“… and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

13 January

You and I, all of us, have had this experience: you suffer from low self confidence because there’s an ogre inside that says, on a regular basis, "you wet your pants in kindergarten, and don’t you EVER forget it!"

Countering that ogre clearly is a multi-faceted process maybe lasting a lifetime, but surely for you as for me includes the help of a mentor, someone close to you who NOTICED, someone who said/did the exact right thing to get you to take those first few halting, stammering, fear-filled steps, and before you knew it you extended beyond your comfort zones and did what you were convinced was impossible. Maybe the only thing he did to stoke the fire of your self esteem was simply to make you feel welcome. Maybe all he did was say, “How are you?” and meant it. But whatever he did, your self confidence shot up exponentially. With his subtle help you went from "I could never do that" to "If he can do that so can I" and finally to "if I did that then I can do this now." And almost without your noticing it, you stopped being such a welter of shyness and defeatism anymore – you stopped pandering ogres!

[By the way, remember to pay it forward. Now it’s your job to NOTICE, to be the mentor to someone who dutifully, 24/7, ever panders to ogres.]