Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.
Augusten BurroughsDecisions are beautiful. They are the evidence of thought and care. Decisions are the polishing cloths of life.
Augusten BurroughsTime moves only forward, never back. We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away. You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
Augusten BurroughsWhen you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me." That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.
Augusten BurroughsI understood at once, I am not living, but actively dying. I am smoking, living unhealthily. Iโm shutting down. I need to go the other way, inside. And it was so clear to me what I was doing. It was suddenly perfectly clear. I understood, I need to write. Live here, in my words, and my head. I need to go inside, thatโs all. No big, complicated, difficult thing. I just need to go in reverse. And not worry about what to write about, but just write. Or, if Iโm going to worry about what to write, then do this worrying on paper, so at least Iโm writing and will have a record of the anxiety.
Augusten BurroughsI've overcome a lot - sexual abuse, death of a loved one, bad parents and experienced life. My nature is such I not only survived all this but I have thrived. I've always been psychologically ambitious in that I've never been willing to settle emotionally for anything less then what's needed. I've wanted more then that from life.
Augusten Burroughs