The Secret To Freedom in Life

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.  Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original:  whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before), you will, nine times out of ten, become original without having noticed it.  The principle runs through life from top to bottom.  Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.  Lose your life and you will save it...  Nothing that you have not given will be really yours...

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 190