Nothing destroys a person as much as self-pity. We all have experienced this feeling in one way or another. It is oppressive and hopeless, inhibits development, closes the person on himself, blocks the Sky.

Nothing destroys a person as much as self-pity. We all have experienced this feeling in one way or another. It is oppressive and hopeless, inhibits development, closes the person on himself, blocks the Sky.

The consequences of such faked pity are resentment against others, unforgiveness, remembrance of wrongs, despondency, laziness and so on. Self-pity is rooted in pride and conceit.

Self-pity is the sign of faint-heartedness, weakness, and is an evil in its pure form. A stout-hearted person consciously disroots such a malicious pity from his heart. A strong one always serves good and never supports evil.

One of the examples of a strong person in all aspects can be our contemporary, the famous athlete, writer, world-famous olympian Yury Petrovich Vlasov. He was an idol for few generations not only in the Soviet Union, but also abroad. For example, the Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger dreamed of meeting Vlasov since youth.

Yury Vlasov was distinguished by amazing honesty, frankness, tenderness and human decency. He didn’t look like a typical sportsman. He was smart, intelligent, and wrote dozens of books. In the daytime he got a workout, and in the night he wrote books. And he aroused admiration no matter what he was doing.

Yury Vlasov, for all his athletic build, was highly delicate and shy. He was afraid to offend someone. He treated everybody like a cut glass vase. He was considered as a strongest man of the world in 1960s.

The multiple world champion said that strength must assert the greatness of soul and the beauty of overcoming. And exactly this is the great justice.

But not everyone can reveal this strength, find it within himself. Vlasov endured the suffering and hardships of challenges: betrayal, envy of colleagues, injustice, abandonment of sports, heavy injuries, oblivion, losing loved ones. He managed to overcome all this. He found a way to get through a horrible pain, immobilization and to go out into the world. It took him a while to do it. He spent several years to understand what held him, what chained him. His organism nearly was falling apart by the minute. The self-pity, which was taking away his power and eating up his body and soul, was his own diagnosis.

After seeing his enemy, Vlasov declared war and defeated him. Things started getting better, and soon he got into shape again and came back to high-performance sport as a coach. Yury Vlasov came across as someone who didn’t loose eternal in everyday life — on the contrary he gained. During trainings, wakeful nights, trains of thoughts, reading he permanently analyzed the connection between body and soul and concluded that the soul manages the body, not the other way around. Yury became a champion, a real man thanks to the strength of soul, living according to his conscience, personal will for kindness and justice. And he didn’t use his famousness for evil in his soul.

Vlasov was the quintessence of strength and spirit — persevering and unbreakable. But he didn't need the strength for strength's sake.

He recalled: «Everything in my life was going in different ways. I can’t say that my health was always splendid. I received three surgeries: tumor on my arm after being hit by barbell and two spinal surgeries when my relatives were warned that I would hardly survive. After the surgery I didn't die only thanks to the sport. I was strong in spirit enough, the sport raised my will… But sports has never been the only purpose and intention. It was always a support which led me to solving other, more important, in my view, tasks».

And these tasks were not to betray himself, not to reach a compromise with time-spirit, not to act against conscience, to protect the weak ones… He taught not to give up in the face of difficulties no matter how hard they are.

Vlasov was best remembered by millions as the knight of spirit and strength.

Self-pity is a devilish trick that doesn’t let a person to unlock his whole potential put in by God. Self-pity hammers fear into shape. Vlasov with his example showed which heights a person can touch, from which hard condition he can break free if he’s not afraid, if he doesn’t have pity for himself.

We can’t even imagine what potential the Lord gave us. Most of us didn't unlock it for the tenth part. Fears and self-pity keep us within the narrow framework of the human logic which doesn't let the Divine to come into our life, and exactly this gives a person the necessary impulse for maximal release, growth and salvation.

If we just assume that we’re underestimated, offended, that we deserve better, we will immediately loose and fall again to the foot of mountain, and climbing on it is our life.

Recorded by Natalia Goroshkova