Polonius:This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!Laertes:Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
"To thine own self be true" is Polonius's last piece of advice to his son Laertes, who is in a hurry to get on the next boat to Paris, where he'll be safe from his father's long-winded speeches [see NEITHER A BORROWER NOR A LENDER BE].
To Thine Own Self Be True
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Polonius has in mind something much more Elizabethan than the New Age self-knowledge that the phrase now suggests. As Polonius sees it, borrowing money, loaning money, carousing with women of dubious character, and other intemperate pursuits are "false" to the self. By "false" Polonius seems to mean "disadvantageous" or "detrimental to your image"; by "true" he means "loyal to your own best interests." Take care of yourself first, he counsels, and that way you'll be in a position to take care of others. There is wisdom in the old man's warnings, of course; but he repeats orthodox platitudes with unwonted self-satisfaction. Polonius, who is deeply impressed with his wordliness, has perfected the arts of protecting his interests and of projecting seeming virtues, his method of being "true" to others. Never mind that this includes spying on Hamlet for King Claudius. Never mind, as well, that many of Polonius's haughty, if not trite, kernels of wisdom are now taken as Shakespeare's own wise pronouncements on living a proper life.
The quote is one of the best-known excerpts from the play, and one of the most commonly used today. But, it reveals a great deal more about the character who speaks it, Polonius, than comes through in contemporary contexts. Polonius is a scheming, backstabbing, hypocritical character who eavesdrops and gets himself killed. He provides his son with the advice included in the long monologue below but does not follow it himself.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,For loan oft loses both itself and friend,And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.
In my life and work, I've found that honesty comes with goodness. My mother used to say, and she was quoting Shakespeare, "This above all: To thine own self be true." In the rehearsal studio, I strive to be as true to myself as I possibly can. For me, the studio is hallowed ground, where the realities of self and spirit are revealed. There is a sense that I am breathing rarified air, special and pure, like on Mount Everest. And in the studio, on this higher ground, we are unified in purpose. Everyone in the room is vulnerable.
Once, I had a dancer who was a beautiful dancer with a gorgeous body. But I couldn't get him to express himself. He had to go further. He had to tell me his journey, his emotional center, but he wouldn't. One time we were in rehearsal. He had a five-minute solo. He did it once. He was breathing hard. I said, "Do it again." The second time he was so exhausted he had no choice: He had to go deeper. He was honest. He arrived. It was exquisite.
As dancers, we need to bring our life experiences to the stage. We don't just want to thrill an audience with how many turns we can do or how high we can jump or raise our legs. Plenty of people can do that with practice. We need to share our truth. When a performance stands out, it's not just the arms and legs that stay in your mind. What you remember is the feeling you get from the performance, and that feeling comes from the dancers' expression of self.
One of the requirements in the Dutch regulation for euthanasia and assisted suicide is that the doctor must be satisfied 'that the patient's suffering is unbearable, and that there is no prospect of improvement.' In the notorious Chabot case, a psychiatrist assisted a 50 year old woman in suicide, although she did not suffer from any somatic disease, nor strictly speaking from any psychiatric condition. In Seduced by Death, Herbert Hendin concluded that apparently the Dutch regulation now allows physicians to assist anyone in suicide simply because he or she is unhappy. In this paper, I reject Hendin's conclusion and in particular his description of Mrs Boomsma as someone who was 'simply unhappy.' After a detailed narration of her lifestory, I turn to the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt's account of volitional incapacity and love for a more accurate characterization of her suffering. Having been through what she had, she could only go on living as another person than the one she had been when she was a happy mother. That would have violated her integrity, and that she could not bring herself to do.
It is extremely difficult to be authentic all the time. But it is worth so much more than just knowing that you are mindful of what you do. According to psychologists, being true to yourself helps you feel pure about yourself. It encourages you to help others. Living authentically allows you to be selfless and do things for other people. But for this, you must also bring in consistency throughout your actions.
One of the most common reasons for addiction is low self-worth. People tend to abuse substance when they have low self-esteem. Besides, a lack of goals in life can also influence your decision to abuse alcohol. Fortunately, studies have repeatedly shown that goal determination can help you keep yourself off of drugs. Choosing a purposeful life can allow you to overcome alcohol abuse because it helps you focus on a different aspect of your life.
You are the only one in the whole world that can truly know what you want from your business. There is a saying from the great William Shakespeare in his play Hamlet, "To thine own self be true." These are powerful words. No matter how close another person is to your dreams, only you can truly know what you hope to achieve. No one else can come close to the intimate knowledge that you have of yourself and the success you seek in your business. You have to be willing to be you; all the time; no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You have to be willing to stand confident in where you want your company to go and how you want to take it there.
Sometimes in business you have to be willing to stand up for yourself. And sometimes that means you have to be willing to stand alone. Standing alone can be scary, but what is important to remember is when you know that something is right for your business, you have to be willing to fight for it. Don't let others, who are reacting from fear, deter you from walking in the path that will take your company to new heights.
It could be that you have done a lot of work to climb and build and you just need a break. That is okay too. Taking a break and reassessing is a good thing. Once you have done that you will find yourself ready to climb again. When you start to "Shake it UP" you will put yourself in positions that help you to keep building, keep climbing, and keep learning about your business and what you want from it.
These days, most of the time we hear people say "to thine ownself be true," they are speaking literally. And it seems like pretty good advice, especially for people heading off to college, taking a new job, or making big changes in their lives. It's important to remember to be yourself and not change for other people.
This advice has been used as a self-help slogan. It's put on greeting cards, wall art, and more recently, used in a lot of tattoos. People are proclaiming to the world: we want to be who we are, without anyone else defining us. And that's a good thing.
If Cupid was really in the business of creating fulfilling and lasting relationships, we would see his arrows pointing towards boosting self-esteem. Besides, who needs a special day to have chocolate anyway?
One of the core principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12-step addiction-recovery program, is authenticity. At least two of the steps emphasize the importance of honest moral inventory, and the AA "chip" -- the medallion handed out to commemorate periods of continued sobriety -- reads, "To thine own self be true."
The people who created AA back in the 1930s were not scientists or philosophers, but the early literature contains many insights that scientists have verified in intervening years. The link between authenticity and morality and psychological health is not intuitively obvious. Some philosophers have indeed argued that the desire to be authentic -- to act in a way that is consistent with one's values and sense of self -- is linked to well-being. But others have just as forcefully argued the opposite: that learning to express thoughts and feelings that obscure one's true inner state is an important adaptation for successful living.
A team of psychological scientists has been working to resolve this issue empirically. Francesca Gino, Maryam Kouchaki and Adam Galinsky -- from the business schools at Harvard, Northwestern and Columbia, respectively -- are not interested in addiction recovery as such, but they are interested in the psychological consequences of being true to oneself. Authenticity means not only owning one's actions but acting in accordance with one's thoughts, desires and needs. This commitment is essential for self-regulation, and violating this commitment leads to feelings of inauthenticity, which taint one's moral self-concept and lead to emotional dysregulation. In short, being an imposter to oneself leads to moral and psychological distress.
So being dishonest with oneself triggers feelings of impurity and a desire for cleanliness, but there's more. This heightened desire to be cleansed in turn made subjects more likely to help others -- including donating money to others -- as a way of compensating for the feelings of immorality. Other negative experiences did not trigger this same cascade of feelings -- only inauthenticity -- and it was clearly the feelings of moral impurity that boosted the urge to help and serve others. 2ff7e9595c
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