Misery or Strength
“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Casteneda
Triumph
“The difference between try and triumph is a little umph” – Anonymous
I love this. It’s a great line to pin up on the board for the beginning of the new year and new you.
It makes me think of two things, the first being the photo finish of a race – where it is a split second, a nose, which is all that makes the difference between 1st and 2nd place. A little umph at the end of the race can make all of the difference.
The second thing is when you give up (and thereby fail) at what you are trying to achieve. Visualize that you are stretching out your hand to grab it, you almost have it. Your fingers are barely touching it and you just need a little umph to get your fingers over the edge and and pull the object to you. As you stretch just a little bit further straining all of your arm muscles, you become frustrated and pull back, saying “this will never work”. Then the negative voices chime in agreement and we stop trying.
Whether it is Winston Churchill chiming in your ear, “never, never, never give up”, or the little red engine chugging up the mountain, “I think I can, I think I can” or even Yoda “no try, do or don’t do”; we need to have something in our toolbox that helps us gather our energy and put a little umph in our lives to help us along lifes journey.
Creative
“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you will discover is yourself.” – Alan Alda
Today
“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” – Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx
Best
“If you are content with the best you have done, you will never become the best you can be.” Unknown.
Believe in Yourself
Happy New Year, everyone!
“Believe in your dreams and they may come true; believe in yourself and they will come true.” – Unknown
Freedom
Victor Frankl once wrote, “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Revelation
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order…the continous thread of revelation” – Eudora Welty
Good, Better, Best
“Never stop until your good becomes better, and your better becomes the best.”
– Frank Zappa
Dreams
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water and altered the color of my mind” Emily Bronte
Passion & Purpose
“There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela
Passion and purpose are interlinked. And they come from the gifts or talents that you have – those things that you take for granted as being so simple. Playing small means that we aren’t using those talents to their full capability. Sort of like singing in the shower, but not in the choir. If you have a beautiful voice you should be sharing it with others, even though you discount your talent to yourself. That is the fear talking. I am really getting in touch with the thought that anywhere I have resistance, I have fear that I need to take out hiding and look at. Why am I afraid, whats the worst that could happen, and just do it anyway.
Excellence
“Excellence is…caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe; dreaming more than others think is practical; expecting more than others think is possible.” – Winston Churchill
When you really believe in someone, you give them permission to think big. To open themselves to the possibilities and because of your belief they begin to believe, and suddenly that mountain in front of them becomes a hill with a gradual slope. If you think that I can do it, and she thinks I can do it, then I begin to believe I can can do it. And if all believe in each other and expect 6 impossible things before breakfast, who knows what we could do together?