Commonsense Quotes From Famous Women - Golda Meir

Commonsense Quotes From Famous Women - Golda Meir
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”

Truer words were never spoken.  It’s a small quote, but one that encompasses so many of life’s basic truths.
If there is one thing in life I have learned, it is the basic fact that in the end, there is only one person and one thing in this world that you can control.  That is, of course, yourself.

Until you like and trust yourself, no other genuine happiness can ever be truly possible.

Therefore the first key to happiness has to be to make yourself into a person you can trust.

Or in other words, to make yourself into a person that you like when you look into the mirror each morning.
Is it easy? “Hell no, it’s not!” It’s actually one of the hardest things you will ever achieve because in achieving it (If you are not some total sociopath who has mastered the art of lying to yourself.) you will always have to face the judgment and criticism of the one person from whom you cannot hide any of your dirty little secrets. And that, of course, is the hard part, because it means you have to forgo lying, cheating, stealing, revenge and all of those other nasty little traits that seem to come so easily to many whom the world deems as successful.

You can say or do anything you want and if you are very clever you can probably get away with it…at least for a little while in the eyes of the world.  But if you are a genuinely decent human being, then you will never be able to run far enough or fast enough to outrun the secrets that you keep hidden in  the dark corners of your mind.  You know…the ones that haunt you in the dead of night when you can’t sleep and you can’t shut your mind off, and every foul deed or honest mistake you ever made comes back to mentally bite you in the butt.

Now you are probably sitting there thinking. Oh how I wish that were true.  I wish that success required genuine self-awareness and honesty; because if that were so, then only worthy people would achieve success in life…only honest people would achieve success in life.

But we all know that life doesn’t really work that way…or does it?

It all depends on how you define success.

If you are a member of the “He (or She) who dies with the most toys wins.” school of thought, than success requires nothing more than one or more of the following, inherited wealth and/or a willingness to work coupled with cutthroat ambition and the inherent ability to rationalize away all the basics of morality and integrity...or the sociopathic ability to not give a damn about anyone else as long as you get your way.

If on the other hand, it matters most to you that you are able to look at yourself squarely in the mirror each morning without shame, and sleep the night away without fear of mental demons in the dark, then your journey to success, no matter how long and winding the road, begins with a single step.

Make yourself into a person you can trust to hold fast to the path dictated by your personal values and code of ethics despite all the challenges that the road to success presents.

Then and only then will you find the true success that meets the criteria you have set for yourself and that you can live with and enjoy for a lifetime.

 Compiled From Sources In The Public Domain.

Smiles and Good Fortune,
Teresa Thomas Bohannon

*****************************
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 ? 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915