No matter how smart you are, if you don’t exchange values, you’ll starve to death. For one thing, being self-sufficient enables survival, but self-sufficiency is only possible if you have your own assets and can borrow from others. However, even with existing assets, one can only survive through minimal labor and effort, which means engaging in productive activities. Thus, having great intelligence and applying that intelligence to productive activities are two different things. Even if you aren’t brilliant, you can survive if you are productive. It’s essential to identify the productive activities in which I excel and those where I need improvement. If I understand that, I must act without looking back. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”
Fear and doubt are brothers from the same root. They are born together from the root of trust and gnaw away at peace and audacity . Fear is the outward emotional expression of doubt, and it is the fuel that energizes doubts to grow. Doubt feeds on your fear and helps keep it from being set aside. In other words, between doubt and fear, the counterweight of ego serves as the center of gravity. If pride weighs down doubts, it blames others; if it weighs down fears, it finds justifiable reasons and surrenders will. A state in which pride is precisely balanced between doubt and fear is called conflict. So, although conflict intentionally seems to be polite to others, emotionally, it constantly forces them to engage in self-defense against regret in advance. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”