Sunday 19 May 2013

Courage To Walk Alone




“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”

This is one of my very favorite quotes. It celebrates individuality and embraces the idea that in order to live, we must not follow, but lead ourselves.

So often we all fall into the assumptions life should be lived according to what our religions, traditions or learned moral values teach us. The comfort of knowing what is expected drives most to live a predictable life. We all get into a routine and when we begin to wonder where life went; we are old and gray, regretting all the things we did not do. Many of us day dream about things we are only brave enough to do in our imagination and when it comes to taking that first step to putting that dream to work, we doubt ourselves.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

We doubt because we allow fear to question our commitment to the crowd; we allow fear to convince us we will be scolded and shunned for taking that first step to walk alone; we assume traditions and moral values are beliefs which cannot be bent or edited to become our own version.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When you are struggling with taking that first step to walk alone, ask yourself if that step is done for LOVE. LOVE for yourself and LOVE for LIFE. Often times we allow ourselves to stay stuck in a bad, miserable or unhealthy situation because we are afraid of the backlash we may get from the crowd if we decide to leave. If you live your LIVE with LOVE as your main driver, you will only reciprocate that energy and more will come right back to you.

There are old heads in the world that cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In a crowd, people are like each other and strive to be so. Walking alone, your example is yourself. You learn to be better than you were yesterday and realize dictating your own life is more beneficial than using someone else as your example to be like. Many influential people in the world walked alone, they realized their potential was only limited when they compared themselves to someone else.
It’s not what you are that holds you back; it’s what you think you’re not. ~ Denis Waitley


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