“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
Variant: Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Steven Pressfield 70
United States Marine 1943Related quotes
Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)
Paraphrased variant: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Harvard address (2008)
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
“We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.”
Source: The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
“There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”
“We must all do theatre – to find out who we are, and to discover who we could become.”
Aesthetics of the Oppressed (2006)
Lecture I, Occasion and Context
Lectures on the Essence of Religion http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/lectures/index.htm (1851)