Managing Oneself Quotes

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The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
After tail spinning into chaos, one needs a bolt-hole, to resource and ‘challenge’ oneself, break free from the haunting constrictions, squirrel back into bouncy and buoyant surroundings and enjoy the many laugh-out-loud-moments of the day. As soon as one manages to wobble out of one’s shell, everything may click into place again and the radiance and glare of the bright side of life might show again. ("Imbroglio")
Erik Pevernagie
Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
If people keep stepping on you, wear a pointy hat.
Joyce Rachelle
It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
You should not change yourself, but create yourself, that mean build around your strengths and removing bad habits
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Would it be simplistic to think the moral problem with regards to others consists in behaving as one ought to, and the moral problem with regards to oneself is managing to feel what one ought to?
Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.)
Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Fiction offers the best means of understanding people different from oneself, short of experience. Actually, fiction can be lots better than experience, because it's a manageable size, it's comprehensible, while experience just steamrollers over you and you understand what happened decades later, if ever.
Ursula K. Le Guin (Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016)
Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
I barely managed to do the small talk—the what-do-you-do, the where-are-you-from, the what-neighborhood, the what-college, the despair of trying to explain oneself.
Catherine Lacey (The Answers)
You religious men who boast so much that you live on charity including what the poor manage to scrape together out of their meagre income - how can you justify your actions? How can your moral conscience be clear when you acknowledge that in no way do you contribute to the society that is maintaining you, day after day? In your self complacent conceit, you denigrate and harshly condemn, those who, with their sweat and hard work, provide you with a life fit for a king. What is the reason you spend your lives living comfortably in some ashram or isolated monastery when life only makes sense if it is experienced with your fellow brothers and sisters by showing compassion to them? It is easy and simple enough to spend your lives meditating in the Himalayas being irritated by nothing and no one if not the occasional goat, rather than placing yourselves in the midst of your fellow men and living an ordinary life of toil as they do. Do not delude yourselves, because what you refer to as a state of internal peace represents nothing but the personal satisfaction of the conscious ego that is admiring and adoring itself..
Anton Sammut (The Secret Gospel Of Jesus AD 0-78)
Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one's own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being - or even with being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image -look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extraversion without depth, a sort of self-promot­ing ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance.
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
The chief requirement of the good life', said Michael, 'is that one should have some conception of one's capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has. ... One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles.
Iris Murdoch (The Bell)
It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
Peter F. Drucker (The Effective Executive)
There is a relation between persons and role. But the relationship answers to the interactive system—to the frame—in which the role is performed and the self of the performer is glimpsed. Self, then, is not an entity half-concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. Just as the current situation prescribes the official guise behind which we will conceal ourselves, so it provides where and how we will show through, the culture itself prescribing what sort of entity we must believe ourselves to be in order to have something to show through in this manner.
Erving Goffman
You will never get the best out of anyone professionally unless you understand what motivates and makes them tick personally - as a human being
Rasheed Ogunlaru
If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.
Stephen Hawking
Psychological despotism, whether enlightened or not, is gross misuse of psychology. The main purpose of psychology is to acquire insight into, and mastery of, oneself. Not for nothing were what we now call the behavioral sciences originally called the moral sciences and “Know thyself” their main precept. To use psychology to control, dominate, and manipulate others is self-destructive abuse of knowledge. It is also a particularly repugnant form of tyranny.
Peter F. Drucker (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices)
One has to forget about being sweet, pleasant, and helpful; one has to give oneself permission to publicly dominate the other. One has to manage without the other's approval.
Virginie Despentes (King Kong théorie)
If you have a goal that you still postpone, that means, it's not one of your strengths
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Introverts do better alone with competition, extraverts do better in large group without competition
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Because of the way God has made us, it is impossible finally and completely to deaden the soul. The soul will resurrect, in spite of the cruelty used to destroy it. It will pop up and then be slain again, return and be shoved down through contempt. The power to destroy the soul is not in the hands of Satan, another human being, or even oneself. Nevertheless, when we manage to deaden our soul, even temporarily, we open the door to terrible consequences.
Dan B. Allender (The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse)
The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Working relationships are as much based on the people as they are on the work.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
He is saying not just to love one’s neighbour, but to love them as much as one loves oneself. If one cannot love oneself, one cannot love others. If one cannot believe in oneself, one cannot believe in others. Please think of the phrase as carrying that connotation. You are insisting that you cannot believe in other people, but that is because you have not managed to truly believe in yourself.
Ichiro Kishimi (The Courage to be Happy: True Contentment Is In Your Power)
Advances in biological knowledge have highlighted the potential chronicity of effects of childhood maltreatment, demonstrating particular life challenges in managing emotions, forming and maintaining healthy relationships, healthy coping, and holding a positive outlook of oneself.
Christine Wekerle (Childhood Maltreatment)
This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true. ... This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it. ... Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do.
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
I’ve lived so little that I tend to imagine I’m not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop. At times, too, I’ve had the impression that I’d manage to feel quite at home in a life of vacuity. That
Michel Houellebecq (Whatever)
To expend oneself, to bestir oneself for an impenetrable object is pure religion. To make the other into an insoluble riddle on which my life depends is to consecrate the other as a god; I shall never manage to solve the question the other asks me, the lover is not Oedipus. Then all that is left for me to do is to reverse my ignorance into truth.
Roland Barthes (A Lover's Discourse: Fragments)
others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy—that is, a lack of manners.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
This failure to ask reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Values, in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Appreciation, affection, focus and intention fill up the space of self-reflection, and one loses oneself in the engagement. And what a relief it is when you get there.
Darrell Calkins (Re:)
To manage complexity, one needs to understand it to release oneself from the comfort zone or liberate the comfort zone from prejudice.
Thomas Vato (Questology)
Logotherapy bases its technique called “paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes. In German I described paradoxical intention as early as 1939.11 In this approach the phobic patient is invited to intend, even if only for a moment, precisely that which he fears. Let me recall a case. A young physician consulted me because of his fear of perspiring. Whenever he expected an outbreak of perspiration, this anticipatory anxiety was enough to precipitate excessive sweating. In order to cut this circle formation I advised the patient, in the event that sweating should recur, to resolve deliberately to show people how much he could sweat. A week later he returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to himself, “I only sweated out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!” The result was that, after suffering from his phobia for four years, he was able, after a single session, to free himself permanently of it within one week. The reader will note that this procedure consists of a reversal of the patient’s attitude, inasmuch as his fear is replaced by a paradoxical wish. By this treatment, the wind is taken out of the sails of the anxiety. Such a procedure, however, must make use of the specifically human capacity for self-detachment inherent in a sense of humor. This basic capacity to detach one from oneself is actualized whenever the logotherapeutic technique called paradoxical intention is applied. At the same time, the patient is enabled to put himself at a distance from his own neurosis. A statement consistent with this is found in Gordon W. Allport’s book, The Individual and His Religion: “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management, perhaps to cure.”12 Paradoxical intention is the empirical validation and clinical application of Allport’s statement.
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
Mayer and Salovey’s definition of emotional intelligence includes five domains: knowing one’s emotions; managing one’s emotions; motivating oneself; recognizing emotions in others; and handling relationships.
Doc Childre (The HeartMath Solution: The Institute of HeartMath's Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart's Intelligence)
Part of the art of choosing difficulties is to select those that are indeed just manageable. If the difficulties chosen are too easy, life is boring; if they are too hard, life is defeating. The trick is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become at a level of difficulty close to the edge of one’s competence. When one achieves this fine-tuning of his life, he will know zest and joy and deep fulfillment.
Nicholas Hobbs
What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Is it possible to be so happy for one person and at the same time be so sad for oneself? "Only the most generous in spirit can manage it. The rest of us don't know how to be happy for another when our own dreams have gone astray.
Julia Quinn (Scottish Brides)
The promise of happiness through consumption can make us chase after experiences or objects that deplete us even though they are pleasurable, closing of our capacity to be affected otherwise. in a different way, social media trains its subjects into perpetual performance of an online identity, and the anxious management of our profiles closes us of from other forms of connection. rigid radicalism induces a hypervigilant search for mistakes and flaws, stifling the capacity for experimentation. none of these modes of subjection dictate how exactly subjects will behave; instead they generate tendencies or attractor points which pull subjects into predictable, stultifying orbits. resisting or transforming these systems is never straightforward, because it means resisting and transforming one’s own habits and desires. it means surprising both the structure and oneself with something unexpected, new, and enabling.
Nick Montgomery (Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times (Anarchist Interventions))
Strong decision makers often put somebody they trust into the number two spot as their adviser—and in that position the person is outstanding. But in the number one spot, the same person fails. He or she knows what the decision should be but cannot accept the responsibility of actually making it.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person—hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre—into an outstanding performer.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
...you shall hear about how we managed to survived. How we survived the hardest battle of all - the battle with ones own mind, thoughts and feelings. The inner battle with oneself. The scars from our journey remind us that we made it through what we never thought we would - And with every day that passes by, we win another battle of survival.
Isha Barlas
When General Eisenhower was elected president, his predecessor, Harry Truman, said: “Poor Ike; when he was a general, he gave an order and it was carried out. Now he is going to sit in that big office and he’ll give an order and not a damn thing is going to happen.” The reason why “not a damn thing is going to happen” is, however, not that generals have more authority than presidents. It is that military organizations learned long ago that futility is the lot of most orders and organized the feedback to check on the execution of the order. They learned long ago that to go oneself and look is the only reliable feedback.5 Reports—all an American president is normally able to mobilize—are not much help. All military services have long ago learned that the officer who has given an order goes out and sees for himself whether it has been carried out. At the least he sends one of his own aides—he never relies on what he is told by the subordinate to whom the order was given. Not that he distrusts the subordinate; he has learned from experience to distrust communications.
Peter F. Drucker (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices)
APPLES SCENT, You arrive in the basement. Immediatly it catches you. Apples are here, lying on fruit trays, turned crates. You didn't think about it. You had no wish to be flooded by this melancholic wave. But you can't resist. Apple scent is a breaker. How could you manage without this childhood, bitter and sweet ? Shrivelled fruits surely are delicious, from this feak dryness where candied taste seems to have wormed in each wrinkle. But you don't wish to eat them. Particularly don't turn into an identifiable taste this floating power of smell. Say that it smells good, strong? But not ..... It's beyond .... An inner scent, scent of a better oneself. Here is shut up school autumn, with purple ink we scratch paper with down strokes and thin strokes. Rain bangs against glasses, evening will be long .... But apple perfume is more than past. You think about formerly because of fullness and intensity from a remembrance of salpetered cellar, dark attic. But it's to live here, stay here, stand up. You have behind you high herbs and damp orchards. Ahead it's like a warm blow given in the shade. Scent got all browns, all reds with a bit of green acid. Scent distilled skin softness, its tiny roughness. Lips dried, we alreadyt know that this thirst is not to be slaked. Nothing would happen if you bite the white flesh. You would need to become october, mud floor, moss of cellar, rain, expectation. Apple scent is painful. It's from a stronger life, a slowness we deserve no more.
Philippe Delerm
Respect was a big word in Linc's vocabulary. It meant being selective and paying attention to things that mattered and people who made differences. And respect for oneself meant being valuable enough to make sure they would notice you. That was the key to doing better than just getting by and surviving, which was something even the rats in the sewers under the city managed.
James P. Hogan (Outward Bound)
After the Spanish publication of the 'Précis,' two Andalusian students asked me if it was possible to live without “fundamentación.” I answered that it was true that I had found no solid basis anywhere and that I had nonetheless managed to endure, for with the years one got used to everything, even vertigo. Then, too, one does not constantly keep watch and interrogate oneself, absolute lucidity being incompatible with breathing.
Emil M. Cioran (Anathemas and Admirations: Essays and Aphorisms)
Watching him then, I simply couldn’t think of him doing anything other than winning. Loss wasn’t the norm, it couldn’t be. I didn’t have the words for it then, what it felt like to watch my cousin, whom I love and whose worries are our worries and whose pain is our pain, manage to be so good at something, to triumph so completely. More than a painful life, more than a culture or a society with the practice and perfection of violence as a virtue and a necessity, more than a meanness or a willingness to sacrifice oneself, what I felt—what I saw—were Indian men and boys doing precisely what we’ve always been taught not to do. I was seeing them plainly, desperately, expertly wanting to be seen for their talents and their hard work, whether they lost or won. That old feeling familiar to so many Indians—that we can’t change anything; can’t change Columbus or Custer, smallpox or massacres; can’t change the Gatling gun or the legislative act; can’t change the loss of our loved ones or the birth of new troubles; can’t change a thing about the shape and texture of our lives—fell away. I think the same could be said for Sam: he might not have been able to change his sister’s fate or his mother’s or even, for a while, his own. But when he stepped in the cage he was doing battle with a disease. The disease was the feeling of powerlessness that takes hold of even the most powerful Indian men. That disease is more potent than most people imagine: that feeling that we’ve lost, that we’ve always lost, that we’ve already lost—our land, our cultures, our communities, ourselves. This disease is the story told about us and the one we so often tell about ourselves. But it’s one we’ve managed to beat again and again—in our insistence on our own existence and our successful struggles to exist in our homelands on our own terms. For some it meant joining the U.S. Army. For others it meant accepting the responsibility to govern and lead. For others still, it meant stepping into a metal cage to beat or be beaten. For my cousin Sam, for three rounds of five minutes he gets to prove that through hard work and natural ability he can determine the outcome of a finite struggle, under the bright, artificial lights that make the firmament at the Northern Lights Casino on the Leech Lake Reservation.
David Treuer (The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present)
Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust. The existence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another. Taking responsibility for relationships is therefore an absolute necessity. It is a duty. Whether one is a member of the organization, a consultant to it, a supplier, or a distributor, one owes that responsibility to all one’s coworkers: those whose work one depends on as well as those who depend on one’s own work.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
As for law and religion, which also have preached this principle, they have simply filched it to cloak their own wares, their injunctions for the benefit of the conqueror, the exploiter, the priest. Without this principle of solidarity, the justice of which is so generally recognized, how could they have laid hold on men's minds? Each of them covered themselves with it as with a garment; like authority which made good its position by posing as the protector of the weak against the strong. By flinging overboard law, religion and authority, mankind can regain possession of the moral principle which has been taken from them. Regain that they may criticize it, and purge it from the adulterations wherewith priest, judge and ruler have poisoned it and are poisoning it yet. Besides this principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it but the very same principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And how can any one manage to believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody? We do not wish to be deceived, we wish always to be told nothing but the truth. And by this very fact, do we not de- clare that we ourselves do not wish to deceive anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others' labor?
Pyotr Kropotkin (Anarchist Morality)
All of these experiences have reinforced our idea that procrastination is not primarily a time management problem or a moral failing but a complex psychological issue. At its core, problem procrastination is a problem with one’s relationship to oneself, reflecting a shaky sense of self-esteem. In our first book, we called it a problem of self-worth. Now we emphasize that self-worth is rooted in the capacity for acceptance, which includes acceptance of our biology, our history, our circumstances, and our many human limits.
Jane B. Burka (Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now)
What if conscious experience is managed by each module? Lose a module to injury or stroke, and the consciousness that accompanies that module is gone, too. Remember: patients with hemi-neglect aren’t conscious of one-half of space because the module that processes that information is no longer working. Or, if the modules responsible for locating oneself in space are not being integrated properly, conscious experience is deeply affected, and one ends up with the feeling that someone else is there just over your shoulder. Or, take people with Urbach-Wiethe disease, which leads to deterioration of the amygdalae: they no longer experience the emotion of fear. One
Michael S. Gazzaniga (The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind)
There are two types of shot. The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case, although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on the target and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything has become mere routine. The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a distance provokes —paradoxically enough— a return to and an encounter with oneself.
Paulo Coelho (The Way of the Bow)
And so I learned things, gentlemen. Ah, one learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs. One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition. My ape nature fled out of me, head over heels and away, so that my first teacher was almost himself turned into an ape by it and was taken away to a mental hospital. Fortunately he was soon let out again. But I used up many teachers, several teachers at once. As I became more confident of my abilities, as the public took and interest in my progress and my future began to look bright, I engaged teachers for myself, engaged them in five communicating rooms, and took lessons from all at once by dint of leaping from one room to the other. That progress of mine! How the rays of knowledge penetrated from all sides into my awakening brain? I do not deny it: I found it exhilarating. But I must also confess: I did not overestimate it, not even then, much less now. With an effort which up till now has never been repeated I managed to reach the cultural level of an average European. In itself that might be nothing to speak of, but it is something insofar as it has helped me out of my cage and opened a special way out for me, the way of humanity. There is an excellent idiom: to fight one’s way through the thick of things; that is what I have done, I have fought through the thick of things. There was nothing else for me to do, provided that freedom was not to be my choice. As I look back on my development and survey what I have achieved so far, I do not complain, but I am not complacent either. With my hands in my trouser pockets, my bottle of wine on the table, I half lie and half sit in my rocking chair and gaze out of the window: If a visitor arrives I receive him with propriety. My manager sits in the anteroom; when I ring, he comes and listens to what I have to say. Nearly every evening I give a performance, and I have a success that could hardly be increased. When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific receptions, from social gatherings, there sits waiting for me a half-trained chimpanzee and I take comfort from her as apes do. By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye, no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it. On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I have set out to achieve. But do not tell me that it was not worth the trouble. In any case, I am not appealing to any man’s verdict. I am only imparting knowledge, I am only making a report. To you also, honored Members of the Academy, I have only made a report.
Franz Kafka (A Report for an Academy)
Freud considered that after age 45, psychoanalysis could do nothing for a neurotic: Jung was convinced that 45 was roughly the period of life when its immensely important second development began, and that this second period was concerned with matters which were, in the broadest sense, religious. Many people are put off by this attitude. They want nothing to do with religion and are too lazy or too frightened to accept the notion that religion may mean something very different from orthodoxy. They attach themselves to the notion that Man is the center of all things, the highest development of life, and that when the individual consciousness is closed by death, that is, as far as they are concerned, the end of the matter. Man, as the instrument of some vastly greater Will, does not interest them, and they do not see their refusal as a limitation on their understanding. Robertson Davies, “The Essential Jung
Martin E.P. Seligman (What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement)
As this example suggests, it is rarely possible—or even particularly fruitful—to look too far ahead. A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific. So the question in most cases should be, Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half ? The answer must balance several things. First, the results should be hard to achieve—they should require “stretching,” to use the current buzzword. But also, they should be within reach. To aim at results that cannot be achieved—or that can be only under the most unlikely circumstances—is not being ambitious; it is being foolish. Second, the results should be meaningful. They should make a difference. Finally, results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable. From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set. RESPONSIBILITY
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
We were at an age of innocence when, through touch and sound, taste and smell and sight, once could sense things beyond the surface, when it seemed to use that blood flowed even through inanimate objects. We were at an age when we could not foresee that one day our senses would convince us only of our captivity in space and time, and not lead us to an awareness of somthing beyond. We were at an age of innocence when the soul is still soft clay and does not know that one day it will turn to stone or barren earth; we were at an age when the soul is clay that can easily be warmed by a kindred spirit, when it is possible for two to become one. We were at an age of innocence when a shy look and a secretly expressed longing make our souls erupt under the delicate and tender wrap of our bodies, an age when the soul and the body are still bound into one, an age when excitement does not know it will someday turn into indifference or to a simple urge to satisfy bodily needs, and that when one manages to infuse oneself with passion there is neither the capability nor the desire to turn that moment of pleasure into a brief eternity.
Гоце Смилевски (Freud's Sister)
Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.
Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence)
and at one point they had heard what had sounded mighty like a musket shot which, although not very near, might or might not have been fired in their direction but, they decided, probably had been. Harry clung to this adventure, such as it was, all the more tenaciously when he found that because of his sprained wrist he had missed an adventure at Captainganj. Those of his peers who had escaped with life and limb from the Captainganj parade ground did not seem to be thinking of it as an adventure, those who had managed to escape unhurt were now looking tired and shocked. And they seemed to be having trouble telling Harry what it had been like. Each of them simply had two or three terrible scenes printed on his mind: an Englishwoman trying to say something to him with her throat cut, or a comrade spinning down into a whirl-pool of hacking sepoys, something of that sort. To make things worse, one kept finding oneself about to say something to a friend who was not there to hear it any more. It was hard to make any sense out of what had happened, and after a while they gave up trying. Of the score of subalterns who had managed to escape, the majority had never seen a dead person before . . . a dead English person, anyway . . . one occasionally bumped into a dead native here and there but that was not quite the same. Strangely enough, they listened quite enviously to Harry talking about the musket shot which had “almost definitely” been fired at himself and Fleury. They wished they had had an adventure too, instead of their involuntary glimpse of the abattoir. It
J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur)
So, instead of venting hurt pride, he preferred to speak in a way that would be of some profit for me. “There is no such thing,” he said, “as a man, however clever he may be, who has never at some time in his youth uttered words, or even led a life, that he would not prefer to see expunged from memory. He should not find this absolutely a matter for regret, as he cannot be sure he would ever have become as wise as he is, if indeed getting wisdom is a possibility for any of us, had he not traversed all the silly or detestable incarnations that are bound to precede that final one. I know there are young men, sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose tutors, since their earliest high-school years, have taught them every nobility of soul and excellent precept of morality. The lives of such men may contain nothing they would wish to abolish; they may be happy to endorse every word they have ever uttered. But they are the poor in spirit, the effete descendants of doctrinarians, whose only wisdoms are negative and sterile. Wisdom cannot be inherited—one must discover it for oneself, but only after following a course that no one can follow in our stead; no one can spare us that experience, for wisdom is only a point of view on things. The lives of men you admire, attitudes you think are noble, haven’t been laid down by their fathers or their tutors—they were preceded by very different beginnings, and were influenced by whatever surrounded them, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Each of them is the outcome of a struggle, each of them is a victory. I can understand that the image of what we were in an earlier time might be unrecognizable and always irksome to behold. It should not be rejected for all that, as it is testimony to the fact that we have lived, that, in accordance with the laws of life and the spirit, we have managed to derive, from the common constituents of life, from the life of the studio and artists’ cliques, if we’re talking of painters, something that surpasses them.”91
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
We must become what we wish to teach. As an aside to parents, teachers, psychotherapists, and managers who may be reading this book to gain insight on how to support the self-esteem of others, I want to say that the place to begin is still with oneself. If one does not understand how the dynamics of self-esteem work internally—if one does not know by direct experience what lowers or raises one’s own self-esteem—one will not have that intimate understanding of the subject necessary to make an optimal contribution to others. Also, the unresolved issues within oneself set the limits of one’s effectiveness in helping others. It may be tempting, but it is self-deceiving to believe that what one says can communicate more powerfully than what one manifests in one’s person. We must become what we wish to teach. There is a story I like to tell psychotherapy students. In India, when a family encounters a problem, they are not likely to consult a psychotherapist (hardly any are available); they consult the local guru. In one village there was a wise man who had helped this family more than once. One day the father and mother came to him, bringing their nine-year-old son, and the father said, “Master, our son is a wonderful boy and we love him very much. But he has a terrible problem, a weakness for sweets that is ruining his teeth and health. We have reasoned with him, argued with him, pleaded with him, chastised him—nothing works. He goes on consuming ungodly quantities of sweets. Can you help us?” To the father’s surprise, the guru answered, “Go away and come back in two weeks.” One does not argue with a guru, so the family obeyed. Two weeks later they faced him again, and the guru said, “Good. Now we can proceed.” The father asked, “Won’t you tell us, please, why you sent us away for two weeks. You have never done that before.” And the guru answered, “I needed the two weeks because I, too, have had a lifelong weakness for sweets. Until I had confronted and resolved that issue within myself, I was not ready to deal with your son.” Not all psychotherapists like this story.
Nathaniel Branden (Six Pillars of Self-Esteem)
I don’t like to think too much about you, in my head, that only makes a mess of us both. But of course what I live for now is for you and me to live together. I’m frightened, really...I feel my inside turn to water sometimes, and there you are, going to have a child by me. But never mind. All the bad times that ever have been, haven’t been able to blow the crocus out: not even the love of women. So they won’t be able to blow out my wanting you, nor the little glow there is between you and me. We’ll be together next year. And though I’m frightened, I believe in your being with me. A man has to fend and fettle for the best, and then trust in something beyond himself. You can’t insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it. So I believe in the little flame between us. For me now, it’s the only thing in the world. I’ve got no friends, not inward friends. Only you. And now the little flame is all I care about in my life.. It’s my Pentecost, the forked flame between me and you... Me and God is a bit uppish, somehow. But the little forked flame between me and you: there you are! That’s what I abide by, and will abide by... “That’s why I don’t like to start thinking about you actually. It only tortures me, and does you no good. I don’t want you to be away from me. But if I start fretting it wastes something. Patience, always patience. This is my fortieth winter. And I can’t help all the winters that have been. But this winter I’ll stick to my little pentecost flame, and have some peace. And I won’t let the breath of people blow it out. I believe in a higher mystery, that doesn’t let even the crocus be blown out. And if you’re in Scotland and I’m in the Midlands, and I can’t put my arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I’ve got something of you. My soul softly flaps in the little pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it’s a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause. “So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow, brilliant. But not now, not yet! Now is the time to be chaste, it is so good to be chaste, like a river of cool water in my soul. I love the chastity now that it flows between us. It is like fresh water and rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander! What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and the little flame alight, impotent and unable to be chaste in the cool between-whiles, as by a river. “Well, so many words, because I can’t touch you. If I could sleep with my arms round you, the ink could stay in the bottle. We could be chaste together just as we can fuck together. But we have to be separate for a while, and I suppose it is really the wiser way. If only one were sure. “Never mind, never mind, we won’t get worked up. We really trust in the little flame, in the unnamed god that shields it from being blown out. There’s so much of you here with me, really, that it’s a pity you aren’t all here. “Never mind about Sir Clifford. If you don’t hear anything from him, never mind. He can’t really do anything to you. Wait, he will want to get rid of you at last, to cast you out. And if he doesn’t, we’ll manage to keep clear of him. But he will. In the end he will want to spew you out as the abominable thing. “Now I can’t even leave off writing to you. “But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says good night to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart.
D.H. Lawrence
Sincerity” is detrimental to one’s job, until the rules of salesmanship and business become a “genuine” aspect of oneself. —C. Wright Mills
Arlie Russell Hochschild (The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling)
Whatever you may say, genuine emotions are aroused by people. The first smile of a newborn, love confession, hang-loose chatting with friends, weekly meetings with dears, and a lot more other things initiated by two or several individuals trigger the feeling of happiness. There are more specific emotions native to females and males. Whereas the first ones are pleased at hearing sweet words. We live and work in the tradition of love and not hatred. As for us, it is the unconditional acceptance of all people, the scale of our love for them. Let's treat every person as a person in his uniqueness at eye level. Love is one of the strongest feelings one can ever have. It comes over you all of a sudden and totally absorbs before you manage to realize the fact. Emotions which arise with the feeling require some way of expression. Furtive glances, sweet words, touching, and romantic dates are a usual manifestation of affection. Still, there is a more inventive way to expose oneself – dedicating a special beautiful love quote to your beloved.
Oscar Auliq-Ice
It is not at all clear to the ascriptive scientist that every individual is a self. a self is something to be achieved by doing the hard and humbling work of self-experimentation, not something that one possesses solely by virtue of being biologically human. The “self-management” tools and techniques sup- plied by the psychological sciences of self-regulation and self-control become, within ascriptive science, personal technologies for the targeted transforma- tion of some counterproductive behavior. epistemic rationality is more than something to talk about in the arid confines of academic classrooms; it is a blueprint for a structured and more productive series of conversations with oneself.
Mihnea C. Moldoveanu (Inside Man: The Discipline of Modeling Human Ways of Being)
Authenticity reduces stress and produces faith in oneself and in the potential to grow and learn.
Arthur P. Ciaramicoli (The Stress Solution: Using Empathy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Reduce Anxiety and Develop Resilience)
One really has to ask oneself how Socrates managed to maneuver himself into such conjugal misery, and this question can be posed in several variations. If Xantippe really was from the start the kind of woman the legend says she was, we would show very little understanding for our great philosopher because then it was his own carelessness that led him to choose precisely her and no other woman. Or is he supposed to have thought, ironic as he was, that a surly woman is just what a thinker needs? If, from the beginning, he recognized her "true nature" and put up with it, then this indicates deplorable marital behavior on his part because he thus unreasonably expected a women to spend her whole life with a man who obviously at best endured her but did not appreciate her. Conversely, if Xantippe had become as she is described only during her marriage to Socrates, then the philosopher would really come into a questionable light because then indisputably he himself must have caused his wife's vexation without having interested himself in it. No matter how the story is turned, Xantippe's moods fall back on Socrates. This is a genuine philosophical problem: How did the thinker and questioner manage not to solve the puzzle of Xantippe's bad temper? This great midwife of truth was obviously unable to let his wife's rage express itself or to help her find a language in which she would have been able to express the grounds and justifications for her behavior. The failure of a philosopher often consists not in false answers but in neglecting to pose the right questions —and in denying some experiences the right to become "problems." His experiences with Xantippe must have been of this kind—a misery that is not given the dignity of obtruding into the male problem-monopoly. Philosphers fail when they endure as a naturally given evil that for which they are to blame; indeed, their capacity for "wisely" enduring it is itself an intellectual scandal, a misuse of wisdom in favor of blindness. With Socrates, it seems, this misuse immediately avenged itself. When a thinker cannot refrain from equating humanity with masculinity, reality will strike back in the philosopher's marital hell. The stories about this thus have, I think, also a kynical meaning. They reveal the real reason for philosophicalclerical celibacy in our civilization. A definite dominating kind of idealism, philosophy, and grand theory becomes possible only when a certain "other kind" of experience is systematically avoided
Anonymous
If you are not surprising yourself, you are not growing.
Shweta Gour
It would take expert navigators, like economists, to steer the world through the purgatory of capitalism and arrive at a future not just of leisure but also of morality. To ensure that human beings would be able to seize their opportunity for an ethical society, one devoted to good ends and rid of foul means, society would have to concern itself with both quality and quantity of population. As long as there was un- satisfied need, Keynes said in 1928, it would “remain reasonable to be economically purposive for others after it has ceased to be reasonable for oneself.” Here was the objective of Keynes’s idiosyncratic eugenics, one that connected the ethics of obligation to plans for social and economic management. Only when the condition of wantlessness “has become so general that the nature of one’s duty to one’s neighbour is changed” would progress truly have been made
David Roth Singerman
We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it. After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs. But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job. And yet they are still likely to face another 20 if not 25 years of work. That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career. There are three ways to develop a second career. The first is actually to start one. [...] The second way to prepare for the second half of your life is to develop a parallel career. [...] Finally, there are the social entrepreneurs. [...] There is one prerequisite for managing the second half of your life: You must begin doing so long before you enter it.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
I saw no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
It is our emptiness and lowliness that God needs and not our plenitude. These are a few of the ways we can practice humility: Speak as little as possible of oneself. Mind one's own business. Avoid curiosity. Do not want to manage other people's affairs. Accept contradiction and correction cheerfully. Pass over the mistakes of others. Accept blame when innocent. Yield to the will of others. Accept insults and injuries. Accept being slighted, forgotten, and disliked. Be kind and gentle even under provocation. Do not seek to be specially loved and admired. Never stand on one's dignity. Yield in discussion even when one is right. Choose always the hardest.
Mother Teresa (The Love of Christ (English and French Edition))
to govern oneself, to govern and manage an institution or in business, to govern a city or country – you need to be able to study, understand, reflect on, anticipate, and adjust to second-order consequences, third-order consequences, and so on.   If I were forced to pick just one attribute that would make someone “gold souled,” it would be simply that – the ability to see all the cascading consequences of immediate actions.
Sebastian Marshall (PROGRESSION)
Helping others is an effective way of training oneself.
Rajen Jani (Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories)
It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it—‘In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?’” (
Lyssa Adkins (Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition)
No doubt the almighty makes it pour everywhere, but collecting the rainwater in the bucket is to be done only by oneself!
G.S. Krishnan (MYTHOLOGY LESSONS FOR MANAGERS: 100 Inspiring Stories of Corporate Functions)
It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist — surely any serious Marxist — should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism. As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the ‘socialist’ dungeon.
Noam Chomsky
As we stray from the path, our inner selves try to lead us back in the right direction. By throwing negative emotions and obstacles in our way, our inner self, or gut feelings tries to deter us when we are making bad
Jane Alerson (Emotional Intelligence: Master Your Emotions To Improve Self Control, Self Awareness & Mind Power. Effectively Managing Oneself & Managing People Will Allow You To Achieve More. (Self Help Book 1))
As we stray from the path, our inner selves try to lead us back in the right direction. By throwing negative emotions and obstacles in our way, our inner self, or gut feelings tries to deter us when we are making bad decisions, and lead us back to the path of least resistance.
Jane Alerson (Emotional Intelligence: Master Your Emotions To Improve Self Control, Self Awareness & Mind Power. Effectively Managing Oneself & Managing People Will Allow You To Achieve More. (Self Help Book 1))
One can only be an exceptional negotiator, and a great person, by both listening and speaking clearly and empathetically; by treating counterparts—and oneself—with dignity and respect; and most of all by being honest about what one wants and what one can—and cannot—do. Every negotiation, every conversation, every moment of life, is a series of small conflicts that, managed well, can rise to creative beauty. Embrace them.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
The most effective way to combat stress and anxiety is to return home to this moment; to tune in to what you can control. Being present develops your spiritual muscles. When we are aligned with the present, we are grateful, we are at peace, we find acceptance with ourselves exactly how we are.
Hania Khuri-Trapper (Rest & Return: Weekly Reminders to Pause, Reflect, and Just Be)
Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
It is incumbent on the people who work with them to observe them, to find out how they work, and to adapt themselves to what makes their bosses most effective. This, in fact, is the secret of “managing” the boss.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
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This technique now finds application in the field of therapeutics. For example, if one steadily holds the image of oneself as being healthy and well, it favourably affects the physical processes and mental activities in the direction of wellness. Here is a testimony of its effectiveness from one of the most eminent yogis of modern times: Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the first swamis to come to the US from India, used this technique to reduce his weight. He mentions in his famous book, Autobiography of a Yogi, that when he began his spiritual charitable work in America, he realised he was overweight and needed to lose a few pounds. He held a slimmer image of himself in his mind, along with the thought that he wished to reduce his weight, and soon the body responded by becoming trimmer.
Swami Mukundananda (The Science of Mind Management)
Today, often when someone dies, we tend to look for the analogue to the fatal illness in their behavior: lung cancer results from smoking, heart disease from a lack of exercise, colon cancer from not eating enough fiber, etc. By linking death to a specific behavior, we deontologize it; we make it seem as if death is only one possibility for life, a possibility that we ourselves—or someone, someday—might manage to escape. The same thinking applies to aging as well: all the formulas for the conquest of aging (skin creme, the baldness pill, plastic surgery, low fat diets) implicitly view aging itself as just one option among many. When we view death as a “case” or an “option,” we reject its necessity as a limit. Death no longer indicates a moment of transcendence that we must encounter. According to Baudrillard, “We are dealing with an attempt to construct an entirely positive world, a perfect world, expurgated of every illusion, of every sort of evil and negativity, exempt from death itself.” In the society of enjoyment, death becomes an increasingly horrific—and at the same time, an increasingly hidden—event. Not only does death imply the cessation of one’s being, but it also indicates a failure of enjoyment. Death is above all a limit to one’s enjoyment: to accept one’s mortality means simultaneously to accept a limit on enjoyment. This is why it is not at all coincidental that with the turn from the prohibition of enjoyment to the command to enjoy we would see an increase in efforts to eliminate the necessity of death. Today, human cell researchers are working toward the day when death will exist only as an “accident,” through the modification of the way in which cells regulate their division and creating cells that can divide limitlessly. As Gregg Easterbrook points out, the introduction of such cells into the human body would not create eternal life, but it would make death something no longer necessary: “Therapeutic use of ‘immortal’ cells would not confer unending life (even people who don’t age could die in accidents, by violence and so on) but might dramatically extend the life-span.” The point isn’t that death would be entirely eliminated, but that we might eliminate its necessary status as a barrier to or a limit on enjoyment. This potential elimination of death as a necessary limit to enjoyment follows directly from the logic of the society of enjoyment. As long as death remains necessary, it stands, as Heidegger recognizes, as a fundamental barrier to the proliferation of enjoyment. If subjects know that they must die, they also know that they lack—and lack becomes intolerable in face of a command to enjoy oneself. But without the idea of a necessary death, every experience of lack loses the quality of necessity. Subjects view lack not as something to be endured for the sake of a future enjoyment, but as an intolerable burden. In the society of enjoyment, subjects refuse to tolerate lack precisely because lack, like death, has now lost its veneer of necessity.
Todd McGowan (The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment (Psychoanalysis and Culture))
The gradual deheroization of oneself is the true labor one works at beneath the apparent labor, life is a secret mission. So secret is the true life that not even to me, who am dying of it, can the password be entrusted, I die without knowing wherefrom. And the secret is such that, only if the mission manages to be accomplished shall I, in a flash, perceive that I was born in charge of it — every life is a secret mission.
Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.)
A person’s way of performing can be slightly modified, but it is unlikely to be completely changed—and certainly not easily. Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perform. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.
Peter F. Drucker (Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics))
To expend oneself, to bestir oneself for an impenetrable object is pure religion. To make the other into an insoluble riddle on which my life depends is to consecrate the other as a God; I shall never manage to solve the question the other asks me, the lover is not Oedipus. Then all that is left of me is to reverse my ignorance into truth. It is not true that the more you love the better you understand; all that the action of love obtains from me is merely this wisdom: that the other is not to be known.
Roland Barthes
To often a leader defuses the situation by: 1. Determining the right answer primarily through logic reason and efficiency 2. Cutting off discussion and taking things off-line when people get too emotional 3. Managing strong personalities through one on one conversations 4. Listening to the loudest or the favorite voice the one who starts are usually the same as the leaders 5. Declaring oneself as the leader in forcing a direction
Crismarie Campbell (The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage)
Triangles are ubiquitous and automatic in emotional systems. They are considered, in Bowen family systems theory, to be the molecule, or basic building block of any system of people—be it the family, an organization, or society itself. The goal is not how to get out of them, however, but rather how to manage oneself in and through them.
Roberta M. Gilbert (Extraordinary Relationships)
Who can argue with perception? One can examine only reasoning. A superior intellect is perceptive. It sees what is right immediately. A lesser one will need to work it out. A mother may know what is right for the child, the child may need to learn and apply himself to find the same truth. In the first, no effort is necessary. But, in reasoning, one needs to apply oneself.
Janki Santoke (How Do You Know What You Know?: Manage Thoughts, Manage Life)
In the flexible workplace the manager increasingly comes to take the position of the customer who must be satisfied, and to whom one has to continuously sell oneself.
Ivor Southwood (Non Stop Inertia)