17 January 2023
|
|
|
In
every walk with nature one receives far more than one seeks.
John Muir
|
Humility is strong--not bold;
quiet--not speechless;
sure--not arrogant.
Estelle Smith
|
If you
do not hope, you will not find out what is beyond your hopes.
Clement of Alexandra
|
Half
our life is spent trying to find something to do with
the time we
have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers
|
|
|
|
|
New
Life
(an excerpt)
Marianne
Williamson
New life emerges not from strategy but from character.
Before realizing this, you might think that making plans,
devising blueprints for your future or whatever, are the keys
to the path ahead. But our real keys to victory are
internal. Your state of doing must be matched by the
state of your being, or the incongruity will sabotage even
your most brilliant plans.
It's been fascinating over the last few years, watching the
high and mighty in business and politics fall
precipitously--not because their plans didn't work, but
because their character flaws undercut those plans.
Whether the microphone caught them making racist comments or
their greed overcame their common sense, who they were as
people made all the difference--more than their résumés,
their degrees, or even their past successes. If you fail
at the art of being human and staying human, you recklessly
court disaster. Yet how do we cultivate the betterment
of our humanity? What is the how-to of personal
transformation?
What I've learned, to the extent to which I've been successful
at any of this, is that the path of right living is walked one
moment at a time. Whether you show up for life as a jerk
or a saint has little to do with belief or theology; it has to
do with personal integrity. We aren't transformed in our
hearts by mere belief, because belief isn't of the
heart.
|
|
The heart's
transformation is not attained through the mind--it's attained
through surrender, authenticity, forgiveness, faith, honesty,
acceptance, vulnerability, humility, willingness, nonjudgment,
and other characterological values that have to be learned and
relearned continuously.
We might skip some lessons at school, but we can't skip any of
the lessons of life. They will find us. If a
lesson is up for us and we don't learn it now, then it's
programmed into the universe that we will just have to learn
it later. It's said in A Course in Miracles that
it's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn
through joy or through pain.
But by midlife, we're destined to learn. Whatever parts
of you are blocking the emergence of the highest, best you,
have simply got to go now. And one way or the other,
they will.
Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your
spirit--the alchemical grail through which the metal of your
former self turns into gold--is one of the highest callings of
life. Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you
up and redeem you. It can deliver you to an entrenched
despair, or deliver you to your higher self. At midlife
we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the
victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at
last.
Growth can be hard, and laboring a new self very
difficult. Growing older just happens; growing wise is
something else again. And by a certain point in life,
most of us have been hurt. We have been
disappointed. We have had dreams die, and find it
hard to forgive ourselves or others. The challenge of
age is not to skip life's disappointments but to transcend
them. We transcend them by learning the lessons they
taught us, however painful, and coming out on the other side
prepared to create, with God's help, a new life.
Marianne
Williamson
The
Age of Miracles
|
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
|
|
Achieving
Your Dreams
Jim
Rohn
While most people spend most of their lives struggling to earn a
living, a much smaller number seem to have everything going their way.
Instead of just earning a living, the smaller group is busily working
at building and enjoying a fortune. Everything just seems to work out
for them. And here sits the much larger group, wondering how life can
be so unfair, so complicated and unjust. What’s the major difference
between the little group with so much and the larger group with so
little?
Despite
all of the factors that affect our lives—like the kind of parents we
have, the schools we attended, the part of the country we grew up
in—none has as much potential power for affecting our futures as our
ability to dream.
Dreams are a projection of the kind of life you want to lead. Dreams
can drive you. Dreams can make you skip over obstacles. When you allow
your dreams to pull you, they unleash a creative force that can
overpower any obstacle in your path. To unleash this power, though,
your dreams must be well defined. A fuzzy future has little pulling
power. Well-defined dreams are not fuzzy. Wishes are fuzzy. To really
achieve your dreams, to really have your future plans pull you
forward, your dreams must be vivid.
If
you’ve ever hiked a 14,000-foot peak in the Rocky Mountains, one
thought has surely come to mind: “How did the settlers of this
country do it?” How did they get from the East Coast to the West
Coast? Carrying one day’s supply of food and water is hard enough.
Can you imagine hauling all of your worldly goods with you... mile
after mile, day after day, month after month? These people had big
dreams. They had ambition. They didn’t focus on the hardship of
getting up the mountain.
In
their minds, they were already on the other side–their bodies just
hadn’t gotten them there yet! Despite all of their pains and
struggles, all of the births and deaths along the way, those who made
it to the other side had a single vision: to reach the land of
continuous sunshine and extraordinary wealth. To start over where
anything and everything was possible. Their dreams were stronger than
the obstacles in their way.
You’ve
got to be a dreamer. You’ve got to envision the future. You’ve got
to see California while you’re climbing 14,000-foot peaks. You’ve
got to see the finish line while you’re running the race. You’ve
got to hear the cheers when you’re in the middle of a monster
project. And you’ve got to be willing to put yourself through the
paces of doing the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable. Because
that’s how you realize your dreams.
* * * * *
Reprinted with permission from the Jim Rohn e-zine.
|
|
|
|
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
|
|
Find the
passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do
anything
creative. I would go so far as to say you can't do it without
that passion.
Agnes DeMille
|
|
Undivided
Attention
I was once looking to buy a new printer, and I went to Office
Max to see what kinds of printers they had to offer. I
had a couple of questions about their wireless capabilities,
so when one of the guys who worked there came over and asked
if I needed help, I said yes and asked him a question.
I was
about halfway through the question when he asked "Which
operating system are you using?"
I was
a bit taken aback that he had interrupted the question
before I had even finished it, and a bit perplexed that he
was asking a question that had nothing to do with my
question. It wasn't until I looked back up at him that
I realized that he was talking on the phone with someone
through the Bluetooth unit perched so prominently on his
ear.
He
had asked me if I needed help, while he was supposedly
"helping" someone else on the phone. It was
ridiculous, and I told him that I was fine and that I'd
figure out my questions on my own. He looked at me a
bit surprised, and asked, "Are you sure?" I
said yes--after all, what good can he do me when he's not
even focused on what he's doing?
|
|
The present moment is filled with joy and
happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
Thích Nhat Hạnh
Peace
Is Every Step
|
|
I'm
constantly amazed at the number of people I see spending
"quality" time with their kids, only to pull out
the cell phone and have a long and involved conversation
with someone who isn't even there. The poor kid is
relegated to the status of ignored companion, unless they do
something they shouldn't do, when the adult will take two
seconds from the conversation to say "Knock that
off!"
It
makes me wonder if today's little kids will have to become
even more destructive and anti-social in order to gain the
attention that they crave.
In
spite of the reams of evidence that cell phone use while
driving is incredibly dangerous (at least 2600 people DIE
every year because of it), many, many people still insist
upon carrying on phone conversations and maintaining text
exchanges while behind the wheel
in traffic. Tens of thousands of people have lost their husbands, wives,
sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. . . . you name it, only
because someone thought "It'll never happen to
me." Those people were wrong, and they've killed
other people because they weren't willing to give their
undivided attention to the task at hand, which was driving.
|
|
A
study done in Boston found that all the attention to
devices takes parents away from parenting. It creates
conflict. “I think they’re ignoring their children and
I think
the kids are pretty upset about it,” says Dr. Jeanne
Floerke, child psychologist. She sees kids acting out with
bad behavior having to compete with a device for attention.
“Kids are saying ‘pay attention to me’ so I think what we
need
to do is engage in positive behavior with our kids, turn off
the cell phones, and interact with your kids.” Or else
they’re likely to seek other ways to get attention.
David Mitchell and Dave Young
|
|
Why
are we so unwilling--and almost unable--to give our
undivided attention to the tasks that we do? All
throughout our culture and society, we see declines in the
quality of work and the service, and much of this is due to
the fact that people seem to think that multi-tasking isn't
just a new norm, but a necessity.
In
the United States, at least, we used to have a very strong
work ethic, and we used to teach our kids to be proud of the
results of their work. We much more often focused on
outcomes, and because we wanted it to be positive, we
learned to put our undivided attention to the task we had
taken on. When a parent spent time with a child, they
spent time together, talking or playing or just going for a
long walk. Nowadays, though, parents seem to resent
this distraction that keeps them from watching their TV and
spending time on the phone talking about trifles. So
they compromise by being there physically with the
kid, but certainly not there emotionally or mentally for
the kid.
In
the classroom, in spite of all the people who glorify the
idea of multi-tasking, I find that the students who are able
to sit down and focus on the assignment are the ones who
succeed in learning the material. Because of that, I
spend a lot of time in class teaching kids how to focus, and
believe it or not, these kids appreciate that. Over
and over again, these teenagers thank me for helping them to
learn how to study, because no one else ever had tried to do
so. Most teachers are so intent on the assignments
that they never pay attention to whether or not their
students are even able to focus on the material they're
supposed to be learning.
|
|
Supported by research into how the brain functions,
Dr. Deak
argues that the brain is only able to focus deeply on one task
at a time. And not only that, trying to do too many things at
once causes the brain to lose the capacity for deep thinking
altogether. “When you try to multitask, in the short-term it
doubles the amount of time it takes to do a task and it usually
at least doubles the number of mistakes,” she told the conference.
Nick Morrison
|
|
And
with the role models that these young people have, is it any
surprise that they have a hard time focusing? Whom
have they seen who models the ability to put their undivided
attention on a task? Even many pro athletes don't
focus on their sports exclusively any more--during games,
watch how many NFL players are just as interested in the
crowd and the cameras as they are in the game. And
those are the ones that the networks give the most camera
time to. . . .
I
know many people who are almost never satisfied with the
results that they get in life, whether that be at work, with
their hobbies, in their relationships, or in other
areas. Most of these people don't get the results they
desire because while they're doing something, they're also
focused on something else. Is a conversation with your
wife as valuable when you're also watching a TV show?
Is time spent with your teenager going to be as valuable if
you--or her--spend most of your time on the phone with
someone else? Can you really get your work done well
if you're also surfing the Internet? These are
questions that most of us never seem to address--and
probably because we already know the answer, and we just
don't really want to hear it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HOME
- contents - Daily
Meditations - abundance - acceptance
- achievement
- action
- adversity
-
advertising
- aging - ambition
anger
- anticipation
- anxiety - apathy - appreciation -
arrogance
- art - attitude
- authenticity
- awakening - awareness
-
awe
balance - beauty
-
being yourself
- beliefs
- body
- brooding
- busyness - caring -
celebration
- challenges -
change - character
charity - children
-
choices
-
Christianity
- coincidence
- commitment
- common
sense
- community
- comparison - compassion
competition - complaining
- compliments -
compromise
- confidence - conformity
- conscience
-
contentment - control
- cooperation
courage -
covetousness
- creativity
- crisis - criticism
-
cruelty
- death
- decisions
- desire
- determination
- disappointment
discipline -
discouragement - diversity -
doubt - dreams
- earth - education -
ego - emotions -
encouragement
- enlightenment
enthusiasm - envy
- eternity
- ethics - example - exercise - experience - failure
-
faith
- fame
- family - fate - fathers
-
fault-finding
fear
- feelings - finances
- flowers - forgiveness
-
freedom
- friendship
- frustration - fun - the future
- garden of life - gardening
generosity -
gentleness
- giving
- goals - God
- goodness
- grace -
gratitude
- greatness
- greed
- grief - growing up
- guilt -
habit
happiness
- hatred
- healing
-
health -
heart
- helpfulness
- home - honesty
- hope
- hospitality - humility
- hurry
-
ideals - identity
idleness - idolatry
- ignorance
- illusion -
imagination - impatience
-
individuality
- the inner child - inspiration -
integrity - intimacy
introspection - intuition
- jealousy
- journey of life - joy
- judgment - karma - kindness
-
knowledge - language
- laughter
-
laziness
leadership
-
learning - letting
go - life
- listening - loneliness
- love
- lying - magic - marriage
-
materialism
- meanness
- meditation
mindfulness
- miracles
-
mistakes - mistrust
- moderation - money -
mothers
- motivation - music - mystery
- nature
-
negative
attitude
now -
oneness
- open-mindedness
- opportunity
-
optimism
-
pain - parenting - passion
- the past - patience
-
peace -
perfectionism
perseverance
- perspective - pessimism
- play
- poetry -
positive
thoughts
- possessions
-
potential - poverty -
power - praise
prayer
- prejudice
- pride - principle
- problems - progress
- prosperity
- purpose
- reading -recreation
- reflection
- relationships
religion
- reputation - resentment
-
respect - responsibility
- rest - revenge
-
risk - role models
- running -
ruts - sadness
-
safety
seasons of
life - self - self-love
-
self-pity
-
self-reliance - self-respect
- selfishness - serving others - shame
- silence
- simplicity
slowing
down - smiles
-solitude - sorrow -
spirit -
stories -
strength - stress
- stupidity
- success -
suffering - talent
the tapestry of life - teachers - thoughts
- time
- today - tolerance
-
traditions
-
trees
-
trust
- truth - unfulfilled
dreams
- values
vanity
- virtue
- vulnerability - walking - war
- wealth - weight
issues - wisdom
-
women -
wonder - work
-
worry - worship
youth
- spring - summer
- fall - winter
-
Christmas - Thanksgiving
-
New Year - America
-
Zen sayings -
articles
& excerpts
Native American
wisdom
-
The Law of Attraction -
obstacles to
living
life fully
- e-zine archives
-
quotations
contents
our most recent e-zine - Great
Thinkers - the people behind the words
|
|
™
|
All contents
© 2023 Living Life Fully™,
all rights reserved.
Please feel
free to re-use material from this site other than
copyrighted articles--
contact each author for permission to use those.
If you use material, it would be
greatly appreciated if you would provide credit and
a link back to the original
source, and let us know where the material is
published. Thank you. |
|
|
Nothing
is too great or
too good to be true.
Do not believe that we
can
imagine things better
than they are.
In the long
run, in the
ultimate outlook,
in the eye of the Creator,
the possibilities of
existence,
the possibilities open to us,
are beyond our imagination.
Joseph
Wood Krutch
|
|
|
|
Gifts
That We Can Pass On to Others:
THE GIFT OF
LISTENING
You must REALLY listen. No interrupting, no daydreaming,
no planning your response. Just listening.
THE GIFT OF
A COMPLIMENT
A simple and sincere,
"You look great in red," or
"You did a super job" or
"That was a wonderful meal"
can make someone's day.
THE GIFT OF
AFFECTION
Be generous with appropriate
hugs,
kisses, pats on the back and handholds. Let these small actions demonstrate the
love you have for family and friends.
THE GIFT OF
A CHEERFUL DISPOSITION
The easiest way to feel good
is
to extend a kind word to someone;
really, it's not that hard to say Hello or Thank You.
THE GIFT OF
LAUGHTER
Clip cartoons. Share articles and funny stories.
Your gift will say,
"I love to laugh with you."
THE GIFT OF
KINDNESS
Every day, go out of your way
to do something kind.
THE GIFT OF
A WRITTEN NOTE
It can be a simple
"Thanks for the help" note
or a full sonnet. A brief, handwritten note may be
remembered for
a lifetime, and may even change a life.
THE GIFT OF
SOLITUDE
There are times when we want
nothing more than to be left alone. Be sensitive to those times and give the gift of solitude to others.
THE GIFT OF
ENCOURAGEMENT
It
costs nothing, it's easy to pass on, and its effects can be truly
magical. Find some aspect of another person's life in which he
or she could use an encouraging word or three, and pass it on!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nothing
great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes
or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer
that there must be
time. Let the tree first blossom, then bear fruit, then
ripen.
Epictetus
|
|
|