Shattered Confidence Quotes

You are so confident," he says to me. "You're stubborn and resilient. So brave. So strong. So inhumanly beautiful. You could conquer the world.

I hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet i hear one insult and all confidence shatters - focusing on the negative

Let us express our confidence lavishly. In the construction of human relationships, trust can unlock bolted hearts and evaporate groundless suspicions. It has the power to uplift us and detach us from material calculations. Except, if reliance shows nasty shatters, we may put it on hold for a while or, furthermore, deny it. ("'My radio ")

Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.

As parents, guardians, teachers and school administrators, we should be giving our children better days, we are the outcome of their future, we are the pieces of the puzzle – pieces that restore their shattered confidence.

Arrogance is false confidence. It is born from insecurity.

Even the wealthiest professional woman can be "brought down" by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and is consistently lied to. To the degree that she trusts her male companion, lying and other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem.

Things are changing, but this time I'm not afraid. This time I know who I am. This time I've made the right choice and fighting for the right team. I feel safe. Confident

To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

Time again for the waltz of smiles. Amazing how you sometimes make resolutions, tell yourself everything will be a certain way from now on, and then all it takes is a tiny movement of the lips to shatter your confidence in a certainty that seemed eternal.

Arrogance is false confidence. It is born from insecurity. Haider pretends to be unafraid. He pretends to be crueler than he is. He lies easily. Than makes him unpredictable and, in som ways, a more dangerous opponent. But the majority of the time his actions are inspired by fear. And that makes him weak.

The complete truth, McKenzie, is I’d do anything for you, but you ask for nothing. You won’t confide in me. You won’t rely on me. You’re so preoccupied trying to decide if you can trust your feelings that you won’t consider giving in to them.

The most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections. And this is especially true for children. Being harmed by the people who are supposed to love you, being abandoned by them, being robbed of the one-on-one relationships that allow you to feel safe and valued and to become humane—these are profoundly destructive experiences. Because humans are inescapably social beings, the worst catastrophes that can befall us inevitably involve relational loss. As a result, recovery from trauma and neglect is also all about relationships—rebuilding trust, regaining confidence, returning to a sense of security and reconnecting to love. Of course, medications can help relieve symptoms and talking to a therapist can be incredibly useful. But healing and recovery are impossible—even with the best medications and therapy in the world—without lasting, caring connections to others.

Here's to everyone who has survived something devastating-- something that shattered your self-confidence and distorted your world in one blow. Whether you were fierce in the face of it or fell to pieces or shoved it out of sight for years-- I don't care how you got here. Every day you are stronger. Every day you are healing. Every day that you survive, you are telling that event, that person, that illness, that memory: YOU DO NOT DEFINE ME. Keep on. -- Acknowledgements

He didn’t complete me with a part of himself; he just put me back together with all my own pieces. I shattered and he crawled around on the floor handing me my confidence, my hope, my dreams, my voice, my future. He mended me then kissed my scars and looked at me like I was nothing short of a timeless masterpiece.

But the problem was, Sacks wasn’t comparing herself to all the students in the world taking Organic Chemistry. She was comparing herself to her fellow students at Brown. She was a Little Fish in one of the deepest and most competitive ponds in the country—and the experience of comparing herself to all the other brilliant fish shattered her confidence. It made her feel stupid, even

Love is the reflection of a broken heart in a shattered mirror...

Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. […] Consider a word that refers to a thing- “ umbrella”, for example. […] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. […] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? […] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing.

i hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet i hear one insult and all confidence shatters - focusing on the negative

How is it fair that the respectful children always get in trouble and the bullies get away with shattering lives? You all need to put a stop to bullying instead of condoning it.

Cynicism creates a numbness toward life. Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaging, loving, and hoping. ... To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit. ... Cynicism begins, oddly enough, with too much of the wrong kind of faith, with naive optimism or foolish confidence. At first glance, genuine faith and naive optimism appear identical since both foster confidence and hope.But the similarity is only surface deep.Genuine faith comes from knowing my heavenly Father loves, enjoys, and cares for me. Naive optimism is groundless. It is childlike trust without the loving Father. ... Optimism in the goodness of people collapses when it confronts the dark side of life. ... Shattered optimism sets us up for the fall into defeated weariness and, eventually, cynicism. You'd think it would just leave us less optimistic, but we humans don't do neutral well. We go from seeing the bright side of everything to seeing the dark side of everything. We feel betrayed by life. ... The movement from naive optimism to cynicism is the new American journey. In naive optimism we don't need to pray because everything is under control. In cynicism we can't pray because everything out of control, little is possible. With the Good Shepherd no longer leading us through the valley of the shadow of death, we need something to maintain our sanity. Cynicism's ironic stance is a weak attempt to maintain a lighthearted equilibrium in a world gone mad. ... Without the Good Shepherd, we are alone in a meaningless story. Weariness and fear leave us feeling overwhelmed, unable to move. Cynicism leaves us doubting, unable to dream. The combination shuts down our hearts, and we just show up for life, going through the motions.

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

I PAINT MY FACE. By Omrane Khuder. Mirror, distorted; I sit, paint my Face, Toxic white Make-up buries my Scars, My Eyes tell lies; Dumbfounded Confidence hides the Disgrace. Place the tragic Vehicle called My Life in to Drive, Sad pathetic Clown; Late for the suppression show, Despair another time; Let the chuckles and defeat derive. I paint my Heart; I hide my True. I paint my Soul; I keep it from You. I paint, I cannot accept; To ignore you the way you ignore Me? I paint my scarred and pitiful Face; No Will left to restore Me. I paint my Face; it’s all I know to do. My painted Face shatters the Mirror, yet still all I see is You.

We believe that failure of any kind should be avoided instead of embraced, because it shatters our confidence. We’re making the same mistakes, setting ourselves up for a confidence based on the external, not internal.

For work success to lead to confidence, the job has to be challenging and it must require effort. It has to be done without too much help. And it cannot go well every single day. A long run of easy successes creates a sort of fragile confidence, the kind that is shattered when the first failure comes along. A more resilient confidence comes from succeeding—and from surviving some failures.

Nothing saves the day so much as a good word. And nothing has been misused as often. There is power in a word, whether we read it, speak it or hear it. And we command and are commanded by the word. We scatter, we call forth, and we comfort. Words are tools, weapons, both good and bad medicine-but very beautiful when used lovingly. The word, or ka ne tsv in Cherokee, is power to help heal, or make sick people sicker by negative talk around them. The word gives confidence when it builds rather than destroys. Relationships have been shattered beyond repair by a run-away mouth. Prosperity has been dissolved by talking lack. Until we listen to our own voices and how we talk, we would never guess how we use our words.

If self-confidence is so important, why would we ever want to approach someone in a manner that might disrupt or shatter it?

Arrogance is false confidence,” he says. “It is born from insecurity.

Fathers of the fatherless children, eliminating your presence or being a “revolving door,” you are pulling your children under to the point that their confidence is shattered. Your children are unsure where they stand and feel out of place with the many different experiences they battle constantly. Their private thoughts are signs of not feeling wanted, loved, or accepted.

How is the fair that the respectful children always get in trouble, but the bullies always get away with shattering lives. I am tired of you all tolerating bullying at your school! You all should be ashamed of yourselves! You all need to put a stop to bullying instead of condoning it. Take the wool off of your eyes and see the truth for what it is--and it is the bullying; known as the Silent Killer!

You got very drunk that night. You were a mess and a public embarrassment. Your mother said that on a day you should have been dancing on clouds, you cried yourself to sleep. This moment would forever shatter your confidence. Every victory thereafter would be glazed with rejection. No accomplishment would ever be real or enough, every achievement forever fraught with a dreaded sense of betrayal and disappointment

It was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone’s will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt—as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers.

i hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet i hear one insult and all confidence shatters -focusing on the negative

i hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet i hear one insult and all confidence shatters - focusing on the negative

Arrogance is false confidence. It is born from insecurity

i hear a thousand kind words about me and it makes no difference yet i hear one insult and all confidence shatters

before kids, my confidence could not be dented. Now it’s shattered on a daily basis. I don’t know what I am doing.

On a grim and dismal day that shattered my last ounce of confidence, I broke down and whimpered, “I’m awful and hideous and incompetent and boring and utterly useless.” And then you grinned at me and said, “That’s okay.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.

But the problem was, Sacks wasn’t comparing herself to all the students in the world taking Organic Chemistry. She was comparing herself to her fellow students at Brown. She was a Little Fish in one of the deepest and most competitive ponds in the country—and the experience of comparing herself to all the other brilliant fish shattered her confidence. It made her feel stupid, even though she isn’t stupid at all. “Wow, other people are mastering this, even people who were as clueless as I was in the beginning, and I just can’t seem to learn to think in this manner.

Fixed mindset people need approval and external validation as a means of reinforcing their internal sense of their fixed traits. Failure is therefore to be feared because it ‘reveals’ the underlying fixed truth of who they are and so could shatter that person’s identity and sense of value.

Most of the time, we have to be strong, we must not show our fragility. We’ve known that since the schoolyard. There is always a fragile bit of us, but we keep it very hidden. Yet Venetian glass doesn’t apologise for its weakness. It admits its delicacy; it is confident enough to demand careful treatment; it makes the world understand it could easily be damaged. It’s not fragile because of a deficiency, or by mistake. It's not as if its maker was trying to make it tough and hardy and then - stupidly - ended up with something a child could snap, or that would be shattered by clumsy mishandling. It is fragile and easily harmed as the consequence of its search for transparency and refinement and its desire to welcome sunlight and candle light into its depths. Glass can achieve wonderful effects but the necessary price is fragility. Some good things things have to be delicate - the dish says: ‘I am delightful, but if you knock me about I’ll break, and that’s not my fault.’ It is the duty of civilisation to allow the more delicate forms of human activity to thrive; to create environments where it is OK to be fragile. And we know, really, that it is not glass which most needs this care, it is ourselves. It’s obvious the glass could easily be smashed, so it makes you use your fingers tenderly; you have to be careful how you grasp the stem. It teaches us that moderation is admirable, and elegant, not just a tedious demand. It tells us that being careful is glamorous and exciting - even fashionable. It is a moral tale about gentleness, told by means of a drinking vessel. This is training for the more important moments in life when moderation will make a real difference to other people. Being mature - and civilised - means being aware of the effect of one’s strength on others.

Does man not face life with a greater assurance is he believes that a benevolent providence foresees the future? And yet he must at the same time be confident that his will is free, otherwise moral support is meaningless altogether. Doctrines in themselves are not important to me, but their consequences are. For example, I urge upon men that they regard themselves as embodiments of the divine essence. If I convince them, their days are endowed with a sense of abiding significance and unturning glory. Then not all the misfortunes and degradations to which they may be subjected can take from them their feelings of oneness with angels and stars. And as for our people, persecuted and dispersed, they live under the shadow of death, cherishing a dream that is recurrently shattered by the caprice of tyrants and then dreamed again half in despair. What can enable such a people to persist except a conviction of a special relationship to God?

Uncertain times brought out the best and worst in people. This was not the first time she'd behaved boldly. That was a positive aspect of being a deaf person in a hearing world - you had to have confidence, or at least, act in a fashion that led others to believe you were courageous. And she'd perfected her acting abilities a long time ago for the sake of survival

I don't think confidence and self-worth is something you magically attain. And you don't simply hold on to it forever like a tangible object. It's fluid. You can be confident in every aspect except one. Or something could happen and all your confidence can be shattered in an instant. Like the Instagram photo. It doesn't mean you don't inherently love yourself to the core.

Set them on fire.' Her eyes go wide. 'In your mind,' I say, attempting a smile. 'Let them fuel the fire that keeps you striving.' I reach out, touch my fingers to her cheek. 'Idiots are highly flammable, love. Let them all burn in hell.' She closes her eyes. Turns her face into my hand. And I pull her in, press my forehead to hers. 'Those who do not understand you,' I say softly, 'will always doubt you.

When I was cheated by my uncle I felt very strongly the unreliableness of men. I learned to judge others harshly, but of my own integrity I knew I could be certain. I thought that in the midst of a corrupt world I had managed to remain virtuous. [When I caused K to commit suicide,] however, my self-confidence was shattered. With a shock, I realized that I was just as human as my uncle. I became as disgusted

When I think how in the past couple of years your confidence in your knowledge of people has been shattered, how you have obtained in place of peace of mind only uncertainty, and in place of happiness a new, painful knowledge, how you ended at the place where you thought you would begin, and began at the place you had ended ... how you have been able to secure your present, peaceful uncertainty by sacrificing everything, my nature is such that I feel less sympathy than respect.

Holmes," I said, reaching up to touch her hands, to fold them in mine. "Do you forgive me?" "You sound like you're making some kind of decision," I said, because she was scaring me a little. "Do you?" I paused, thinking. Not long ago, I'd wanted everything from her. For her to be my confidant, my general. My best and only friend. I wanted her to be the other half of me, like we together made a coin. She the king's head to my tails. I loved her like you would the person you'd always wanted to be, and in return I would have followed her anywhere, excused any action, fought to keep her hoisted high on her throne. When that myth I'd made of her shattered, I didn't know what to do. This last year, any thought I had of her felt wrong. Skewed. How could I understand what had happened, when I had put up so many lenses between my experience of her and the girl herself? Holmes wasn't a myth, or a king. She was a person. And to have a relationship with a person, you had to treat them like one. "Can I forgive you a little now?" I asked. "And then a little more tomorrow, and the next day? If there is a next day?" "Yes," she said, quickly, like it was more than she had asked for. Like I might take it back. "Provided you don't blow anything up, of course." "Yes." "Or try to look in my ears again while I'm sleeping -" "Yes," she said, laughing. That look on her face, always, like she was surprised to be laughing, like it was something involuntary and slightly shameful, like a sneeze.

The inhabitants, in their darkened rooms, were possessed by that terror which follows in the wake of cataclysms, of deadly upheavals of the earth, against which all human skill and strength are vain. For the same thing happens whenever the established order of things is upset, when security no longer exists, when all those rights usually protected by the law of man or of Nature are at the mercy of unreasoning, savage force. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under falling roofs; the flood let loose, and engulfing in its swirling depths the corpses of drowned peasants, along with dead oxen and beams torn from shattered houses; or the army, covered with glory, murdering those who defend themselves, making prisoners of the rest, pillaging in the name of the Sword, and giving thanks to God to the thunder of cannon—all these are appalling scourges, which destroy all belief in eternal justice, all that confidence we have been taught to feel in the protection of Heaven and the reason of man.

In a private moment on the campaign trail, just a few days before the election, Hillary grew reflective about her relationship with the American public. “I know I engender bad reactions from people, and I always have,” she confided in an aide who was traveling with her on a swing through several battleground states. “There are some people in whom I bring out the worst. I know that about myself, and I don’t know why that is. But it is.” “That’s going to be one of the main problems you’re going to face as president,” the aide replied

I only wanted to suggest to you that self-confidence is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worth while or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son.

herself to Moore. “I don’t understand what’s happening with the country. I can’t get my arms around it,” Hillary confided. Moore just listened. “How do I get answers to this?” Hillary asked. It was a quandary that would plague her throughout the campaign. After nearly a year on the campaign trail, and hundreds of stops at diners, coffee shops, and high school gymnasiums and just as many roundtables with young professionals and millworkers, Hillary still couldn’t figure out why Americans were so angry or how she could bring the country together. She

Since his back was to her front Chloe had to practically plaster herself against his wide back in order to unbutton his crisp dress shirt, but somehow she didn’t mind. From his low, masculine groan that her action had elicited, she assumed Mark didn’t mind either. His spicy, dangerous scent filled her head as she spread the shirt to find a smooth, muscular chest leading down to powerfully sculpted abs. She wondered what line of work Mark was in. Whatever it was, he certainly kept himself in shape. “Are you enjoying yourself, Mistress?” His smart-ass tone threw her, breaking her concentration on his muscled chest. “I’ll ask the questions,” Chloe snapped, deciding abruptly that it was time to move on. She still felt a definite lack of control in this situation and it made her nervous, shattering the fragile self-confidence she’d managed to build. But she couldn’t stop searching him now or he’d be the winner of this little confrontation. She let her hands slide lower, past the waistband of his pants to the bulging crotch. Oh my God, is he for real? She hadn’t been with very many men—okay, two. She’d only been with two other men. But Mark more than measured up to any other guy in her experience. In fact, she could barely believe what she was feeling was real. It was a damn good thing rule number two was “never have sex with the client”. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to handle what Mark was packing. “Uh, Mistress, that’s all me, not a toy.” Mark’s deep voice still held a hint of amusement though it was sounding rather strained now. “And you might want to think of it less as a ‘toy’ than a loaded gun. One that’s going to go off if you’re not careful.

The admiral was famously unflappable, but found the attack on Pearl Harbor a shattering experience. Spruance revealed this only to his wife and daughter, then waited anxiously for Admiral Chester Nimitz to take over as CincPac—Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet. After the obscenity at Pearl, America’s Pacific Fleet leadership was demoralized. Spruance sensed that Nimitz would inject some sorely needed fighting spirit, and he was right. Nimitz proved bold, aggressive, confident. Energized, the Pacific fleet began to sortie out and fight back. Spruance was elated.

The earthquake crushing a whole nation under falling roofs; the flood let loose, and engulfing in its swirling depths the corpses of drowned peasants, along with dead oxen and beams torn from shattered houses; or the army, covered with glory, murdering those who defend themselves, making prisoners of the rest, pillaging in the name of the Sword, and giving thanks to God to the thunder of cannon—all these are appalling scourges, which destroy all belief in eternal justice, all that confidence we have been taught to feel in the protection of Heaven and the reason of man.

It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through at random. I left them off at the point where I was just going to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively speaking) did I write the concluding lines!—though it may be not so much with a light heart, as with a measure of self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At that time had I any doubts of myself? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a half have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest beggar. But what is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined myself—that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims—if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for me, has become changed. Yet, had things befallen otherwise, these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and congratulations. Yes, they would never have turned from me as they are doing now! A fig for all of them! What am I? I am zero—nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from the dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man in myself, if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered.

Christopher . . . are these from you?” she asked at lunch, careful to make her tone light as she placed the two picture-poems on the table. Christopher’s eyes fell to them, and he smiled. “Yes.” He didn’t ask if she liked them, and he didn’t seem embarrassed. Sarah was flustered, and somewhat surprised by Christopher’s easy confidence. Even so, her natural suspicion surfaced. “Why?” “Because,” he answered seriously, “you make a good subject. Your hair, for one, is like a shimmering waterfall. It’s so fair that it catches the light. It makes you seem like you have a halo about you. And your eyes—they’re such a pure color, not washed out at all, deep as the ocean. And your expression . . . intense and yet somehow detached, as if you see more of the world than the rest of us.” Flustered, she could think of no way to respond. Did he just say this stuff from the top of his head? Only her strict Vida control kept her from blushing. Meanwhile Nissa entered the cafeteria. She started to sit, then glanced from the pictures, to Christopher, to Sarah. “Should I go somewhere else?” Christopher nodded to a chair, answering easily, “Sit down. We aren’t exchanging dark secrets—yet.” Nissa flashed a teasing look to her brother as she took a seat. “As his sister, I feel the need to inform you, Sarah, that Christopher has been talking about you incessantly.” Christopher smiled, unembarrassed. “I suppose I might have been.’ “Especially your eyes—he never shuts up about your eyes,” Nissa confided, and this time Christopher shrugged. “They’re beautiful,” he said casually. “Beauty should be looked at, not ignored. I try to capture it on paper, but that’s really impossible with eyes, because they have a life no still portrait can capture.” Sarah’s voice was tied up so tightly she thought she might be able to speak again sometime next year. No one had ever talked about her—or to her—with such admiration.

Naturalization, on the other hand, also proved to be a failure. The whole naturalization system of European countries fell apart when it was confronted with stateless people, and this for the same reasons that the right of asylum had been set aside. Essentially naturalization was an appendage to the nation-state's legislation that reckoned only with "nationals," people born in its territory and citizens by birth. Naturalization was needed in exceptional cases, for single individuals whom circumstances might have driven into a foreign territory. The whole process broke down when it became a question of handling mass applications for naturalization: even from the purely administrative point of view, no European civil service could possibly have dealt with the problem. Instead of naturalizing at least a small portion of the new arrivals, the countries began to cancel earlier naturalizations, partly because of general panic and partly because the arrival of great masses of newcomers actually changed the always precarious position of naturalized citizens of the same origin. Cancellation of naturalization or the introduction of new laws which obviously paved the way for mass denaturalization shattered what little confidence the refugees might have retained in the possibility of adjusting themselves to a new normal life; if assimilation to the new country once looked a little shabby or disloyal, it was now simply ridiculous. The difference between a naturalized citizen and a stateless resident was not great enough to justify taking any trouble, the former being frequently deprived of important civil rights and threatened at any moment with the fate of the latter. Naturalized persons were largely assimilated to the status of ordinary aliens, and since the naturalized had already lost their previous citizenship, these measures simply threatened another considerable group with statelessness.

Sometimes Danielle fantasized about “waiting tables or working in some easy job where [she] didn’t have to think or didn’t make mistakes.” But twentysomethings who hide out in underemployment, especially those who are hiding out because of a lack of confidence, are not serving themselves. For work success to lead to confidence, the job has to be challenging and it must require effort. It has to be done without too much help. And it cannot go well every single day. A long run of easy successes creates a sort of fragile confidence, the kind that is shattered when the first failure comes along. A more resilient confidence comes from succeeding—and from surviving some failures.

There is an art to navigating London during the Blitz. Certain guides are obvious: Bethnal Green and Balham Undergrounds are no-goes, as is most of Wapping, Silvertown and the Isle of Dogs. The further west you go, the more you can move around late at night in reasonable confidence of not being hit, but should you pass an area which you feel sure was a council estate when you last checked in the 1970s, that is usually a sign that you should steer clear. There are also three practical ways in which the Blitz impacts on the general functioning of life in the city. The first is mundane: streets blocked, services suspended, hospitals overwhelmed, firefighters exhausted, policemen belligerent and bread difficult to find. Queuing becomes a tedious essential, and if you are a young nun not in uniform, sooner or later you will find yourself in the line for your weekly portion of meat, to be eaten very slowly one mouthful at a time, while non-judgemental ladies quietly judge you Secondly there is the slow erosion-a rather more subtle but perhaps more potent assault on the spirit It begins perhaps subtly, the half-seen glance down a shattered street where the survivors of a night which killed their kin sit dull and numb on the crooked remnants of their bed. Perhaps it need not even be a human stimulus: perhaps the sight of a child's nightdress hanging off a chimney pot, after it was thrown up only to float straight back down from the blast, is enough to stir something in your soul that has no rare. Perhaps the mother who cannot find her daughter, or the evacuees' faces pressed up against the window of a passing train. It is a death of the soul by a thousand cuts, and the falling skies are merely the laughter of the executioner going about his business. And then, inevitably, there is the moment of shock It is the day your neighbour died because he went to fix a bicycle in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It is the desk which is no longer filled, or the fire that ate your place of work entirely so now you stand on the street and wonder, what shall I do? There are a lot of lies told about the Blitz spirit: legends are made of singing in the tunnels, of those who kept going for friends, family and Britain. It is far simpler than that People kept going because that was all that they could really do. Which is no less an achievement, in its way.

A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. They have not adapted themselves to the new reality. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. It's made a mess of everything. But words, as you yourself understand, are capable of change. The problem is how to demonstrate this. That is why I now work with the simplest means possible - so simple that even a child can grasp what I am saying. Consider a word that refers to a thing - "umbrella", for example. When I say the word "umbrella", you see the object in your mind. You see a kind of stick, with collapsible metal spokes on top that form an armature for a waterproof material which, when opened, will protect you from the rain. This last detail is important. Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function - in other words, expresses the will of man. When you stop to think of it, every object is similar to the umbrella, in that it serves a function. A pencil is for writing, a shoe is for wearing, a car is for driving. Now, my question is this. What happens when a thing no longer performs its function ? Is it still the thing or has it become something else ? When you rip the cloth off the umbrella, is the umbrella still an umbrella ? You open the spokes, put them over your head, walk out into the rain, and you get drenched. Is it possible to go one calling this object an umbrella ? In general, people do. At the very limit, they will say the umbrella is broken. To me this is a serious error, the source of all our troubles. Because it can no longer perform its function, the umbrella has ceased to be an umbrella. It might resemble an umbrella, it might once have been an umbrella, but now it has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore, it can no longer express the thing. It is imprecise; it is false; it hides the thing it is supposed to reveal. And if we cannot even name a common, everyday object that we hold in our hands, how can we expect to speak of the things that truly concern us? Unless we can begin to embody the position of change in the words we use, we will continue to be lost.

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet. “It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.

Despite the dangers and discomforts, climbing is for many an all-consuming passion. They interrupt, end, or never start their careers, focusing exclusively on completing the next climb. Climber Todd Skinner said free climbing means "going right to the edge" of your capabilites. For many climbers, this closeness to death - the risk of dying - produces an adrenaline rush that most other life experiences simply can't. It is what keeps many of them married to the sport. Probably no other sport creates such a feeling of oneness with Mother Nature. Attached to a mountainside by fingertips and toes, the climber necessarily becomes part of the rock - or else. One climber says that while scaling a granite face, she felt close to God, so intense was her relationship with the natural world. Climbers speak of "floating" or "performing a ballet" over the rock, each placement of foot and each reach into a crack creating unity with the mountain. The sport is one of total engagement with the here-and-now, which frees the mind from everything else. Climbers' concentration is complete and focused. Their only thought is executing the next move... Ken Bokelund... said: "Climbing for me has always been the strength of the body over the weakness of the mind. If you train so that you are very strong physically and you have mastered the techniques, then all that's left is believing. Freeing your mind of fear is the key. This is very difficult to do, but when you can achieve it, then you are in true harmony with the rock. Fear is just one more thing to worry about and is very distracting. It can make you fall... ...when you know you are strong enough to complete any maneuver, once that level of physical confidence is achieved, then you are able to put fear out of your mind. Climbing becomes a very simple pleasure. It's just you and the rock. It's a total clarity of being, a time when nothing matters, you're moving without any thought, you're in a place where time stands still. Even when you're on a wall for days, when you get down, everything seems exactly the same, as though time never passed.

The Pathe & Mullen (1997) sample almost unanimously reported deterioration in mental and physical well-being as a consequence of the harassment. (..) These victims often described a preoccupation with their stalker, one commenting: "I think I’ve become as obsessed as the stalker himself". (..) Whenever stalking victims present it is essential to assess their suicide potential and continue to monitor this. (..) Victims of stalking often respond to cognitive-orientated psychological therapies because stalking breaches previously held assumptions about their safety. The belief of victims in their strength and resilience and their confidence in the reasonable and predictable nature of the world are frequently shattered, to be replaced with feelings of extreme vulnerability and an expectation of pervasive danger and unpredictable harm. Cognitive therapies attempt to restructure these morbid perceptions of the world that threaten the victim’s adaptation and functioning. (..) Avoidance can respond to behavioural therapies such as prolonged exposure and stress inoculation, which aim to assist victims to gradually resume abandoned activities and manage the associated anxiety.

HIRE THE BEST BITCOIN RECOVERY EXPERT; HOW TO SAFELY RECOVER STOLEN CRYPTOCURRENCY VISIT CYBER CONSABLE INTELLIGENCE I’ve always felt confident navigating the world of cryptocurrency. As a software engineer, I understood the ins and outs of wallets, private keys, and blockchain security, which made me feel secure in my investments. So, when I found a promising platform that seemed like a great opportunity, I invested $250,000 without hesitation. Unfortunately, I soon learned that my confidence would be shattered by a sophisticated cyber attack. It started with small, unauthorized transactions in my wallet. At first, I thought it was a mistake, but as the activity continued, I realized something was wrong. My wallet had been compromised, but not in the way I had expected. Instead of a simple hack, I had fallen victim to a virus attack. The virus was a piece of malware designed specifically to target cryptocurrency wallets. It infiltrated my system through a vulnerability I hadn’t noticed. Once inside, the virus silently monitored my wallet, captured my private keys, and gave the hackers full access to my funds. It was stealthy and nearly undetectable. The attackers didn’t need to log into my account manually; they could control everything remotely, draining my wallet without my knowledge. I was completely blindsided. As someone familiar with tech, I knew how advanced this virus was. It wasn’t just a typical phishing attack, it was a targeted, silent assault on my financial assets. As my funds disappeared, I realized I might never be able to recover them. Desperate, I turned to a trusted colleague who had gone through a similar situation. They recommended Cyber Constable Intelligence, a company that specializes in recovering stolen crypto assets. I contacted them immediately, and their team quickly started investigating. Cyber Constable Intelligence explained how the virus had exploited a weak point in my security. Using advanced tools, they traced the stolen funds across the blockchain and located them. After a thorough recovery process, they managed to return the entire $250,000.Thanks to their expertise and quick action, I was able to recover my funds. The experience was a wake-up call about how vulnerable even the most cautious can be to sophisticated attacks. Without Cyber Constable Intelligence, I would have lost everything, and I’m grateful for their skill in reversing the damage caused by the virus. Here's Their Info Below WhatsApp: 1 (252) 378-7611 mail: cyberconstable@coolsite net Website info; www cyberconstableintelligence com

June 7 Someone Who Believes In Me "Just for today I will have faith in someone in NA who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery." Basic Text, p. 96 Not all of us arrive in NA and automatically stay clean. But if we keep coming back, we find in Narcotics Anonymous the support we need for our recovery. Staying clean is easier when we have someone who believes in us even when we don't believe in ourselves. Even the most frequent relapser in NA usually has one staunch supporter who is always there, no matter what. It is imperative that we find that one person or group of people who believes in us. When we ask them if we will ever get clean, they will always reply, "Yes, you can and you will. Just keep coming back!" We all need someone who believes in us, especially when we can't believe in ourselves. When we relapse, we undermine our already shattered self-confidence, sometimes so badly that we begin to feel utterly hopeless. At such times, we need the support of our loyal NA friends. They tell us that this can be our last relapse. They know from experience that if we keep coming to meetings, we will eventually get clean and stay clean. It's hard for many of us to believe in ourselves. But when someone loves us unconditionally, offering support no matter how many times we've relapsed, recovery in NA becomes a little more real for us. Just for today: I will find someone who believes in me. I will believe in them.

The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look-at-us-we’re-such-responsible-guardians. Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance. They fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for their own good. By pandering to this myth of the naïf, we service our own legend. Presumably we have looked the horror in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic. The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children’s lunch boxes. The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies. What’s a kid to find out? Presumably we lord over them an exclusive deed to sex, but this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days. No, they have sex, too. In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.

It is not only in childhood that people of high potential can be encouraged or held back and their promise subverted or sustained. The year before I went to Amherst, a group of women had declined to stand for tenure. One of them simply said that after six years she was used up, too weary and too eroded by constant belittlement to accept tenure if it were offered to her. Women were worn down or burnt out. During the three years I spent as dean of the faculty, as I watched some young faculty members flourish and others falter, I gradually realized that the principal instrument of sexism was not the refusal to appoint women or even the refusal to promote (though both occurred, for minorities as well as women), but the habit of hiring women and then dealing with them in such a way that when the time came for promotion it would be reasonable to deny it. It was not hard to show that a particular individual who was a star in graduate school had somehow belied her promise, had proved unable to achieve up to her potential. This subversion was accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and be used and even used up by the community. Many women at Amherst ended up investing vast amounts of time in needed public-service activities, committee work, and teaching nondepartmental courses. Since these activities were not weighed significantly in promotion decisions, they were self-destructive. The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation. Even women who arrived at Amherst full of confidence gradually became vulnerable to distorted visions of themselves, no longer secure that their sense of who they were matched the perceptions of others. When a new president, appointed in 1983, told me before coming and without previous discussion with me that he had heard I was “consistently confrontational,” that I had made Amherst “a tense, unhappy place,” and that he would want to select a new dean, I should have reacted to his picture of me as bizarre, and indeed confronted its inaccuracy, but instead I was shattered. It took me a year to understand that he was simply accepting the semantics of senior men who expected a female dean to be easily disparaged and bullied, like so many of the young women they had managed to dislodge. It took me a year to recover a sense of myself as worth defending and to learn to be angry both for myself and for the college as I watched a tranquil campus turned into one that was truly tense and unhappy.

He had thought of her poise as being that of a woman of experience, and been a little afraid of it, he saw it now as the self-confidence of a girl whose adolescent pride had never been shattered. And now it had been shattered, by humble old Harriet of all people, and they could start again together....

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one

Communism was now forever to be associated with oppression, not revolution. For forty years the Western Left had looked to Russia, forgiving and even admiring Bolshevik violence as the price of revolutionary self-confidence and the march of History. Moscow was the flattering mirror of their political illusions. In November 1956, the mirror shattered.

when the first woman spread her legs to let the first man in what did he see when she led him down the hallway toward the sacred room what sat waiting what shook him so deeply that all confidence shattered from then on the first man watched the first woman every night and day built a cage to keep her in so she could sin no more he set fire to her books called her witch and shouted whore until the evening came when his tired eyes betrayed him the first woman noticed it as he unwillingly fell asleep the quiet humming the drumming a knocking between her legs a doorbell a voice a pulse asking her to open up and off her hand went running down the hall toward the sacred room she found god the magician’s wand the snake’s tongue sitting inside her smiling - when the first woman drew magic with her fingers

self-confidence is so important, why would we ever want to approach someone in a manner that might disrupt or shatter it?” – Pete Carroll, Winner of 2 National Titles and 1 Super Bowl

Even the wealthiest professional woman can be “brought down” by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and is consistently lied to. To the degree that she trusts her male companion, lying and other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem.

The duke had indeed existed alone for ten long years. That shattering knowledge brought a harsh ache to the back of Jules’s throat and calmed the odd sense of fright that had filled her at his intensity. There were so many times she had felt an aloneness that ravaged her, for she truly felt like she did not belong. Despite being surrounded by friends and family, Jules had not been able to confide her uncertainty and hopes to anyone. As she grew older she had kept a careful distance from her sister and acquaintances lest they discovered the truth. Eschewing deep bonds and friendship had bred a sense of aloneness that had eaten at her, and more than one night she had buried her face in her pillows and wept. How had it been for the duke? Everyone needed a measure of contact, and he had been deprived of it for years. How had he endured without the comfort of a hug or a lover’s embrace? To touch others and be touched was an imperative biological need and necessity. It was a language without words that he might hunger for without knowing it, for touch was far more powerful and stronger than verbal or emotional contact. There had been no gentle touch, a kiss against the brow…a lover’s touch, the reassuring slap of a friend across his shoulders.

Boys evaluate themselves and feel ‘less’ that what they want to be; but it is not the comparison to others that is the problem here — it is the belief that they cannot be as developed, skilful, athletic, intelligent, mature and strong as they would like to be: this is what ‘breaks’ the boy as he looks upon those who are ‘more’ than him in some way. The comparison to others only exposes a desire in them, to be more, just as those others have become more in their way; but the trauma of the realisation that they would never be that, is what shatters the inner self. It is the death of hope — the hope all children are born with — that shatters the boy’s inner self into pieces which he then spends a lifetime trying to collect and organise in hope of putting up a facade that would somehow make life easier and worth living. ‘It’s just who I am’, such a heart-broken boy would say to himself as he comes face-to-face with his own limitations. Having been deprived of what was needed to help him become the man he would have liked to be, having then been judged for being something he wouldn’t particularly have chosen to be, he then judges himself and believes that this is the hand he had been dealt by fate... Then, disappointed by his own self and lacking a strong, wise presence to direct him away from making unhealthy agreements that would shape his future personality and life, he has only one choice: to look at himself as he currently is, and make a judgement based on what he sees. What follows is always tragic... Not fully possessing the 'natural' feelings of self worth, confidence and boyish wonder, (which only come as that ‘seed’ is nurtured with much love and physical affection, first by the mother, later by the father) the boy does not feel whole, strong, and 'good enough' to think that he is indeed a man, that he does have the seed of manhood within himself... Therefore, instead of being fully open and eager to receive more and learn more, he shuts down, covering what he sees as emptiness in him, with falsehood, pretending the empty places have been filled, that he is indeed a strong, confident man. He learns to feel scorn for the ‘needy’ little boy within and he ‘moves on’ into adulthood without him. From that moment on, a part of him — that little boy; that particular aspect of himself he has been disappointed in — is pushed out of reach, out of sight, and out of his conscious life.

The sale of Merton Robotics had gutted Dan, left him unemployed and unmoored, and shattered his confidence. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

I like having sex with Vale,” I blurted. Or maybe not. He froze. The sudden shock of heat in the way he stared at me tunnelled right through to my toes. He growled out a sound of desire that belonged more to an animal than an unshakable man like Vale. “That one was very personal.” Helki was flexing his fingers, trying not to turn them into fists as he swivelled a dark glower to Vale. “I liked sex with you too, Beast.” I applauded my own confidence as I managed to keep a straight face. “It was shattering." Andel groaned, his head falling into his hands. “Tell me she didn’t just make a spinal injury joke.

Harldin spoke with a prideful confidence, clearly enjoying the moment. He might have lived if he hadn’t made the mistake of trying to clamp a hand to my shoulder. “Surrender your arms…” The pommel of my sword caught his upper jaw as I drew it, shattering teeth before breaking his nose. He staggered back a foot or two, all the space I needed to reverse the blade and spear him from chin to nape. “Consider that your lesson in manners,

Dollmann was fond of Braun, and a sweet and simple young woman who confided her sad life to him. She was known throughout the world as the German strongman's mistress, but, as she confessed to Dollmann, there was no sexual intimacy between her and the Führer. 'He says to me that his only love is Germany and to forget it, even for a moment, would shatter the mystical forces of his mission.' ¶ Dollmann strongly suspected that the Führer had other passions besides Germany. On Christmas Eve 1923, when he was a university student in Munich, Dollman had been invited to an extravagant, candelit party at the house of General Otto von Lossow, who had helped put down Hitler's Beer Hall putsch in November 1923. During the evening, Lossow took Dollmann and some of his other guests into his parlor, where he entertained them by reading selections from Hitler's thick police dossier. 'In a café near the university on the evening of, Herr Hitler was observed . . . " Lossow's voice was matter-of-fact as he read through the depositions and eyewitness reports about Germany's future leader. The general's small audience listened in rapt silence, transfixed by the portrait of a Hitler who was more interested in boyish men than in national politics.

Dollmann was fond of Braun, and a sweet and simple young woman who confided her sad life to him. She was known throughout the world as the German strongman's mistress, but, as she confessed to Dollmann, there was no sexual intimacy between her and the Führer. 'He says to me that his only love is Germany and to forget it, even for a moment, would shatter the mystical forces of his mission.' ¶ Dollmann strongly suspected that the Führer had other passions besides Germany. On Christmas Eve 1923, when he was a university student in Munich, Dollman had been invited to an extravagant, candelit party at the house of General Otto von Lossow, who had helped put down Hitler's Beer Hall putsch in November 1923. During the evening, Lossow took Dollmann and some of his other guests into his parlor, where he entertained them by reading selections from Hitler's thick police dossier. 'In a café near the university on the evening of, Herr Hitler was observed . . . ' Lossow's voice was matter-of-fact as he read through the depositions and eyewitness reports about Germany's future leader. The general's small audience listened in rapt silence, transfixed by the portrait of a Hitler who was more interested in boyish men than in national politics.

Be confident when facing your enemies; be humble when you defeat them. Break records, then shatter them.

money was being scrimped to put food on the table rather than blown on a night out at the wrestling.

I say all this confidently now, but it wasn’t that long ago that I thought the answer to all our social and political problems was to elect the right people—good people with the right ideas and the courage to act on them. Before I went to work for the governor, I thought he was one of the right people. And he was. He did what he said he was going to do, he took his duties seriously, he behaved himself in public with charm and decorum, he did not fear criticism, and he had realistic views of what government could and couldn’t accomplish. He was everything a politician should be—a politician in the best sense of that word, if it has a best sense. After two or three weeks of working for him, though, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t that I thought he should have been the same thoughtful political leader in private that he was in public; the difference between public persona and reality is a valuable and inevitable one. Rather, I found it unnerving to discover such a stark difference between the personality he presented to the public and the one to which he subjected his staff. I remarked on this difference many times to my wife during that first year. We often laughed about it, but I think we both knew it signified something terrible—not just about the governor but about the world, or at least about democratic cultures in which political leaders often function as celebrities and even heroes. What that something was came to me much later, when I glimpsed the depth of his self-absorption. Here was a man who shattered his ambitions and humiliated his family and friends by pursuing his own petty, myopic desires. And yet in his ruin he could not find more than the paltriest shred of genuine self-criticism. I believe he wanted to feel a deeper remorse, but he looked inside and it wasn’t there. All he found was more of himself.

Shut your disgusting mouth, mole,” spit Asherah. They stood in the large secret cavern carved out of the rock fifty feet beneath the temple of Dagon. Dagon and Ba’alzebul watched Asherah walk up to the rock wall where they had fastened Mikael’s body. Or rather, where they had fastened the parts of Mikael’s body. When they had ambushed Mikael in the Valley of Hinnom, Ba’alzebul had fallen with him some two hundred feet to the valley floor where all Mikael’s bones had been shattered. Ba’alzebul was also incapacitated in the fall, but because he used Mikael’s body as a cushion, and because he had a much stronger bodily structure, he had healed more quickly and was ready for action. But before Mikael could heal to move at all, they had him drawn and quartered. All four of his limbs were severed from his body, and he was beheaded. As an angel, he could not die, but this was surely a living hell as they pinned all his body parts spread out on the wall so he could look helplessly down upon them and their mockery. Asherah looked into Mikael’s eyes. He could not respond verbally because his head was severed from his voice box and lungs, which were separated from each other by about six feet, like a sick spread-out puzzle. But he could watch her and hear their discussion. Ba’alzebul said, “The only time all of them came together like this was to take back the body of Moses from Mastema.” Molech said, “I think they plan much more than retrieving the prince of Israel here. I think they came to bind us into the earth.” “Of course, you idiot,” said Asherah. “But why do they not hide themselves?” said Dagon. Ba’alzebul said, “They want us to stand and fight.” “And why not?” said Asherah. “We are in our stronghold, we are empowered by the Philistines.” “We are confident,” added Ba’alzebul. “Presumptuous. So we will be reckless.” “Exactly,” said Asherah. “If they can deliver this blow to us now, they will control all of Canaan. Which we cannot allow. So we will run.” “Like cowards?” worried Dagon. “Like insurgents,” said Asherah. “Look at the Amalekites. They were almost wiped out. But their few roaming hordes have become a terror to the Israelites, because they cannot be targeted in a specific location. They hit and they run, and Israel has nowhere to respond or retaliate. In our fortified Philistine cities, the archangels know exactly where we are, and what we are doing in our temples. And they can come get us whenever they want. Because they know where we are. As they do this very moment.” The other gods nodded with understanding. Asherah added, “It is time we become more mobile.

Your words are so powerful that they can break hearts or fill them with joy. Your words have the ability to comfort a wounded soul or shatter someone’s confidence. Your words can act as your messengers of hope or a salve for a broken human being.

You told your brother and some guy I don’t even know the things I told you in confidence.” “Yes.” She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I’m not sure this helps, but Charlie knows Logan.” “You talked to Charlie?” “Yes, he helped us with the details I didn’t know.” “So you went behind my back, talked to my friends, and told your brothers and some guy everything.” She pressed her lips together. “Yes.” “And you told them things about the blackmail that’s not public knowledge.” Maddie swallowed hard as her throat constricted. “I did.” “I trusted you with information about my family that nobody knows.” “Mitch, I’d never jeopardize you or your family. I’d never tell them if I didn’t trust them implicitly. You know that.” She had to make him understand. He leaned forward, putting elbows on his knees. “I want you to leave.” “What? No. Let me explain.” The blood rushed in her ears as a wave of hot dizziness engulfed her. Fear and desperation warred inside her. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t listen.” “You didn’t ask.” Flat. She wrung her hands. “You would have said no.” “I see,” he said, so coldly that it was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. “So that makes it right? You didn’t think I’d agree, so you went behind my back, talked to my friends, your family, and some black-ops guy, revealing the things I’ve told you in private, because you know best?” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes, the same way you went behind my back and stalled the repairs on my car so I wouldn’t leave.” His head snapped back. “That’s not the same thing, Maddie.” “You lied, just like me. You went behind my back. Just like me.” She hoped he could see reason, but his expression said otherwise. “I told you those things,” he said through gritted teeth, “because I thought I could trust you.” “You can.” Her stomach clenched. “The evidence says otherwise, now doesn’t it?” Cold, cold words. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please understand, I did it for you.” “No, you didn’t. You did it for you,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Tell me something. Why are you so interested in meddling in my life when you have your own to worry about?” She reared back, stepping toward the door, unable to figure out how to handle this dead, cold Mitch who treated her like a stranger. “I wanted to help you.” “You know how you could have helped me?” There was a cruel twist to his lips. “By being the one fucking person who didn’t betray me.” “I didn’t. That’s not what . . .” She trailed off, feeling helpless. She hung her head and said softly, “I’d never betray you.” “Bullshit. If you thought what you were doing was right, you would have talked to me. ” This ice. She’d prepared for fire, for burning anger, not this. She had no defense. No plan. She walked over to him and fell to her knees, taking his hands in hers. He didn’t even flinch. It was like he was made of stone, and she met his eyes. Hard chips of gold. “Mitch, I’m sorry, I wanted to help.” He studied her as though she was a stranger. “You need to leave now.” The words were a crushing blow, threatening to break her. She did the only thing she could think of and confessed the truth. “I love you.” His mouth firmed. Eyes flashing, he pulled away and stood, moving around her and going over to the window that overlooked the nearly deserted parking lot. “I need you to leave.” Her heart shattered into a million pieces and desolation swept over her. She hadn’t felt anything like this since her father had died and she’d woken in a hospital bed. That same heavy weight crushed her chest, numbing her limbs. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she wiped them away. Her voice trembled as she spoke, already knowing the answer but unable to keep from asking the question. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes.” His tone was distant and unreachable. “Leave.” There

Finally, here’s to everyone who has survived something devastating—something that shattered your self-confidence and distorted your world in one blow. Whether you were fierce in the face of it or fell to pieces or shoved it out of sight for years—I don’t care how you got here. Every day you are stronger. Every day you are healing. Every day that you survive,

God shatters our self-confidence and self-righteousness, so that we will put our faith in Jesus Christ. Luther goes on to say that “hunger is the best cook. As the dry earth thirsts for rain, so the Law makes the troubled heart thirst for Christ. To such hearts Christ tastes sweetest, to them He is joy, comfort, and life. Only then are Christ and His work understood correctly.

Did you see it?" asked Yarvi. "I had that questionable privilege." "What do you think?" "She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself." The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away "The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense." "I'm right here," Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees. "Just where the drunk boy put you." The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. "I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination.

It perplexed me how sex with other men seemed natural to me but not the small physical gestures of affection and concern. What I remembered most clearly from my first sex with another man was the unexpected tenderness. It disturbed me—disoriented me, I guess. I had expected homosexuality to be dark and furtive, but it wasn’t. It was shattering but liberating to come out and it ended a lot of doubts that had been eroding my self-confidence. I remember thinking, back then, so this is it, one of the worst things I can imagine happening has happened. And life goes on.

Time may heal all wounds, but confidence once shattered may never be fully restored.

Things are changing, but this tiime I'm not afraid. This time I know who I am. This time I've made the right choice and I'm fighting for the right team. I feel safe. Confident. Excited, even.

She'd never imagined such sensations existed; she could barely believe they were real. Yet the caresses continued, thrilling her, heating her- she had to wonder what else she didn't know. What else she had yet to experience. With every ounce of expertise at his command, Vane deliberately drew her deeper. Her total lack of resistance would have made him wonder, if he hadn't earlier seen this curiosity, the calm calculated intention in her eyes. She was willing, even eager- the knowledge stirred his passions powerfully. He held them in check, aware that she was no wanton, that she'd never been down this road before- and that, despite her guileless confidence, her openness- her implicit trust was a fragile thing which could all too easily be shattered by overly aggressive loving. She was naive, innocent- she needed to be loved tenderly, coaxed to passion gently, savored slowly. As he was savoring her now, the softness of her mouth his to enjoy, her breast firm under his fondling hand. Her innocence was refreshing- heady, addictive, entrancing.

Great problem-solvers aren’t afraid of their ignorance, and they’re not afraid of others seeing it. Great questions shatter assumptions, provoke new insight, and position those that do know about the process or system to contribute their expertise. Great problem-solvers build confidence and don’t need to position themselves as all-knowing

Hear these words, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” and know that the Son of God has taken our place, become for us the abandonment our sin produces, so that we may live confident that the world has been redeemed by this cross. So

Consider how suffering affects people who are seeking salvation by works. Self-justifiers are always insecure at a deep level because they know they aren’t living up to their standards but they cannot admit it. So when suffering hits, they immediately feel they are being punished for their sins. They cannot take confidence in God’s love (v 5). Since their belief that God loves them was inadequately based, suffering shatters them. Suffering drives them away from God, rather than toward him. It is when we suffer that we discover what we are really trusting and hoping in: ourselves, or God.

When you’re invested in a goal, being doubted by experts is a threat. They may be credible, but since they don’t recognize your potential, they’re not coaches who will help you improve. Their disbelief quickly becomes your insecurity. It shatters your confidence and stifles your growth. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the research suggests that when they come from an uninformed audience, low expectations can become a self-negating prophecy. You’re motivated to shatter their confidence that you won’t succeed. Samir calls it the underdog effect.

Kenji steps back, looking injured. “Why are you trying to hurt me, J? Where’s your vote of confidence? Where’s the love and support I require at this difficult hour? I need you to be my wingwoman.