[H]appy people don’t believe that life is good because they’re just lucky. They don’t believe that they’re mere reeds in the winds of fate. Rather, happy people believe that they can influence what happens to them in the future, and they tend to take responsibility for the important events in their lives.
“What Are Happy People Like? the Characteristics of Happiness.” Positive Psychology 101, Philip C. Watkins, Springer Publishing Company, 2015.
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
[…]
“To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves–there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
-Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect“
Rule Number One: A Library Blog 