Promise Yourself

• Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your piece of mind.
• To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
• To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
• To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
• To think only of the best.
• To work only for the best, and expect only the best.
• To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
• To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
• To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
• To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
• To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

The Rules for Being Human

1. You will receive a body.  You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons.  You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE.  Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons.  You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of trial and error:  experimentation.  The 'failed' experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately 'works'.
4. A lesson is repeated until learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end.  There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons.  If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. "THERE" is no better than "HERE".  When your "THERE" has become a "HERE", you will simply obtain another "THERE" that will again look better than "HERE".
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.  YOu cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you.  You have all the tools and resources you need.  What you do with them is up to you.  The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you.  The answers to Life's questions lie inside you.  All you need do is look, listen and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
11. You can remember it whenever you want.

Symptoms of Inner Peace

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of the ability to worry.
• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

It Doesn't Interest Me...

• It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
  • I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
• It doesn't interest me how old you are.
  • I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
• It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
  • I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
  • I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine and your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
  • I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
• It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling me is true.
  • I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul
  • I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. 
  • I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God's presence.
  • I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"
• It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. 
  • I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for a child.
• It doesn't interest me who you are or how you came to be here.
  • I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
• It doesn't interest me where, or what, or with whom you have studied.
  • I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
  • I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
    • Author Unknown

The Return of the Ragpicker
by Og Mandino

For the Rest of my Life . . .

For the rest of my life  there are two days that will never again trouble me.  The first day is yesterday with all its blunders and tears, its follies and defeats.  Yesterday has passed forever beyond my control.  The other day is tomorrow with its pitfalls and threats, its dangers and mystery.  Until the sun rises again, I have no stake in tomorrow, for it is still unborn.

For the rest of my life, this very special day, God help me. . .
. . . to heed the wise advice of Jesus and Confucius and Zoroaster and treat everyone I meet, friend or foe, stranger or family, as I would want them to treat me.
...to maintain a rein on my tongue and my temper, guarding against foolish moments of fault-finding and insults.
. . . to greet all those I encounter with a smile instead of a frown, and a soft word of encouragement instead of disdain or even worse, silence.
. . . to be sympathetic and attentive to the sorrows and struggles of others, realizing that there are hidden woes in every life no matter how exalted or lowly.
. . . to make haste to be kind to all others, understanding that life is too short to be vengeful or malicious, too soon ended to be petty or unkind.

For the rest of my life, this very special day, God help me . . .
. . . to keep reminding myself that in order to harvest more ears of corn in the fall, I must plant more kernels in the spring.
. . . to understand that life always rewards me on the terms that I establish, and if I never perform or deliver more than that for which I am paid, never will I have reason to demand or expect any additional gold.
. . . to alway deliver more than is expected of me, whether at work, at play, or at home.
. . . to labor with enthusiasm and love, no matter what the talk at hand may be, realizing that if I cannot secure happiness out of my work I will never know what real happiness is.
. . . to endure at my chosen work even after others have ceased their labor, for now I know that the angel of happiness and the pot of gold awaits me only at the end of the extra mile that still lies ahead.

For the rest of my life, this very special day, God help me. . .
. . . to set goals to be accomplished before the day has ended, for now I know that to drift aimlessly from one hour to the next leaves me with only one destination, the port of misery.
. . . to realize that no path to success is too long if I advance bravely and without undue haste, just as there are no honors too distant if I prepare myself for them now with patience.
. . . to never lose faith in a brighter tomorrow, for I know that if I continue to knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, I am certain to arouse someone.
. . . to repeatedly remind myself that success always has its price and that I must be willing to balance its joys and rewards against the precious piece of my life I must always exchange to achieve it.
. . . to hold fast to my dreams and my plans for a better life because if I relinquish them, although I still might exist, I will have ceased to live.

For the rest of my life, this very special day, God help me. . .
. . . to strive to fulfill the best that is within me, knowing that I have no obligation to attain great wealth or success, only the obligation to be true to the highest and best I can be.
. . . to never succumb to the fear of failing, because now I shall be looking up to the goals I have not yet reached rather than peering down at the pitfalls that always threaten me.
. . . to embrace adversity as a friend who will teach me far more about myself than any joyful run of success and good fortune.
. . . to remember that failures, even when they occur, are only guides to success, since every discovery of what is false will lead me to seek after what is true, and every experience teaches me some form of error that shall afterward be carefully avoided.
. . . to rejoice over what I have, little though it may be, always recalling the oft-told tale of the man who was sobbing because he had no shoes until, one day, he met a man who had no feet.

For the rest of my life, this very special day, God help me . . .
. . . to accept myself as I am without ever allowing my conscience or sense of duty to force me to live a life's pattern designed solely for the benefit of others.
. . . to realize that I must never accept the praise and love of people as a measure of my personal worth, since my true value depends far more on how I feel about myself and how involved I am in the world outside myself.
. . . to resist the temptation to surpass the achievements of others, since this pathetic and yet common desire is no more than a sign of insecurity and weakness and I will never be me if I allow others to set my standards.
. . . to ignite all my actions, both at work and play, with constant sparks of enthusiasm so that my excitement and zeal or whatever I am doing will subdue all difficulties that might otherwise slow my progress.
. . . to remember that I must pay the price in time and energy in order to increase my worth, for only fools stand idly by and wait for success to arrive, and now I know that the only chance to start at the top is in digging a hole.

For the rest of my life, on this day of days, God please help me . . .
. . . to do unto others as I would have them do unto me, to give more of myself, every hour, than is expected, to set goals and hold fast to my dreams, to search for the good in every adversity that befalls me, to perform all my duties with enthusiasm and love and, above all, to be myself.

Please help me to accomplish these goals, my special friend, so that I may become a ragpicker of value, laboring in your name with renewed strength and wisdom to rescue others as you have rescued me.  And above all, please remain close to me, through all of this day. . .

How Rich are We?

A very rich man wanted his young son to appreciate how well off they were.  He arranged a trip to the country to show him how less fortunate people live.  They spent two days and nights on the farm of a poor family.  On the way home, the father asked his son, "How was that for you?"

"Very good Dad.  Thanks!"

"Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked.

"Yeah!  Wow!"

"And what did you learn?"

The son answered, "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four.  We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden; they have a creek that has no end.  We have imported lamps in the garden; they have the stars.  Our patio reaches to the front yard; they have a whole horizon.  Most of all, we don't see each other except once in a while. They eat and talk together every day.  They seem to laugh a lot."

The father was speechless, as his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are!"