Many people are seduced from time to time by the temptations to be relevant, powerful, or spectacular, and a few people have to wrestle with them regularly. But perhaps the more common temptation for most of us is to feel that we have little or no chance to be any of these things, even if we wanted to.

Many of us awake each day with so little self-confidence that the thought of being offered a chance at power and glory seems absurd. The temptations Jesus faced are those of the strong ego. But the temptation that afflicts many of us is that of the weak ego–the temptation to think of ourselves as irrelevant, powerless, and utterly mundane, as people in whom Satan would never have the slightest interest.

from The Active Life