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What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It’s what makes us human beings.

Rollo May

Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.
ROLLO MAY

Admire Compulsive Fight Narcissism Ned One Praise Underminem Courage Vanity
Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.
ROLLO MAY

Anything Effective Feel Live Most People Powerless
Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
ROLLO MAY

Against Aleck Community Competitive Contemporary Experience Factor Important Individualism Militate
Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
ROLLO MAY

Deed Establish Esteem Largely Perform Self Society Those Try Violence
All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
ROLLO MAY

Artist Brush Communicating Feeling Like Meaningful Paint Share Something Way World
Humor is the healthy way of feeling “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective.
ROLLO MAY

Distance Feel Healthy Humor Look Perspective Problem Self Stand Way
A mien which seems to say, “You are looking at somebody now.” For this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
ROLLO MAY

Depend Essentially Fall Inner Look Love Men Now Return Seem Sense Somebody Sudden Today
Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.
ROLLO MAY

Being Bring Creativity Into Process Something
Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
ROLLO MAY

Against Being Culture Every Human Me Must Point Say Stand
I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
ROLLO MAY

Active Cure Heal Learn Myself Need Participate Process
One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
ROLLO MAY

Age Anxiety Aware Become Blessing Few Fierce Living One Ourselbeevs
Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.
ROLLO MAY

Curing Explore Help Himself Mean Person Somebody Something Therapy
Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
ROLLO MAY

Arise Out Power Powerlessness Superfully Violence
Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.
ROLLO MAY

Achieve Anxiety Capacity Courage Freedom Meet Write
Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.
ROLLO MAY

Artist Chaos Create Form Genesis God Immerse Into Love Order Out Themselves
One of the easiest ways to be irresponsible about power is to forget you have it.
ROLLO MAY

Forget Have Irresponsible One Easiest Power Way

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