CONFIDENCE by Alan Loy McGinnis

p 22 Admiral Byrd, who was the first person to fly over the North and South Poles said:
"Few people come anywhere near exhausting the resources within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used."
p 22 (re: suicidal people) "You have no right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe."
p 32 How did Golda Meir overcome her inferiority feelings?
"I found what I wanted to do in life."
p 34 It is a sign of health to be able to accept the negative aspects of ourselves (Jung - "our shadow sides")...The only emotion that can hurt us is the unacknowledged emotion. To repress our shadow side is to give it the greatest power over us.
p 43 Life is not so much a matter of finding ourselves as it is a process of MAKING ourselves.
p 51 Self confidence causes you to want to accomplish all the more.
p 75 Facts make it all the more important that we pump as much positive material as possible into the young minds around us.
p 83 In order to succeed you must see yourself succeeding.
p 84 Norman Cousins once wrote "People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears and the expense of their dreams."
p 85 What you hold in your mind is what you move toward.
p 95 Those with strong self confidence have the courage to be different from those around them.
p 100 You can point to 200 souls who are boring because they try so hard not to offend anyone.
p 101 Each of us was created unique, and the discovery and expression of that uniqueness is one reason we are on this planet.
p 127 Being useful is more important than being noticed.
p 131 At some primal level, when we touch another we say "you are loveable still, you are valid, you are THERE."
p 140 Excessive guilt does not make you more guarded or more bent toward changing. Instead, it paralyzes you. If you feel bad enough about yourself you do not have to change -- you're not up to it.
p 141 Everyone has skeletons in the closet. The worst thing about them is the effect they have on us each time we walk down the corridor that passes the closet. Pulses quicken, breathing is tense and quick, and we want to race past the locked door. In psychotherapy we urge clients to unlock the closet and stare the skeleton down. The first time you try it, it will nearly do you in. The second time will not be quite so hard. And if you open the door enough times, you become so accustomed to its existence that you can walk down the hallway unaffected.
p 142 Catharsis..is like lancing an infection.
p 148 The secret of living successfully is to choose only the most important things to do and to leave the insignificant things undone.
p 160 Preogress comes when you are able to relax, stop begging for love, and begin loving.
p 173 Self denegration ought to be removed from ones vocabulary, and we should say nothing about ourselves that we do not wish to become true.
p 177 A reporter once asked Mother Theresa how she measured success and failure of her work. Her reply was that she did not think God used categories like success and failure. The measurement instead was this: "How much have you loved?".
p 181 The successful person leads a life that includes service to others, and he cares passionately for certain people who come across his path. Success and failure seem to come and go, but he does not take that too seriously either, for it is enough to serve God, to do the best he can with what he has, and to catch joy when it comes.

c. 2005 Augsburg Fortress Publishers