Feel deeply to think clearly.

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

It is true that people are sometimes hit by adversities beyond their control. But those so affected are better helped when they are awakened to the resources they do possess than when they are told they don't have any.

If you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with faster recovery-your resilience is greater.

If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.

Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.

Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge