Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose. – C. S. Lewis
Don’t put the key of your happiness in someone elses pocket.
Happiness is an inside job. – William Arthur Ward
Category: Inspiration (Page 2 of 3)
The Serenity Prayer is the common name for a prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The best-known form is:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
You should always be a beginner at something – Marianne Williamson
At the center of your being you have the answer. You know who you are and you know what you want. – Rumi
I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.
I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.
John Lennon
I got this classic story from a friend, it’s great and makes us see cracks and flaws in a different way.
A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One pot had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After 2 years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path. Every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”
Moral:
Each of us has our own unique flaws. We’re all cracked pots. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.
I know we are in the middle of December but with holidays coming up there are not that many workdays left of 2007. Which means I take a shoot at what I intend to do next year, and how.
Chris Garrett posted about The 80/20 Rule of Effort. It is about summing up 2007 and looking forward into 2008. Chris writes:
One conclusion I have to draw from this year that I will take into the next is how I have squandered my time.
Squander (waste; spend thoughtlessly; throw away) is a harsh word but I am guilty of the same with some of my time. It could have been used better and that is where the 80-20-rule comes in. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that, for many phenomena, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the efforts. In other words, find the 20% of your work that really makes a difference and cut down on the other 80%.
Benjamin On WOWNDADI posts 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08. That is a great list and I will comment on some of them.
1. Set good goals.
This is important and so is to follow up on them, are we heading in the right direction and in the desired speed?
2. Quit stuff.
This is where 80-20 can help us, we can quit more than we think and spend that time on our core issues instead.
6. Commit to learning something new.
I believe in life long learning so this is a must for me.
And what do I intend to focus on during 2008?
I recently finished a course and became a professional coach. Coaching is my baby for next year and where most of my efforts will be focused.
I will set off time for my blogging efforts with the intention to post regularly at my three main blogs. The fourth one, doodling, is for fun and requires no set schedule.
On a more personal level I intend to enjoy life, be in the here and now.
I came across this quote by Lin Yutang in Zen To Done:
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
Update: This goes well with my post Turning 2008 into 80-20 which is about deciding what shall be done and what shall be left undone.
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…