” I answered. “I got…I got hot.” He looked at me. “Hot?” “Yeah. Hot.” I had zero pride left. “So…what were you doing in the bathroom?” he asked. “I had to take off all my clothes and fan myself,” I answered honestly. The vitamin C and vodka had become a truth serum. “Oh, and wipe the sweat off my neck and back.” This was sure to reel him in for life. Marlboro Man looked at me to make sure I wasn’t kidding, then burst into laughter, covering his mouth to keep from spitting out his Scotch. Then, unexpectedly, he leaned over and planted a sweet, reassuring kiss on my cheek. “You’re funny,” he said, as he rubbed his hand on my tragically damp back. And just like that, all the horrors of the evening disappeared entirely from my mind. It didn’t matter how stupid I was--how dumb, or awkward, or sweaty. It became clearer to me than ever, sitting on that ornate concrete bench, that Marlboro Man loved me. Really, really loved me. He loved me with a kind of love different from any I’d felt before, a kind of love I never knew existed. Other boys--at least, the boys I’d always bothered with--would have been embarrassed that I’d disappeared into the bathroom for half the night. Others would have been grossed out by my tale of sweaty woe or made jokes at my expense. Others might have looked at me blankly, unsure of what to say. But not Marlboro Man; none of it fazed him one bit. He simply laughed, kissed me, and went on. And my heart welled up in my soul as I realized that without question, I’d found the one perfect person for me.

What I feel now doesn't matter at all? But at what point I am entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, one can't go through one's whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere

The technique known as cognitive challenging, which is a hallmark of CBT, involves challenging beliefs that may trigger anxiety or that may result from feeling chronically stressed. CBT consists of a structured set of steps in which you are first encouraged to identify beliefs or thoughts that are associated with anxiety. When you are feeling stressed or anxious, you may have a whole constellation of anxiety-related thoughts. Step 1 is to focus on one particular thought, such as “I fear that my partner will leave me unless I have a good sexual response.” In Step 2, you are asked to analyze the validity of that thought by considering such factors as whether it is true, how logical it is, and what the probability is for it to be true. In this step, you also consider the evidence supporting the thought. In Step 3, you would examine counter-evidence to the thought by asking yourself the following questions: 1.Is there another way of looking at this thought? 2.Is there another explanation? 3.How would someone else consider the same situation? 4.Are my beliefs based on my emotions rather than on facts? 5.Am I setting unrealistic or unachievable standards for myself? 6.Am I forgetting relevant facts or overemphasizing other ones? 7.Am I engaging in all-or-nothing thinking? Once you consider the evidence for the particular thought and the evidence against (with the against evidence far outweighing the for evidence in most cases), you then come up with a thought that is a more accurate reflection of reality and probabilities. This new belief will replace the original maladaptive belief you had.

There has to be a more loving dream, a dream that appeals to the hearts of humans. There is I know, a more refined dream, which appeals to the human soul,’ offered Wonder encouragingly. ‘I am not so sure,’ rejoined Double Doubt, responding to the tone of hope in Wonder’s voice. ‘Why choose war over peace? Humankind has trod that path so diligently that they have forgotten that there are other ways of ease.’ ‘True. Tis true! But is it not the dominant actions of the few, who lead the many? Does not the fear of being a voice of reason in the wilderness overwhelm the gentle of heart?’ ‘The gentle of heart are weak! Too weak in energy to perform, to take action, and are drained by the fear of action, a fear which inhibits action. I doubt they will break through the fog of fear.’ ‘The fog of fear you say? Or is it their sense of impotence that overwhelms them from speaking out? Knowing that any attempt to change the consensus reality of their space-time is an enormous task, an overwhelming task, and that just to hold the thought of a breakthrough is about the only choice they have.’ ‘Enormous it may be, in terms of consciousness,’ replied Double Doubt. ‘But consciousness grounded in impeccability, will far outweigh the fog of fear, so why the problem? Humans do not seem to understand that the universal energy supports life-furthering consciousness. Such a waste of human resources! No Doubt. No Doubt.’ ‘I understand what you are propounding Gnome Double Doubt, however, it seems to me that most human beings are still not fully aware of the power of thought, and are still not aware of how energy exists; transforming itself through the power of thought. It is only a matter of space-time before humans come to understand the difficult concept of Universal space-time and energy.’ ‘Your optimism is based on a need for perfection Wonder. Humans also seek perfection, but as yet have not come within a whale’s breath of it, and a whale’s breath is vast! I cannot see why you hold out such great hope for these vulnerable humans. It seems to me that your wonderings about their futures will take you away from the higher pursuits of the experiment. Let us deal with one human at a time. Remember, one action, one thought can change the ways of all,’ encouraged Gnome Double Doubt, now taking on the role of the advocate of hope. ‘It is now urgent that we pull ourselves together and act in a more gnome-like manner and have done with all this wallowing concern for the human race.’ ‘You are always so wise Double Doubt. I know you are on the right path,’ conceded Wonder, knowing that Double Doubt was now out of the foggy mire of confusion and back on the track of practicality. ‘I wish I could let go of seeking something of a higher dreaming for the humans. But alas I know myself,’ sighed Wonder. ‘I am as I am, a wondering wanderlust or a Wonder-last, and the last being to wonder or to lust over a dream of such beauty, that it would vanquish the fear of insecurity in the human realm forever. So near and yet so far! I wonder. I wonder? Is it a possibility, or just a dream, as ephemeral in substance as the gossamer rainbow wings of our dear friends the fairies?' ‘My goodness! You do go on Wonder. It seems to me, but who am I to doubt, that you waste so much energy on a dream without substance, a dream which is based on fear, a dream which is embedded like granite in human thought, a dream that would take earth shattering energy to shift such rigidity of thought. Take my advice Wonder. Begin with the smallest crack in the edifice of human thought, and that lies in the direction of Petunia. Leave the human race to experiencing life as they choose to. Until they validate, that ‘All is connected. All is divine’, then they will not be and cannot be, aware of the realm of All That Is. T.L. Franklin (Excerpt from ‘Wonder and Double Doubt’ - Chapter 9, Page 294)

For Jominians, the duty of theory is to uncover these immutable truths and to advocate their adoption and use. In the words of Jomini himself, "convinced that I had seized the true point of view under which it was necessary to regard the theory of war in order to discover its veritable rules, . . . I set myself to the work with the ardor of a neophyte."5 The Jominian school acknowledges that the nature of war is complex and dramatic, and that, consequently, its complete mastery is truly an art form. However, the strategy of war is scientific, knowable, constant, and governed by principles of eternal validity.

For those seeking an alternative to Jordan Peterson’s dark vision of the world, questionable approach to truth and knowledge, and retreat to religion, they will find the answer in Bertrand Russell, whose essays on religion seem to, at times, be speaking directly to Peterson himself. Here’s the final paragraph from Russell’s essay Why I Am Not a Christian: "WHAT WE MUST DO We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world—its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is, and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create. Russell wishes to replace fear, religion, and dogma with free-thinking, intelligence, courage, knowledge, and kindness. To believe something because it is seen to be useful, rather than true, is intellectually dishonest to the highest degree. And, as Russell points out elsewhere, he can’t recall a single verse in the Bible that praises intelligence. Here’s Russell in another essay, titled Can Religion Cure Our Troubles: Mankind is in mortal peril, and fear now, as in the past, is inclining men to seek refuge in God. Throughout the West there is a very general revival of religion. Nazis and Communists dismissed Christianity and did things which we deplore. It is easy to conclude that the repudiation of Christianity by Hitler and the Soviet Government is at least in part the cause of our troubles and that if the world returned to Christianity, our international problems would be solved. I believe this to be a complete delusion born of terror. And I think it is a dangerous delusion because it misleads men whose thinking might otherwise be fruitful and thus stands in the way of a valid solution. The question involved is not concerned only with the present state of the world. It is a much more general question, and one which has been debated for many centuries. It is the question whether societies can practise a sufficient modicum of morality if they are not helped by dogmatic religion. I do not myself think that the dependence of morals upon religion is nearly as close as religious people believe it to be. I even think that some very important virtues are more likely to be found among those who reject religious dogmas than among those who accept them. I think this applies especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organised beliefs.

Right now, I’m feeling pulled in many directions. They are all good things, but I’m not sure I am making the best use of my time. I’m finding it hard to say no to people because the things they ask me to do seem valid and urgent at the time. Often, though, at the end of the day, I realize that much of my day has been spent dealing with crises, emergencies, and the demands of others. I go to bed wondering why I was busy doing all these things that really don’t seem to make much difference. I tell myself that I won’t take on those kinds of tasks again, but sure enough, I end up doing the same thing all over again the next day. I feel that if I were more clear about my purpose, it would help ensure that I am investing my time and energy on things that are in line with what’s important to me as well as confirm that I’m making a difference in the lives of the people I work with in Phnom Penh.

I tried to picture a future reader for my output so as to take my cues from him. My themes were utterly foreign to him, indeed the whole environment I conjured up before his eyes could only seem abstruse and outlandish, as though I sought to transport him to a world that, though familiar to him from earlier times, now seemed thrust to the margins, so that no previously valid form of description could be used for it ... I wrote for an utterly impossible reader, for one reader alone, and that reader was myself.

I may not agree with you or you with me. Yet I can remain in relationship with you. I don’t have to detach from you, reject you, avoid you, or criticize you to validate myself. I can be myself apart from you.

I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions “moral” after a fashion. Perhaps another person, reading of my life, would name me a religious tyrant. He could call me arrogant. What is to make that man’s opinion any less valid than my own? I guess it all comes down to one fact: In the end, I’m the one with the armies.

She’d spent her whole life needing others to validate her, and while that hadn’t completely disappeared, she did feel her own voice rising above the others, guiding her, telling her it was okay to be on her own.

The lesson of acceptance is one of the hardest to learn. I've been working on it for quite a spell, and cannot yet rate myself as A or even B. To accept changes, slow or sudden, to accept the inevitable alterations in one's life, even in one's way of living or thinking, isn't easy; and to accept other people's inviolable right to opinions other than your own is hard, too. To accept God's will, even if you do not understand it—and few of us do—is the most difficult, yet rewarding of all acceptances. Those of us who say the Lord's Prayer—formally at religious gatherings, aloud in a quiet room, or mentally to ourselves—rarely stop to think about each word and sentence or ponder on its strong core of inner meaning. To me the four words, Thy Will be done, are the most important; and they are valid in every creed. Blind faith is something we've heard about as long as we remember. I do not think this is the ultimate in belief. Unless his small personal world has been shattered, the faith of a child in his parents and in his total security is blind until he begins to think for himself, at which point reason gives blind faith its sight. An adult's faith must be logical and based upon an immutable foundation, which gives him the capacity, when for him the world is shattered, to go a step beyond the bewildered child and accept loss or alteration.

By recognizing my mother’s limitations, I was able to realize she’d done the best she could. I finally began to accept that she would never be the kind of mom I had wanted or needed her to be. She was who she was. I didn’t have to like it, but I needed to accept it completely and unconditionally. If I was going to do that for her, I needed to do the same for myself. I needed to accept that my childhood programming was what it was, forgive those who had instilled it, forgive myself for living by it, and break the habit of needing the approval of others in order to feel validated. This was challenging because my need for approval was so strong. If my mother wouldn’t give it to me, who would? Answer: No one, and that was okay. The approval of others no longer needed to be criteria for my own self-worth. It had to be enough that I was proud of my accomplishments and milestones. No matter what happened to me in my life, regardless of the opinions of others, I had to accept myself.

No matter how convincing and irrefutable I felt my train of thoughts to be, as well as that otherwise ideas that has led us all to the conclusion that life is meaningless I still had some obscure doubts as to the validity of the final outcome of my deliberations. It was expressed as follows: I, that is my reason, have acknowledged that life is a rational. If there is nothing higher than reason (and there is not, and nothing can prove that there is), then reason is the creator of life for me. Without reason I can have no life. How then can reason to deny life when it is the creator of it? Or looking at it another way: if there were no life my reason would not exist, which must mean that reason is the offspring of life. Life is everything. Reason is the fruit of life and yet this reason rejects life itself. I felt that something was not quite right here. Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, I said to myself. Yet I have lived and still live, and so to humanity has lived and still lives. How can this be? Why do men live when it is possible not to live?

Sex is a way of announcing yourself. Of telling another person who you are. And that night I realized I had been presenting myself as someone I wasn't, and used sex as a way to escape my body rather than inhabit it. I rested my head on Jonas' chest and I peered up at him and told myself that if this stopped here, it would be enough. I had been on a hellish journey to be seen and validated by an army of inconsequential men. Tell me who I am. Tell me I am worthy. But it was over now. Or it could be over, because by allowing myself to see and accept Jonas, I was also seeing and accepting myself for the first time. He had given me the gift of finally being present in my body. I felt everything. Every stiff fucking muscle, every blemish, every crooked nook and it was beautiful. It was wrong to see my body as anything else. I looked at him and saw a future absent of distractions. Of pure unfiltered reality.

I think I’ve been trying to convince myself that my fears are no longer warranted, that Carter’s been great for a whole week and I have nothing to be insecure about. But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s been a week. I walked away from him for very real reasons, very valid fears, and just because I want them to leave doesn’t mean they simply get up and walk away, even if I wish they would.

You might be wondering, “What if people are right if they say I am TOO something? How do I know I’m not ignoring valid critique?” Good questions. I ask myself a few questions when it comes to determining what we should consider credible and what we should consider compost. Is this thing hindering my personal growth? Is this thing harming someone else? Is this critique coming from someone who loves and respects me? If the answer to all three is no, then wipe your shoulders off, pick your head up, and keep it moving. Otherwise, let’s dig deeper on those questions.