The book
Emerson published this in 1841, in the first series of essays. The epigraph says, roughly, do not seek yourself outside yourself. He has told you the argument before the first paragraph: avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow your own thought.
He starts from a small observation. Reading an original painter, what strikes him is not the subject but that the man trusted his own thought. The sting is that we dismiss our own ideas, and later recognise them in the work of people we call great.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. He is not licensing carelessness. He is freeing you from the obligation to keep agreeing with a version of yourself who knew less than you do now.
The essay is dense in a specific way. Aphorisms stacked, connective tissue left out. It is built for a slow pass, not a highlight.
It holds you on one sentence until you have a case. The useful case is a yes you kept in order to match an older self, or an idea you dropped and later heard from someone else. It will not accept "be yourself" as the work.
It will not turn the essay into permission. Emerson is hard on conformity, and just as hard on the performance of independence. If the week is a calendar problem, Bennett is the book. This one is for the agreement you are done keeping.
Claim it on the book page. Self-Reliance.