Part Three: The Meaning of Life: Concepts of Purpose
âYou wonât be any good at all, unless you love it.â âThe Perfect Storm
Peace: The First Necessity.Why is it that we no longer hear of men and women like William Wallace and Joan of Arc? They were fighters for freedom against any kind of oppression. They knew what they wantedâit was simple enough: to end the use of force against them, to gain the freedom to earn their living and to keep the results of their work. They longed for a society where they need not face constant perils; an environment where todayâs achievement could be furthered tomorrow without fear of it being demolished, confiscated or stolen. They wanted a world where their children would be spared the unnecessary hazards of predacious savages. They fought alongside those they inspired, fully willing to die for their dream, and became legends of human greatness. Do such people still exist? Where are they now? Hint: they are in industry. They had won their freedom to act, and now they are acting.
An industrial revolution is what happens when men are set free. It may have a name associated to a past event, but it is actually a human beingâs natural response to his surroundings when nothing stands in his way. Prosperity, honestlydistributed, is what only freedom can regulate. Someone has to stand in every eraâthose who are part scientist and part adventurerâto speak and to lead. It doesnât matter whether the task is leading men to fight or leading them to produce; such men can do both equally well when called upon. All such men prefer prosperity to violence, but choose the latter when they witness corruption gaining a foothold on our civilization. Men like William Wallace of Scotlandâthe strong, reluctant warrior, the man of unimpeachable integrity and spirit seeing nothing but his right to be, guarding nothing but the integrity of menâwill pick up their weapons again when the law tells them that the government monopoly on force allows the citizens no right to defend themselves against it. The warriors have not died off, and will never die.
Every successive generation asks, âWhat are we here for?â Moral Warriors are the men who have answered that question. We absorb the same fables, stories and legendsâthe great battles of good and evilâall sharing the same elements of innocence oppressed, to be quelled by innocence grown strong. We address the same universal problems as time moves on, passing to future generations the peace of ours. But for the most part, modern warriors use words now. We are free in America; we can speak. Words are swords without the âs,â and they are powerful weapons. Every utterance of integrity is a blow to evil and a plus to the side of life. With our freedom of speech, the concentrations of evil have been disallowed a monopoly on Manâs conveyances to men, and an unprecedented era of productivity has been the result.
Why is the cognitive process so important to a Moral Warrior? Because when virtue is allowed to pass undefined, then so is vice. Sound conceptualization is responsible for all human furtherance. As nature determined our cognitive process, its proper utilization is at the root of every moral action. With the understanding of conceptualization comes the understanding of every moral violation.It is from the negation or perversion of proper conceptual construction that all twists come. The base of nonexistenceâof that which isnât realâis derived from that which is. A negation of any one of the four elementsâperception, identification, creative action or rewardâallows a man to be taken advantage of, and a lack of its comprehension on our part dulls our sensitivity to the risk.
By virtue of the fact that we live, that which is harmonious with life is what we must respect. In our individual lives and in our history as Man, with an interest to see our code make sense it is rational principles weâve supported, while ignoring, tolerating or opposing the senseless. We have been morally correct implicitly through our reverence for the joy-generating potency of our experiences, even in our memories. But without a clear standard to judge moral or immoral ideas, we were unable to get a fix on their identity, allowing them to recur in our own lives, in our relationships and in our law. Yet we still revere what is right: the ideals in Man that we cherish are his life-defending, life-furthering traits: the unflinching nerve, the candid honor, the powerful ability, the free, proud, radiant joy of a being who is calm, confident and in controlâall elements of the four basic virtues.
A lifetime of evidence validating this process is behind the steady eyes and frightening potency of a Moral Warrior. The man who reaches the point beyond all doubtâthe point of total conviction by rational meansâwho grew as Self-made, yet has spent serious time immersed in the world of the Spirit Murderers, who knows their evasions, their escapes and their denials, the man who learns to answer them in every context and watches them fold in their true impotence, time and time again, becomes untouchablepsychologically. With pure honesty, there are no longer any psychological threats to fear. With full willingness to see ourselves, we will have eliminated them. The right shields are up; beautiful, clear, impenetrable shields, through which nothing can ever cut too deep. When you can breathe deeply and, with steady eyes, are able to see whatâs right and wrong and who stands where, no danger is ever too frightening; not even death.
Our pursuit of life is not evil and never was. Thought and knowledge are the tools of Man, and Man is their proper benefactor. The offenses borne against our pursuit were the actual evil, but self-defense is only the beginning. Once the way is clear, the freedom it affordsâthe clean pathways to new heights and sacred rewardsâwill open a whole new destiny before us. We amass within ourselves the wealth of a precision instrument, brimming with radiant activity; a controlled storm that took years to master, and we are free to create life in the most adventurous and exciting ways. That is our nature, our birth-right, our destiny and our glory.
There are inertias that one can pick up on based on oneâs choices in life and oneâs likely future choices. Every choice we make immediately generates positive or negative energy; it immediately begins physiological preparation for the actions to come. This is a fascinating contemplation for me; an untapped cognitive ability I have termed Inertial Awareness. Its popular name is ESP, which is actually a way of saying what it is not. In time, I wish to find a valid philosophical link to what has been considered the proper domain of mysticism. I donât think it is mystical at all; it begins and ends in our minds. It is not a sixth sense, as it is not sensory; but simply an untapped facet of Manâs integrating capacity. Thoughts, however complete in themselves, are not static. They have momentum; they are preceded and followed by other thoughts as are the motions of your body. Your intuitive responses are reflections of your own lifeâs inertia, in a given context at the time of the intuition.
It is an amazing feeling to know in advance how things will come out at any range, long or short. I think of extreme sports, such as the sensation of a bicycle freestylist accelerating into the air on takeoff, reaching weightlessness, then falling back to the ramp. He knows by his approach if all will go well. He knows by his takeoff, how he will land; every fiber of his being can feel it before it happens. The smell of the air, his position on the ramp, the wind on his back, the feeling of the grips and pedals; his overall balance determines his overall confidence. This translates to any other activity. Making a business decision, walking down the stairs, driving a car on a winding roadâyou know what to expect; the pattern repeats. The inertia of now, indicates the inertia of the next moment. It is predictable.
All actions are energies whose âabstraction to physical actionâ neurobiological link is yet to be discovered, but they can be used now for forward thinking. I take actions that further the inertias in my lifeâthe paths I wish to see furthered. When I make a wrong turn, the inertias stop. I do what is necessary to get back on track. It can be any choiceâthe wrong person, a wrong business affiliation or the wrong approach. When it is correct or corrected, the inertias I wish to further are invigorated. As only the right equation will solve a problem of science, I believe that moral consistency is the key to make use of Inertial Awareness: the concept is integrity. Contrary to the claim of psychic hotlines, inertias do not determine your destiny; your premises do. As your premises evolve, your actions change; and so follow your inertias.
What part do emotions play in cognition? The hero of any story is always a just, strong, honorable mind, compelling an able body into action. Notice how his negative emotions are a reaction to the conflict and not an element of the solution. Notice how his elation is a resultof his victory and the restoration of peace, earned and deserved after the battle was won; a desired result, but not the reason of success. Emotions are never sought for solutions to crucial problemsâsolutions of any problem. Notice how emotions are a reaction to a stimulus, positive or negative, which was a result of a happening or a thought. They are never the reason for action, but an indicator of an eventâs significance to our own conditions and possibilities. Emotions are strictly resultant factors. They ride the torrent of our environmental exposure, reading our health, pride, fear and pain with precision, revealing our own deepest estimate of a personâs or a contextâs significance to us. All possible emotions are importantâgood and bad. They are estimates, giving an indication of the soundness of our course. As an intensity gauge, emotions measure virtue or vice, reward or penalty.
Emotions are not volitional phenomenon, butthe resultof volitional phenomenon; the result of choices. They are the finished product of actions taken earlier. Wherever they are encountered in the chain, they confirm the correct path, or warn of trouble ahead. They signal a fork in the road, indicating an alternate route, but they do not provide the map. Proper or improper cognitive effort is responsible for every human action.
Self-made Man considers his emotions to be just one of many gauges on his control panel, and patterns his intellectual effort to use his mind most effectively. He does not ignore them, but payâs strict attention, as to every other measure of health. He traces back through what led him to feel certain emotions, in order to continue their causes or to eliminate them. Once the source of an emotion is understood, it can be reproduced and harnessed as fuel; a concentration of power that can be used for some constructive end. He knows that if a negative emotion remains undefined, its power will rob energy from his sacred goals and possibly destroy them, along with his enjoyment of life. Morally, Self-made Man is motivated by the anticipation of all the pleasure that can be obtained by bettering his condition.
A mind at every turn chooses right or wrong, good or bad. It is simply a choiceâa decision madeâeither based on reason, or based on non-reason. Fear and elation are not perceptual existents, they are psycho-physiological reactions based on the projection of dread and eagerness, which is itself a product of proper or improper conceptual effort. Emotions are a second-level resultant indicator; their implications are accounted for by reason, reason being the faculty of judgment which is rooted in your five-sense awareness, and is the only sound, predictable, repeatable base in which to entrust any decision.
There has always been this debate over the subconscious mind, and whether it is master over our lives and motivations, or servant. To Self-made Man, it is servant. What is the purpose of the conscious versus the subconscious mind? The conscious mind is the integrator, the organizer of percepts, from which concepts are derived, acted on, and whose bounty is then harvested. The subconscious is the automatizerof concepts frequently acted on by oneâs consciousness. It has no knowledge other than that which we give it, through repetition of our conscious effort. We pace ourselves with a certain practice until we understand it, then as it becomes automatic, it is released from conscious control and delegated to the subconscious, allowing the conscious mind to grasp new material. As our efficiency raises, our minor actions become automated, while our major goal remains conscious, and continues to expand in whatever direction our conscious mind chooses. If we make no determination of course, we float, and stillget what weâre after; itâs only that ârandom messâ was replaced as the goal.
The concept of willis just the honest application of the process of cognition, of open perceptionâof honest identificationâof disciplined, rational action and of gratifying reward. Human will is nota subconscious attribute, though prior automatization can serve to undercut our will or to fortify it. The subconscious makes no choices; it has no faculty by which to make them. The subconscious needs direction from the conscious mind. All it does is operate automated processes based on our accepted premises. If we automate unsound processes, it will operate them without question, and our resulting misery will continue as long as we evade the responsibility to correct them. Perceptiveness, evasion, introspection or its avoidance, are first set in motion by being the subject of the conscious mind. Whatever we dwell on, we train the subconscious to evoke and maintain. We control the subconscious whether we accept that responsibility or not, and controlling its automatization can produce fascinating results, to be explored in future works.
Remember those starlit nights of youth, lying on the hood of a car, contemplating the limitless galaxy and all of our possibilities? It implied future action, and was an experience of the exhilarating use of consciousness. The very term âquestionâ is derived from the word quest. Those nights should have followed us into adulthood. We get so involved in our routines, that little energy is left to contemplate what we are all doing here. Topics concerning the universe, social movements and the boundless power of our minds can stem into anything, and most people havenât taken the time to understand the root of it all. The magnificent complexity of our civilization provokes thoughts that can branch off in countless directions. Most believe that every mind creates its own reality, that every branch of life has its own tree, and then itâs too overwhelming a task to investigate them all. But how much simpler would it be if all branches led to the same trunk?
All sound concepts begin grounded in the axioms of existence itself, and consciousness as the faculty of perceiving existence. These concepts are not different for individual people; they are valid and useful for anyone who picks them up. We all use the same dictionaries as they all condense data about the same world. The axiom of existence spans and underlies the complete range of human awarenessâof everything that will ever come within our grasp, encompassing the subjects of mankindâs entire tree of knowledge. The parallel drawn between all branches of human intelligence, is the means and structure of their accumulation. As all limbs of a tree are of similar form, so grows our mental structure and the information it containsâall in this pattern of genus and differentia. If you zoom in, youâll notice that one branch is medicine, while another might be plumbing. Zoom in even closer and youâll see a detailed account of a limb or of the circulatory systemâhow it works, what helps or hinders it and how one repairs its internal and external maladies. While higher concepts of one branch save individual lives, concepts of the other make it easier to live those lives by feeding electricity, gas and water to all human establishments. Zoom in on the other, and its branches reveal the technical intricacies on the space shuttle, in complex machinery, in our homes, businesses, cars and hospitals. Other offshoots such as law on the branch of politics protect our freedoms and make life worth living. All branches of knowledge as all branches of a tree, live dependent on their trunk, and any separation means death for the limb. It is the trunk which is rooted in the groundâthat gathers nutrition and provides the living energy to expand and reach new heights. In other words, any disconnection from existence invalidates a concept.
Healthy, valid concepts all serve the same ultimate purposeâproviding data on which men can act. Each branch is held and furthered by the men who harbor that specific interest. There is no central location for the entirety of mankindâs knowledge. The knowledge exists by grace of the specializations of every human being. We all build a knowledge tree, tailored to our own specific interests. The stability and worth of our tree depends on how deeply our roots delve into the soil of existence.
Building the Tree.Our epistemological structure is the father of all scientific classification. If you remember from biology, the animal kingdom is classified by the following tree: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. The intention of this method of course, is to integrate data into a single whole. The act of gathering, validating and placing knowledge along this chain is integration.From any point on this tree to any other, a chain is formed. At any time, you should be able to see where you came from, where you are and where you are going. This should be true for any tree you amass on any subject. There can be no indetermination at any step. Indetermination is the end of every chain of knowledgeâas knowledge is the defined and the determinable. A fuzzy element breaks the chain and cannot be considered knowledge until its full definition is discovered. There is no room for what âmight beâ in fact; either it is or it isnât. Fuzz is where epistemological order ceases, waiting for and dependent on, the faculty of reason to deduce the subjectâs exact identity. Identifying the missing links in oneâs life and taking the steps to acquire them is the progress required of every volitional consciousness. A self-made rational man does not accept approximations into his epistemological chains, only at the non-useful (as of yet) ends. His judgment is based on sound reasoning, considering all of the elements necessary to draw conclusions. He is thorough in life, in order to thoroughly enjoy it. A step by step progression of logic is the convincing factor; the only means to conviction.The development of conviction is the road to intransigence,led by the practice and automatization of leaving no stone unturned in the validation of every premise.
âI am.â is the shortest sentence in the English language, and with a romantic imagination, maybe the first. The second was probably the first subversion: âIâm not.â Having been developed at a primitive level some two million years ago, language was created for inter-species relations, and became the key abstract means for identifying, cataloging and passing on knowledge.
The origin of our language begins in the common vocal range of a man. A variety of individual sounds that can be made without strain were refined to comprise our alphabet, and form approximately 158,000 different sound combinations. They allow a concise, phonically-clear conveyance to be spoken and understood. Our system allows no meaning to the concept of âA,â beyond its visual representation of the sound made. A fundamental advantage exists in this type of language, as its components maintain no fixed correlation to ideas. In contrast, the Chinese language has only 1,600 sound combinations, severely limiting the number of spoken words. Their alphabet is comprised of about three-thousand commonly used character-words (out of sixty-thousand) which define preset ideas,yet the combinations of our twenty-six are nearly limitless, as are our comparative advancements. Why? To hamper expression is to limit individual progress, which is to limit social progress; and this in part, is the reason the language spoken by the greatest number of people on Earth is rarely used outside Asian borders. Their symbols denote prior meaning, and therefore tax the creation of new meaning, skipping an essential cognitive step. Ours provides no ideas from which a consciousness must begin, allowing it an empty slateâfull freedom to use the tool without the interference of non-self-derived, non-cognitive elements.
The definition of our every word denotes a specific, exact concept. Concept-formation is a sub-concept itself, of identification. The cognitive progression goes: existence, consciousness, perception, identification, concept-formation. It is obvious how the first step of perception precedes this second step of identification. To identify and integrate efficiently, one must see as clearly as possible to grasp and define the greatest number of attributes of any given entity. The simplest concepts are of perceptionâthe words formed to represent physical objects, such as the concept pencil.All entities observed on the planet are given names, as are all attributes of entities. The observation of their attributes forms these sub-concepts, such as arms and legsâof a man, a dog and a frog, excluding the arm of a chair, as the subset biologicalbecomes implicit in the trend. Such associations are created and can branch and be cross-referenced infinitely, given their relevance to human application. Entities spawn all abstract concepts as well, in attributes such as dimension, mass, energy, speed and trajectoryâin the size of an atom, the energy of the sun and the speed of light. The definition of a concept indicates where it came from, pinpointing its location and differentiating itself from all other concepts on Manâs tree of knowledge, and spawns derivative concepts of its own.
Practical use and clear conveyance of these concepts is a result of clear understanding, achieved by a focused mind. The discipline to understand them exactly, determines the quality of our actions and the ultimate quality of our lives. Words are like building blocks. They are what they are, they mean what they mean, and you can build what you want with them. When you discover or create something new, you combine words or signify a new word to describe it. Some understand the medium and built skyscrapers. Some corrupt good concepts to knock them down. There is a clear link to why the worldâs most popular language shares that stature alongside the worldâs standard of monetary value: the American dollar. One respects free will, while the other is stabilized by the exercise of free will. The existence of such concepts as passion, justice, rationality, precision, tenacity, effectiveness, intransigence and independence, presuppose great men of the past who didbuild and reached great heights.
The first steps of a human consciousness as identified and trained in children by the world renowned Dr. Maria Montessori, were designed to explore and master the full range of Manâs perceptual capacity. Her work focused on the subtle differentiation and integration of all facets of each sense, by comprehending the graduations of differing yet similar existents. Her blocks of graduating dimension in length, width, height, weight and shape allowed order to be established by sight and feel, by each sense independently or together. Her bells of graduating tone awakened the mind to the awareness of and differences in, tonal quality. Tactile sensitivity learned by assessing and organizing shapes and textures while voluntarily blindfolded, led into the simplified causal connections of round pegs into round holes. The tying of bows, fastening of buttons, snaps, and zippers transformed fumbling motor skills into practical, graceful motion. Her methods held the implicit truth that differentiationis the key to comprehension, which laid the foundation for sound independent judgment. Bringing sense and order to our perceptual tools is the springboard to an elegant, intellectually and emotionally mature future.
By training the structureof a childâs consciousness, she prepared them for assimilating its future content.We use the four elements of a volitional consciousnessâperception, identification, productive action, and rewardâto validate and then store this data we then reference, in order to live. As a result, we have developed methods which measure and classify this data, according to the manner in which it was obtained. The first of our abstract creations was language;the second was mathematics.Their derivatives include the conceptual structure of genus and differentia,and the standards of measurement by which we identify and make use of the data received by each sense. Light and sound waves, the chemical compositions determining flavors and aromas, and the facets of touch: texture, pressure, temperature, sensual enjoyment and pain, can all be broken down into compositions and quantities along scales designed to be useful to Man. Such knowledge then leads to the means by which we can observe, measure and classify entities which exist well outside of our perceptual range. Every scientific and industrial instrument of Man is designed to extend the range of our senses, from the perceptual realm into the conceptual realm. We cannot see microorganisms, but with an electron microscope, we can. We canât grab radio waves from the air for our own enjoyment, but with a receiver, we can. We canât fight off menacing carnivores with our bare hands, but with the American Bill of Rights, we can.
Taking a few steps deeper can assure us of the proper foundation, as if digging into the Earth to view the roots of a tree. Moving from Dr. Montessoriâs mastery of our perceptual ranges into adult conceptualization, we should validate its origin. The answer lies in mathematics and the physiological workings of the human organismâin how we deal with individual existents and groups of existents. If a number of sticks were placed before you, how many could you perceive before having to count? Looking at ///, its no problem. Looking at /////, most could still reproduce the picture with little difficulty. Move to //////, and most minds hesitate, and have to count. But show six as /// ///, and one has no problem grasping it quickly. The reason is the separation, which is the foundation and purpose of conceptualization: to bring information about the world into our perceptual range, so that it may be dealt with efficiently. Five to six units is the limit for most people, myself included, where the mind begins to reduce the complexity of input to manageable levels, along one of two roads: the conceptual and the mathematical.
Remember the scene in Rain Manwhere Dustin Hoffmanâs autistic character counts toothpicks in quantities of 48, but cannot comprehend the concept âdollarâ? That is an example of a mind whose full range is utilized perceptually, and cannot graduate to the next step of concept-formation. The perceptual faculty of a healthy mind permits only so many elements at once, and begins to condense information by the process of concept-formation, upon reaching that threshold. The creation of language and math is the means to that end.
The elements of a single thought are the foundation upon which every wonder of Man has been built, and need to be understood explicitly if we are to comprehend and own any firm moral convictions. The most important phase in our ethical maturation is gaining explicit understanding of the structure by which Man accumulates and validates his knowledge. Most understand and accept that a healthy diet, exercise and posture for the body are ideal, yet do not grasp that a healthy posture also exists for a consciousness: the structure for an unlimited database, which only the discipline of reason can build and reference.
Being carbon-based, water and oxygen sustained entities, men require all the same nutrients to survive. The needs of water and oxygen are axiomatic,or in other words, are self-evident, foundational truths. Axiomatic needs are fundamentally irrefutable and reach substantially deeper than most imagine. They transcend these obvious physical associations to reveal links directly into conceptual processes. Every manâs mind classifies information alike, building concepts in a standard pattern, and we either learn to hamper this natural design, or learn to act in accordance with it. The process is called conceptualization,and we run it at some level, all day long.
The proper means of cognition is in itself, an achievement. It is achieved, not grantedâearned, not automaticârespected, not forced. And it can be learned any time one assumes the responsibility to do so. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed, and the proper utilization of the mind must be accepted by all those who intend to think, to live and to enjoy livingâthe aim of the Self-made. Accountable conceptualization isthe abstract axiomatic necessity of life sustenance for Man. It isnât a separate issue to our need of air and water, but an extension of the same requirement, moving from direct sensate observation to conceptual observationâdriven by the capacity of volition. Its first step, perception,is the open integration of clear, coherent sensory data. Perception must be used in any observation of existential matter, and in any communication with others. The second step, identification, is the mental effort extended to distinguish the objects of oneâs perceptions, their attributes and actions, for classification of all existential data along a rational hierarchy. To give them namesâto name their attributes, to measure their motions and characteristicsâis a hierarchy called an epistemological chainof knowledge. Its links reveal the origin, components and ultimate purpose of any concept. Proper integration builds oneâs knowledge of the world into a non-contradictory whole, from which sound choices can be made. Reason is the process of making those sound choices, reflecting off this base to establish plans for the third step, productive action.The process of reason, or rationality,accumulates and unites every pertinent detail to arrive at a well-informed conclusion determining oneâs course of action. The fourth and final step is the product of all that has come before; the result.For Self-made Men, most often the result is a reward, a beneficial outcome achieved by intention, such as a positive emotional state, a thought provoking observation, a paycheck, or the United States of America.
Reward is often mistaken to be only a resultant factor, not a part of the process. Reward is not an element separate from cognitionânot an isolated result that can be expropriated or divided in any way from that which it was borneâbut contains vital, essential information to the soundness of oneâs cognitive process, and determines the steadfastness of course or of its correction. Another word for âresultâ in the cognitive process is validation.The moral import of this process is that it istheelife-serving means of existential control for Man, and every step is optional, though the consequences of their evasion are not. Nature cannot force you to compose thought; it can only force you to decompose. A man must accept life as his standard of valueâas his basic referentâby choice, and conceptualization is the fundamental life-patternâthe definitive attribute of a human being. Self-made Man displays the cognitive willingness to exercise every aspect of the process until it is automatized, because he wants to live at the highest, most humanlevel possible, to earn and enjoy the greatest pride.
All living entities run a cycle of accumulation, processing and the result, which is either a reward or penalty. Often considered an involuntary biological process, it is the pattern of cognition as well. The living patterns of Self-made Men all share this structure and can be seen at all levels of rational, civil human endeavor: free-market economics (Capitalism), sound business organizations, democratic elections, the evolution of the space program, Olympic training, choosing a career, the process of eating,âŠthe list is endless. All human action has a purposeâan end in mindâand leads back to its origin; the elements which compose a single thought. The purpose of this cause and effect relationship is to produce confidenceâan axiomatic need for a non-automatic consciousnessâwhich acts as a constant barometer of physical and spiritual health. Animals supposedly have instincts to guide themâa set course to followâso confirmation of sound cognition is unnecessary. All they need is a predictable environment to act in. Regardless of what is considered the primary causal factor, a disruption at any step affects the rest; it is a natural continuum. Studies have shown that when an animalâs life-pattern of âeffort for sustenanceâ is interrupted with penalties when expecting rewards, it will quit eatingârefusing to exist in a world it cannot comprehendâand this is true for us as well.
Confidence is the emotional aggregate resulting from the status of oneâs condition regarding the primary alternativeâlife or death. It involves data encompassing how well oneâs chosen premises are achieving oneâs desired endsâoneâs intellectual and physical health. Confidence attained is never a fixed state. It needs replenishing even more frequently than the body needs food. Confidence results from our every day-to-day action and it varies from brimming to anemic, just as our situations vary. Iâm sure you can remember getting a job and suffering the embarrassment of a poor initial performance, which with critical apprehension was rectified quickly to your relief, as you settled into the work. Imagine reliving that experience every moment. Imagine if every right turn was supposed to be a left. If we didnât make most moves in life correctly, the stress alone would kill us off in no time. Pride or self-esteem is our awareness that our actions are correct. By adding to and building our confidence, they indicate that our ability to satisfy the requirements of existence has proven effective. A sense of prideful confidence is a part of the continuum for a rational being, a reward we have to earn and deserve, and which we could not live without.
