Live in Hope

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

- Barbara Kingsolver

How To Be Unhappy

• Make little things bother you. Don't just let them, MAKE them.
• Lose your perspective on things and keep it lost: don't put first things first.
• Get yourself a good worry, one about which you cannot do anything.
• Be a perfectionist, which means not that you work hard to do your best, but that you condemn yourself and others for not achieving perfection.
• Be right. Be always right. Be the only one who is always right, and be rigid in your rightness.
• Don't trust or believe people, or accept them at anything but their worst and weakest.
• Be suspicious. Insist that others always have hidden motives.
• Always compare yourself unfavourably to others. This guarantees instant misery.
• Take personally everything that happens to you.
• Don't give yourself whole-heartily to anyone or anything

Source unknown

Old Age, I Decided, is a Gift

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt.
And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror, but I don't agonize over those things for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to overeat, to be messy, to be extravagant. I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 a.m., and sleep until noon?
I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love... I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the bikini set.
They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten . and I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken.
How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when a beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no", and mean it. I can say "yes", and mean it.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive.
You care less about what other people think.
I don't question myself anymore.
I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer your question, I like being old.
It has set me free.
I like the person I have become.
I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here,
I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day.

Author unknown

The Dangers of "Self-Esteem Résumés"

Note: This illustration could easily be adapted based on details from your own life. When I was at school, my mother kept saying things like, "You know, honey, you ought to join the chess club." I would say, "Mom, I hate chess." "Yes, I know," she would say, "but it will look so good on your college application." She would try again. "Don't they feed the homeless and hungry downtown, every Saturday morning? Why don't you volunteer for that?" "Mom," I'd say, "I hate that kind of thing." I would get the same response, "I know, honey, but it will look so good on your college application." So, at school, I did all kinds of things that I had absolutely no interest in doing for themselves. I was simply putting together a résumé.
That is what our egos are doing all the time. Doing jobs we have no pleasure in, doing diets we take no pleasure in. Doing all kinds of things, not for the pleasure of doing them, but because we are trying to put together an impressive curriculum vitae. By comparing ourselves to other people and trying to make ourselves look better than others, we are …. trying to create a self-esteem résumé because we are desperate to fill our sense of inadequacy and emptiness. The ego is busy. So busy all the time.

Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, (10 Publishing, 2012), pp. 19-20

Know Yourself

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

Belonging

Give something to the community in one way or another. It doesn't have to be dramatic, it doesn't have to be in the newspapers. But you need to have the satisfaction of knowing you're helping make somebody else's life a little brighter.

- George Bush

Challenge

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

- John W. Gardner

Who We Are

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body is different.

- Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE)

Focus

I endeavour to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content when I cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress.

- Elizabeth Montagu

The Highest Ethic

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

- Thomas Edison

The Greatest Masterpiece

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaign

Identity

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The source of greatness

Buried deep within each of us is a spark of greatness, a spark than can be fanned into flames of passion and achievement. That spark is not outside of you it is born deep within you.

- James A. Ray

The Search for Truth

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

- Rene Descartes

Decisions

It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live.

- Golda Meir (1898-1978) Israeli Prime Minister

The next step

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.

- Erica Jong

Value

No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.

- Barbara De Angelis

Doubting Oneself

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

- Alexandre Dumas

Choices

Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things. Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it.

- Stephen Covey

Your greatest asset

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

- Brian Tracy