STRENGTH, MASTERY, & POWER

Self-control is strength.
Accurate thinking is mastery.
Poise is power.

If...

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

SELF-RESPONSIBILITY (4): VIEWING LIFE AS A WHOLE (by Bertrand Russell)

Human beings differ profoundly in regard to the tendency to regard their lives as a whole.

To some men it is natural to do so, and essential to happiness to be able to do so with some satisfaction.

to others life is a series of detached incidents without directed movement and without unity.

I think the former sort are more likely to achieve happiness than the latter, since they will gradually build up those circumstances from which they can derive contentment and self-respect, whereas the others will be blown about by the winds of circumstances now this way, now that, without ever arriving at any haven. 

The habit of viewing life as a whole is an essential part bnoth of wisdom and of true morality, and is one of the things which ought to be encouraged in education.

Consistent purpose is not enough to make life happy, but it is an almost indispensable condition of a happy life.

And, consistent purpose embodies itself mainly in work.

SELF-RESPONSIBILITY (3): WORK (by Bertrand Russell)

The second advantage of most paid work and of some unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and opportunities for ambition.

In most work success is measured by income, and while our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best work is concerned that this measure ceases to be the natural one to apply. The desire that people feel to increase their income is quite as much a desire for success as for the extra comforts that a higher income can procure.

However dull work may be, it becomes bearable if it is a means of building up a reputation, whether in the world at large or only in one's own circle.

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most people this comes chiefly through their work.

The satisfaction of killing time and of affording some outlet, however modest, for ambition, belongs to most work, and is sufficient to make even a person whose work is dull happier on the average than a person who has no work at all.

But when work is interesting, it is capable of giving satisfaction of a far higher order than mere relief from boredom.

SELF-RESPONSIBILITY (2): WORK AND PLAY

WORK may be defined as activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

PLAY may be defined as activity involving mental or physical effort done for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose. 

So, as Mark Twain said, "Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."

Notice that the essential way that work differs from play is by the purpose and by the degree of seriousness.

Following are notes from 'WORK' by Bertrand Russell.

Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question.

There is certainly much work which is exceedingly irksome, and an excess of work is always very painful. 

I think, however, that, provided work is not excessive in amount, even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness.

Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. 

To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And watever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. Moreover the exercise of choice is in itself tiresome. Except to people with unusual initiative it is positively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, provided the orders are not too unpleasant. Most of the idle rich suffer unspeakable boredom as the price of their freedom from drudgery. The more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor, while rich women for the most part keep themselves busy with innumerable trifles of whose earth-shaking importance they are firmly persuaded.

Work therefore is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventative of boredom, for boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days.

With this advantage of work another is associated, namely that it makes holidays much more delicious when they come. Provided a man does not have to work so hard as to weaken or damage his health, he is likely to find far more zest in his free time than an idle man could possibly find.

SELF-RESPONSIBILITY (1)

In the following lessons, I will promote wholesome self-responsibility and provide information to help the readers self-improve by thinking more accurately, making better decisions, and having a more benevolent attitudes and habits. Because nobody is perfect (and can never be), the information that I will present has the potential to help each one of us (including me) to improve ourselves.

My aim is to help all of us become more of the kind of person that each of us wants to be.

‘SELF’ is one’s own being.

‘RESPONSIBILITY’ is the state of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.

Therefore, ‘SELF-RESPONSIBILITY’ is the state of having a duty to deal with and of having control over oneself.

Except for two people born together as conjoined twins, all human beings are born as individuals—that is, as a single human being.

And, each one of us was born neither knowing any meaning nor having any purpose—we merely had life. Apart from a few reflex actions or automatic responses, each of us had to learn almost everything.

As humans, we were born virtually helpless; and, for more than a decade (usually almost two), humans have to be cared for after birth. In other words, someone else or some others have to be responsible for children after birth until they become adults—responsible for themselves.

Of course, since my friends and I are already adults, I don’t propose to teach you how to become more self-responsible. In the lessons that follow, I will merely provide information that anyone can use to help self-improve—that is, to have a more wholesome disposition, think more accurately, and make better decisions.

I am certain that anyone who reads these posts will indeed self-improve because all that anyone needs to change is an idea that changes his or her way of thinking. Of course, such a mind-changing idea won’t be the same for everyone but I will present so many benevolent ones that everyone who reads them will find some of them mind-changing to some extent.