Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?
The real champions in life are so humble and gracious. They just continue doing what they do without all the posturing. If you've got the real thing, you don't have to flaunt a loud imitation.
Make a list of your current wants and desires. Next to each, put down what benefit or payoff there would be when you achieve it. Look at this list often throughout the day and before retiring at night.
Listening without bias or distraction is the greatest value you can pay another person.
You must look within for value, but must look beyond for perspective.
Understand that you, yourself, are no more than the composite picture of all your thoughts and actions. In your relationships with others, remember the basic and critically important rule: If you want to be loved, be lovable. If you want respect, set a respectable example!
Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you.
The real freedom comes to us when we can learn to go inside and connect with that voice. Then, we're not relying on outsiders.
Non-pantheist models for god seem almost completely untenable to me, though not without interest.
Growing up, I would watch a movie on video and would go to the back of the VHS and locate the address for Universal Pictures or MGM or whatever. I'd write to the studios asking them if I could be in a movie. They never wrote me back.
The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.