Be confident. Don't seek permission to be yourself.

Debasish Mridha
About This Quote

I’m a little embarrassed about this one, because it’s from a self-help book written by a convicted felon. But I have to tell you the story behind the quote. In 2006, Alan G. Hefner published a book called "How to Be Yourself: The Art of Changing the World without Losing your Mind." In it, he recounts a story about Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and owner of The Washington Post. Jeff Bezos was looking at getting his dental license renewed in Washington State, which requires two people to sign off on it.

One of those people was Alan Hefner's wife. So, as part of his plan to get her on board with him as his patient, he wrote the following excuse on the application: "Dear Dr. Hefner: As you know, my wife is a licensed dentist in Washington State and is therefore qualified to perform all necessary dental work required for my license renewal.

However, I am not a dentist and thus have no clue what I'm doing during these procedures." This sounds more like a line from a joke than an actual justification for bypassing the state's licensing requirements -- but Hefner apparently had enough faith in Bezos' honesty that he included it in his book as an example of how others should be themselves no matter what the consequences. The problem is that Hefner never actually got his wife to sign off on his application for his dental license... and now he's serving time in federal prison for tax evasion and stealing money from various charitable organizations (including the Boy Scouts and Catholic Relief Services). So we can't really take him seriously when he tells us how we should be ourselves.

But we do take the advice to "be yourself" pretty seriously... because we know that if we're not ourselves, someone else will be taking advantage of us as soon as we're not looking!

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More Quotes By Debasish Mridha
  1. Don't appreciate me, I'm not up to it. Don't criticize me, I don't deserve it. Just be my friend and forgive me, because I am craving for it.
  2. Always be friendly, always be kind, Like the most beautiful flower that you can find.
  3. If you think life is magical or life is hard, either way you are right. Your thoughts are the source of reality.
  4. Writing blooms flowers for mind, which last forever.
  5. No dirt can touch me, like an ocean, everything that comes to me becomes clean.
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