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A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

Rollo May

Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
ROLLO MAY

Ability Choose Freedom Pause Real Response Stimulus
The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them.
ROLLO MAY

Acorn Automatic Become Commitment Growth Mean Necessary Oak
Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
ROLLO MAY

Become Ethical Factory Mithilism Person Result Science Want
Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us?
ROLLO MAY

Courage Effect Inescapable Intimacy Know Outlet Relationship Require Risk
There is no authentic inner freedom that does not, sooner or later, also affect and change human history.
ROLLO MAY

Affect Authentic Change Freedom History Human Inner Later Sooner
People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.
ROLLO MAY

Day Decision Dignity Make Multitude People Worth
Courage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.
ROLLO MAY

Courage Crucial Decision Freedom Hour Little Occasional Only Own Person Place REquired
Forge in the smithy of your soul.
ROLLO MAY

Fire Smithy Soul
To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.
ROLLO MAY

Believe ContrAction Doubt Fully Greater Moment Presuppose Respect Same
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
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
Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.
ROLLO MAY

Achievement Automatically Bound Come Day E Ach Freedom Gain Single
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
There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.
ROLLO MAY

Change Courage Lack Nobis Totally
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
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
ROLLO MAY

Conformity Courage Cowardice Opposite Society
The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
ROLLO MAY

Free People Purpose Pyschothraphy Set
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
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
Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him.
ROLLO MAY

Best Center Contribution Fellow Men Find Long Makem Our Ourselves Run Strength
We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one’s total orientation to life.
ROLLO MAY

Assumption Define Meaning Region
Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
ROLLO MAY

Among Courage Fidelity Love Personal Value Virtue
One does not become fully human painlessly.
ROLLO MAY

Become Does Human Not One Painlessly
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
ROLLO MAY

Habit Human Being Ironic Lost Way
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
ROLLO MAY

Arise Between Creativity Limitation Spontaneously Tension
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
The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
ROLLO MAY

Constructive Deal First Learn Live Moment Necesaaty Present Reality Thing Time

A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

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A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

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