Sizing up everyone but themselves

W. Austin Gardner • April 8, 2022

Human nature seems to endow people with the ability to size up everybody in the world but themselves.

Author Sydney J. Harris observed, “If you’re not comfortable with yourself you can’t be comfortable with others.” I would take that one step further. If you do not believe in yourself, you will sabotage relationships.

In most situations, I am the problem. My mentalities, my pictures, my expectations, form the biggest obstacles to my success.” If you want to keep from becoming your own worst enemy, you have to look at yourself realistically.

Critic Samuel Johnson advised that “he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove.”

stop blaming others, look at ourselves, and do the hard work of resolving the issues that are causing us problems. If you want to have better relationships with others, then stop, look in the mirror, and start working on yourself.

John C. Maxwell, Winning with People: Discover the People Principles That Work for You Every Time (Nashville, TN: HarperCollins Leadership, 2007).

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