Monday 30 April 2018

What's wrong with the world today?....



.....Allow me to give you the definitive answer - there are too many steam engines, and not enough horses. Or is it the other way round? Actually, it's neither. Imagine if someone seriously tried to engage you in a heated debate about the relative merit of these two forms of transport. There's nothing to discuss. The whole thing is history. 






Often, in our personal worlds, an expanse of energy can be spent on issues that have nothing to do with the future or even, really, the present. Do any of us truly have time to allow this!



Stop asking for permission to do what you were born to do. 
You don't need anyone else's approval to fulfil your purpose.

We could, if we chose to....

.......create a long list of all the things that you are unable to do. We could begin with what your current circumstances prohibit you from doing, add to this the activities you have never been able to participate in and then... well, you know what? I am tired of this exercise already, aren't you? What is the point of it? It is not just futile; it is counter-productive. 



You should, and could, be looking instead at what is gloriously possible. That is a much longer list and it is worth giving some serious consideration.



As you heal your own inner wounds, your outer world will align to reflect this also.

Do you know who....

....wrote all those history books? And what works did they refer to? And the authors of those earlier, older, books, where did they get their facts from? How far can we ever really trust anyone who says 'this is how things used to be and this, therefore, is why they have become the way they are today?' 


When we look to instigate change it may be necessary to challenge a long chain of assumptions. It can be wise to be wary of what seems to be set in stone. Sometimes we have to be gentle as we strive to dissolve the concrete, and not resort to smashing it into tiny pieces.



You must learn to trust that there is a future waiting for you that is beyond what 
you might be able to grasp at this present moment.

Wednesday 25 April 2018

'They' are back....

.....but then do they ever go away!!  They say that, one way or another, we end up paying a price for everything. They may be right. But that's not the whole story. Our every action earns us a reward. Our every decision leads to a consequence. If we always do our best to do the right thing for the right reason, we will invariably get a result we can be pleased with.

Any price we ever have to pay for this will always seem small by comparison to the sense of satisfaction that we have been blessed with.



I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those
who do the most for others. (Booker T. Washington)




So many things seem....

....urgent and important. It's amazing what we allow ourselves to become caught up in and concerned about. We live in fear of deadlines and demands. We are constantly aware of commitment. We are forever juggling duties.


Yet, though, we race to meet expectations without even stopping to wonder whether they are valid or relevant. Then we wonder why our lives are so stressful.






The veil of money has never been about how much money you have 
but about how much money has you.

Have you any idea....

....how important you are? On a planet where billions of seemingly similar people all jostle for position, it is easy to feel small and insignificant. Why should you matter more than any of those other grains of sand on the shore? 


Never mind why you should, the fact is, you do! You are made of exceptional stuff.  



Beware the barrenness of a busy life.    (Socrates)

Tuesday 24 April 2018

If you know your....

....20th century European history, you'll know of the British Prime Minister who did a deal with Hitler shortly before the outbreak of WW2.  History hasn't been to nice to him, but I've always thought that certain factors are rarely considered.   Anyway, we're not here for a historical debate...... Clutching a piece of paper as he climbed down from his plane, he promised that it meant 'Peace in our time.' Ever since, Neville Chamberlain's tale has been a salutary warning on the danger of appeasement. Quite right too.






But an effort to avoid conflict is not always foolish. While it is possible to make one, make one!








Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he or she was born in another time.
(Rabindranath Tagore)






There are times....

.....when we are only too well aware of an unsatisfactory situation. And there are those times when we wish an aspect of our personal life could take a different turn. Who is to say that won't happen. The more gracefully and wisely you respond to any current provocation, the quicker you will see that come to pass. 



Be cheerful, trusting, loving, kind and giving. Be all these things, even if you aren't sure they are entirely justified under current circumstances. What we give out is what we'll get back. If what we give is good, nothing but good will come.



The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.




I saw this.....

.......and thought of how many times in a week I hear 'it wasn't me'.  (Don't you just love irony!)



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Monday 23 April 2018

We think we understand everything....


We imagine that we know exactly what's going on. We develop carefully thought-through strategies. We create clear pictures in our mind's eye. Then suddenly, everything spins on a sixpence. All is turned upside down. The book of reality is rewritten in a new language. The flower of understanding is a wilted bloom.


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The seed of some fresh hope must be given a chance. Though things keep turning and changing, just allow yourself to be led by inspiration.


Believe you can and you're halfway there.  (Theodore Roosevelt)

Let's do something different....

....and have a quiz. The answers could prove very helpful.

Q1: When is the darkest hour?  

Q2: What do you have to recognise that you've got before you can find a solution?  

Q3: What never lets you down if you never let it go?


(I don't know how to type upside down, so please stand on your head to read the answers.) 





A1. Just before the dawn.

A2. The problem.

(You got those right, I bet. How did you do with Q3?)

 A3 Faith.               That's all you need to remember



The soul would have no rainbows if the eyes had no tears.
(Native American Proverb, Tribe unknown)

I'll start the week....

...by jumping in at the deep end.  Here goes - deep breath in and - They say..... 
They say 'Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.' So, if you want to enjoy life more, should you stop making plans? No. Experiences are usually richer when our days contain a little space for spontaneity. Plans, though, can be rewarding to make and enjoyable to stick to. We just have to remember that they won't always work out and that we need to be philosophical when they don't.

If your plans are unravelling a little. Don't worry. Just reweave the threads.


The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.   (Leo Buscaglia)

Friday 20 April 2018

A Maya Angelou classic....




Three dangerous words....

....Each time they are uttered, in this order, trouble of some kind is bound to ensue. 'Supposed'. 'To'. 'Be'. Oh, how tempting it is to string them all together without those quotation marks, and thus let loose the demon of destiny. This irritating imp lives within us all. It nags and niggles us. It urges us on to judge everyone and everything - most of all ourselves.




Is this what's supposed to be happening? Is that? Forget 'supposed to be'. Just deal with what 'is'.



If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. (Maya Angelou)

Please imagine that....

....one moment you're in a cinema, fully absorbed by a film. Your pulse is racing as you identify so closely with the key character's deepest needs and feelings. Moments later, you are outside on the street, wondering where you parked the car. You are now in a different world and there is no return to the old one.



As with cinema, so with the theatre of human emotions. A feeling is real until the moment we stop feeling it. Then it is a memory. We must move on.



Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.  
Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.             (Helen Keller)





Thursday 19 April 2018

Realization will always dawn, at some point....






Do you know....

....how much power you have?  What difference can you make? In this vast world, full of so many people, what can one individual do to create change? Who will listen when you talk? Who will notice when you act? It is easy to feel helpless and hopeless, forlorn and frustrated by all that's wrong. Yet you are uniquely positioned. Just as, when you smile at a stranger you can send a cheerful mood halfway around the world, when you shout into the wind you can send a message for miles.




Don't underestimate your ability.













Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Have you heard....

....of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr?  No?  Me neither until a few months ago.  Anyway, he said 'An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.' Perhaps he is right. Possibly too, a fool is a person who considers their own area of expertise to extend across too wide a field. We can all learn from the errors that we may have made in the past but how does that prevent us from making more errors in the future? 


It's very possible that somewhere in your world now, there is someone who knows what you need to know. Are you wise enough to see that they know it?



There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.  
(Martin Luther King Jnr)


Wednesday 18 April 2018

Most of us like....

....to talk. Few of us like to listen. Most of us like to dream but few of us want to wake up. We may claim that we're keen to see change but often, secretly, we want to leave things as they are. We all have selective memories. We're all a little insensitive. We all, sometimes, say one thing and do another. We all make mistakes.  We should make allowances without making fools of ourselves.






Try to recognise your own inconsistencies before being mad at someone else for theirs.










Any fool can criticise, complain, condemn, and most fools do.

That's all there is to it.....




It is in the falling apart....

....that there is the most opportunity for a coming together. Where everything is cut and dried, there can be no room for manoeuvre. Where nothing is quite the way it was, everything has the potential to improve. If you are looking to solve a problem, think twice about seemingly sealed deals and non- negotiable arrangements.






Times change. Rules can be rewritten. What appears to be an impenetrable fortress may prove to be a cardboard cut-out ready to fall in the wind.









The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, 
or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Tuesday 17 April 2018

Imagine that you are....

.....standing in someone else's shoes. It's easy to find fault with another person's actions, but there may be good reasons why they feel what they feel and want what they want. Arguing against this won't help you make your case.



If you hope to communicate an alternative idea, you should consider which words and suggestions would be most persuasive. You can't make false promises nor can you say something that isn't true. But sweetness and sensitivity will take you a long way in the right direction.


To avoid facing our emotions we often keep either busy doing or busy thinking. In order to find tranquillity in life, face the way you feel.

The meaning of real strength....




Spread the light....






Weak people feel that....

....they must be rigid at all times. Strong people can afford to bend a little. You can resolve to be weak, or you can decide to be strong. It doesn't much matter which position or which view you take, as long as you are consistent. If you are going to do something, do it wholeheartedly. If you are not going to do anything, be proud, clear and firm about your decision to let things find their own level.



Don't even think in terms of weakness and strength. Just think about what's needed.






Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now 
and make a brand new ending.

Monday 16 April 2018

When we let....

...things get to us, we find it hard to let them go again. Our emotions, once awakened, refuse to go back to sleep. Our passions, and our prejudices alike, flood our lives with a light of one colour - and in the process they wash away experiences of some more subtle, varied hue.

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That's why we should try to be carefree about what we take seriously.



The wise continues while the fool is always beginning. (Zambian Proverb)

Once upon a time....

.... there was this man who went by the name of William Shakespeare.  Quite well-known, it seems!  One of his famous lines is  'All the world's a stage'.

He must have been right, else why do schoolteachers value his work so much? The idea, though, raises questions such as, 'Where's the audience?' And, 'Where's the script?' And, 'Can you audition for a different role if the one you're doing doesn't suit you?' Let's leave the first two points. They are too hard to answer. As for this business of swapping identities, well no, you can't do that.


But you can expand and develop into the character you have been born to play.




Talking is not doing.  It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.   
(William Shakespeare)

Saturday 14 April 2018

What a tangled web we weave....

....when first we practise to deceive. Sir Walter Scott's wry observation is often quoted. It doesn't justify our efforts to deceive others. Indeed, often conscious, deliberate deceptions stay surprisingly straightforward because all involved in keeping them up are so careful.



The real complications arise when we attempt to deceive ourselves, when we go into denial or rewrite reality to suit our fantasy.



You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.  
(Christopher Columbus)


It's usually a mistake....



....to belong to the group known as 'most people'.....



 

For centuries people dreamed....

....about the ability to fly. That, our ancestors figured, would surely alter everything. It's now close to 230 years since the first hot air balloon carried humans towards the heavens. Has this amazing invention allowed us to conquer war, end famine or eradicate cruelty? It has just allowed more of us to travel further and made a worrying contribution to climate change!


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We should always aspire to progress. But at times we must show caution.  We may well progress but we can't always be sure it will do for us all that we hoped it would.







Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, 
and success have no meaning.      (Benjamin Franklin)


Friday 13 April 2018

I once heard someone....

....tell of how they once walked on fire.  They took off their shoes and strode out purposefully over a long bed of red hot embers. It didn't hurt. And they didn't get burned. But that's only telling you half the story. They spent ages, first, getting psyched up. they did team- building exercises with the other firewalkers. They beat their chests and danced.  They faced their fears and they encouraged each other to believe that they really were about to succeed.




It's amazing what you can do if you feel supported and if you have faith.









The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday.

Emotions aren't easy....

....to explain. We feel what we feel because we feel it. It doesn't matter how often we tell ourselves that we ought not to feel it or how hard it is to justify why we feel it. But this does not mean that we must be slaves to our feelings or that we can never alter them. We just have to recognise that they do not dwell in the realm of the intellect and thus they cannot hear logic.


If you want to change the way you feel about something, don't talk yourself out of it, just try to swap one feeling for another.



 To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Wednesday 11 April 2018

Generally speaking....

.....children are like plastic putty. Emotionally, psychologically and even to some extent, physically. They can bend and stretch quite easily. They can adapt to a new situation and mould themselves into a different shape. Adults, by contrast, are like plaster. They set, very quickly, into rigid patterns. Change involves a slow process of 'chipping away' at a solid structure. 


Change is not a problem unless you choose to see it as such! 




We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.  (Emile M Cioran)

Deconstruction is.....

.....always easier than reconstruction. If you want to take something apart, all you need is a screwdriver or a critical frame of mind. Now, in much the same way that we can take apart a machine, we can find fault with anyone or anything.


Creativity, though, calls for a different kind of energy. A power of belief. A strength to resist the forces of doubt and scepticism.


The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - 
loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Tuesday 10 April 2018

When you finally get....

....to the future, who can you expect to find there? Yourself! You'll be there. In all your glory. There's no getting away from that. The day you cease to exist, there is no future - at least as far as you're concerned. Do you like yourself now? Then you'll like yourself in the future and, reassured by the prospect of your own good company, you'll find tomorrow a rewarding place.



And if you don't like yourself now? You had better start working on that relationship. It's powerful and it's not going to go away.



The greatest disease in the west today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, 
unloved, and uncared for       (Mother Teresa)

Please accept this invitation....

....to join me in growing old disgracefully. Remain rebellious, reckless, free-spirited and fun-loving. But - and there's always a 'but' isn't there -  learn from the past. Don't keep on making the same mistakes - make new ones instead! Modify your behaviour in accordance with experience. Then, as you grow old, you will also grow wise. Once you are truly wise, you will see that it is much more enjoyable to be old than it is to be young.


The road to happiness usually involves breaking a habit or three. Hard though it may be, it may well prove a small price to pay for what could be a lot of freedom.



People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones. 
(Charles Kettering)

A more accurate measure....




Thursday 5 April 2018

You can't make tomorrow....

....happen today, but you can, most definitely, make today happen tomorrow. All you have to do is get stuck in a rut. You can repeat the same old habits and patterns almost ad infinitum.




Then, the same old situations will arise - along with the same old dramas, the same old conflicts, the same old frustrations.



I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
 (Hafiz of Persia)

Rewards and incentives....

 ....don't have to be dramatic to be effective. Would you rather see one slight smile flit across the face of someone you feel fond of or watch an entire crowd adopting an expression of false amazement and feigned rapture? Would you rather be given the one thing you most need to complete a collection or just accept a whole stack of relatively random but expensive prizes?





A small but significant development can be worth more than its weight in platinum.










Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.   (Anthony J D'Angelo)

A point so often missed, by so many....





Wednesday 4 April 2018

We all understand, and then conveniently....

.... (or rather, inconveniently) forget that in war, there are no winners and in love, there are no losers. Instead, we convince ourselves that if we fight with all our might for a cause that we believe to be right, we will emerge victorious and vindicated - rather than scarred forever by our tragic losses. And, because we mistake love for 'ownership', we associate it with pain.








But a genuinely generous and giving heart can never be broken.







Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future. 
(Marilyn Ferguson)

People talk to each other....

....all the time, but they very rarely listen.  When they do, they don't hear. They chit and they chat. They allude and they elude. They rarely speak straight to each other. That's too much like hard work. It's much easier just to allow plenty of latitude for platitude.


Why be scared of telling (or hearing) the truth.  A relevant truth may cause a stir but it can also stir a cause.




We know what we are, but know not what we may be.      (William Shakespeare)


Monday 2 April 2018

We all have closets....

...Those closets all have skeletons in them. Those skeletons, though, have long since lost most of their identifying features. They are not very interesting. The only power they possess is the ability to seem slightly shocking when you first open the cupboard door and they leap out at you from the dark. Shine any kind of a light on them for any length of time and they soon become a pile of boring old bones.



If you want to conquer a fear from the past, stop hiding from it.




Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose   (Lyndon B Johnson)

It's oh so easy to do....

....what you know how to do. It's easy, too, to get the same old results from doing the same old thing. All of which is fine if you're happy with what's happening. If you're not, it's surely got to be worth trying something different. You can't be sure what will happen if you do that? Exactly. But at least you'll learn something. And almost certainly you will get a different result.

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You are not obliged to explore and experiment. You can just stick with the tried and tested. Or you could try being brave.




The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is very easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear
that it is impossible to mistake it.       (Madame de Stael)

What truly defines each and every one of us....