Self-esteem Is Not A Luxury;

It Is Naive To Think That Self-assertiveness Is Easy. To Live Self-assertively--which Means To Live Authentically--is An Act Of High Courage. That Is Why So Many People Spend The Better Part Of Their Lives In Hiding--from Others And Also From Themselves.

You Are Not Likely To Bring Out The Best In People Or Nurture Their Creativity If Every Time You Hear About Their Problems You Instantly Offer A Solution Encourage People To Look For Their Own Solutions-and Project The Knowledge That They Are Capable Of Doing So.

If We Do Have Realistic Confidence In Our Mind And Value, If We Feel Secure Within Ourselves, We Tend To Experience The World As Open To Us And To Respond Appropriately To Challenges And Opportunities.

Romantic Love Can Be Terrifying. We Experience Another Human Being As Enormously Important To Us. So There Is Surrender -not A Surrender To The Other Person So Much As To Our Feeling For The Other Person. What Is The Obstacle? The Possibility Of Loss.

Some People Have A View Of Self And Of The Universe That Obliges Them To Struggle For Happiness, To Yearn For Happiness-"some Time In The Future"-perhaps Next Year Or The Year After That. But Not Now. Not At This Moment. Not Here. Here And Now Is Too Terrifyingly Close, Too Terrifyingly Immediate. They Suffer From Happiness Anxiety.