Be yourself.................................

     To be what you are and to become what you are capable of becoming is the secret of a happy life.
     Every living soul has different talents, different desires, different faculties.  Be yourself.  Try to by anything else but your genuine self, even if you deceive the entire world, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
     Never waste any effort into elevating yourself into something you are not to please another.  Never put on false masks to gratify your vanity.  Never strain to be valued for your accomplishments or you will cease to be valued for thyself.
     Consider the plants and the animals of the field, how they live.  Does a cotton plant bear even one apple?    Does a pomegranate tree ever produce an orange?  Does a lion attempt to fly?
     Only man, of all living things, foolishly strives to be other than what he was intended to be until life marks him a misfit.  Misfits are the failures of the world, always chasing after a more fruitful career they will never find unless they look behind them.
     You cannot choose your calling.  Your calling chooses you.  You have been blessed with special skills that are yours alone.  Use them, whatever they may be, and forget about wearing another's hat.  A talented chariot driver can win gold and renown with his skills.  Let him pick figs and he would starve.
     No one can take your place.  Realize this and be yourself.  You have no obligation to succeed.  You have only the obligation to be true to yourself.
     Do the very best that you can, in the things you do best, and you will know, in thy soul, that you are the greatest success in the world.
-Og Mandino, as excerpted from The Greatest Success In The World