Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it . . . the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way. . . .
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Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) was a British fellow and tutor at Oxford University, chair of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University, and prolific author best known for his work on Christian apologetics and exploration of moral philosophy through fairy tales, science fiction, and the children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia.
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Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
Stay a verb—don’t become a noun.
If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you.
You can’t do everything, but you can do one thing, and then another and another. In terms of energy, it’s better to make a wrong choice than none at all. You might begin by listing your priorities—for the day, for the week, for the month, for a lifetime. Start modestly.
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Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.
Resolve to do the things you find to be difficult. That’s what confident people do. They tackle those things that are scary and they get addicted to doing it.
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This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton’s famous phrase.
We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.
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Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.
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