If you live today as if it were your last day, if you charter your own course right now, and if you begin on the habits that make you excellent, you will show the world what you can really do!
The illusion of control is an incredibly deceiving one. And once you stop buying into it, there’s a bizarre paradox that occurs. You experience freedom and move closer to your goals.
Perhaps the biggest myth in Western culture is that we are born with a fixed and intrinsic personality — that who we are when we’re born is who we’ll be when we die.
Accepting one’s failings, rather than being tortured by them, is a self-respect starting point. Appreciating your intrinsic value is “a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth,” Didion wrote.