Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi
Category: Inspiration (Page 9 of 9)
Part of the dialogue goes like this:
Narrator: Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling
Grinch: How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes, or bags!
Narrator: And he puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.”
Text borrowed from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
I came across this text in the book “Daring Greatly” by Brené Brown, a great and truly interesting book.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Starfish Story is spread over the internet, Google shows 225,000 hits for that search term. My source is The Starfish Story where it says the story is adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977).
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”
“I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”
The lesson is even small deeds can make a big difference.
Today I came across this quote:
Worry doesn’t help tomorrow’s troubles, but it does ruin today’s happiness.
It really says a lot, worry does not solve problems – it only ruins the now.
I got this lovely text in a Yahoo Group I belong to. Original author is unknown.
PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:
1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul
PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:
1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness
PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:
1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another
NO GARDEN IS WITHOUT TURNIPS:
1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another
TO CONCLUDE OUR GARDEN WE MUST HAVE THYME:
1. Thyme for each other
2. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends
Water freely with patience and cultivate with love. There is much fruit in your garden because you reap what you sow.
This post is copied to my new blog The Wise Owl.
Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a very interesting post titled The Nasty Four-Letter Word That Keeps You From Writing that hooked me because I am in a situation where I have a chance to really change what I do for a living. Brian writes:
based on my personal experience, there’s a nasty demon hiding behind the excuses we make. This four-letter word represents a condition we don’t like to admit to ourselves, much less utter in polite conversation.
Yep, it’s the “F” word.
Fear.
Fear affects us all more than we care to admit
Brian’s article is about fear in connection with writing but his post is valid in many areas of life. He mentions five different fears, the key ones (to me) are fear of failure and fear of risk.
Under fear of failure Brian writes:
Countless psychological studies have shown that the fear of failure is the number one barrier to personal success. We fear failure because we don’t separate tasks from ourselves, and therefore our self-esteem is at risk every time we attempt to do anything we really want to achieve.
If we try and fail then we can get up and try again. But if we do not even try then we lock ourselves in where we are now.
This is a quote worth remembering:
Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.
In the part about fear of risk Brian writes:
Is it really better to be safe than sorry? Sometimes, yes. But when it comes to your writing dreams and goals, being safe is a fate worse than death. Not only do your dreams die, but you get to live the rest of your life knowing it.
Remove the word ‘writing’ before dreams and this statement goes anywhere. Dreams are nice but until they turn into actions they remain dreams.
A while back I came across a quote that says a lot:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain)
The feeling of safety makes us often hesitate and take the easy way out (stay in the harbor, no risk, no failure) and not take the exciting way (leave for the high sea, take risks). I think I shall go and check my sails…
This post is copied to my new blog The Wise Owl.
The other day I found this interesting note on the internet:
In the time of the great explorers Columbus, Magellan, and Drake many areas of the earth’s surface, especially the oceans, were uncharted. Most of the people still believed that the earth was flat. Legend among seaman held that sea monsters and other creatures lived in these uncharted regions. As a result, the map makers of this era commonly place the words “beyond this point there be dragons” on uncharted areas.
That is the way we feel when we get outside our personal comfort zones, beyond this point there will be dragons. But if we want to grow outside our current comfort zone then we have to challenge these dragons now and then.
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