Honor and love all of your unique self

Willingly accept the complexity and the contradictions of life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem.
We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.
- Harold Evans

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma,
a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own
mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco

You didn't get stamped out of a mold. You aren't a "black person" or a "white person," a "fat person" or a "skinny person," a "bad person" or a "good person." You are a highly complex human being with emotions, beliefs, capabilities. Each day you face challenges to your health, relationships, finances, and world-view -- and every day you respond to those challenges in ways which are unique to you.

Honor and love all of your unique self. Never diminish yourself with self-applied labels or categorizations.

Further reading: Paradox

Lessons from Life

Stand Rapt in Awe
      

God Knows Best

Everything is a miracle,
not just the beautiful and lovely things.
- Anonymous

Many of our prayers were not answered,
and for this we are now grateful.
- William Feather

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

Today I offer a prayer of forgiveness:
forgive the pettiness of my ingratitude...
the absence of profound thankfulness.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Our opportunity is to love ourselves exactly as we are -
with all our joys and sufferings.
To be grateful for everything.
To forgive ourselves for our doubts of our own worthiness -
for we have no need to be anything other than what we are.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Gratitude for All of Life

Unity with Spirit and All Creation

Miracles Need Both God and You

Gratitude for the Journey
   

Gratitude and Celebration for Your Life

The more you praise and celebrate your life,
the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey

The path to happiness is forgiveness of everyone
and gratitude for everything.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception
to such an extent that it changes the world you see.
- Robert Holden

Further reading: A List of Gratitudes

Zero-Based Gratitude

An Attitude of Gratitude

Feeling Blessed
    

The Difficult Choice for Joy

What are the proper grounds for joy?
Is it circumstance which will
determine the stature of my spirit?
Ah, no. It is choice. It is always a choice -
in the face of any event - for joy.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Your success and happiness lies in you.
Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you
shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
- Helen Keller

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.
- Joseph Campbell

Joy is a choice - but it isn't an easy choice.
It is nearly a certainty that some
of your expectations will not be met today.
Choose Joy Anyway.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Choose to be Peaceful

Life Really Is Good

Fake It 'Til You Make It

Creating Happiness
    

Affirmation of Inner Peace

Each one has to find his peace from within.
And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

We can never obtain peace in the outer world
until we make peace with ourselves.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Guide our feet into the way of peace.
- Luke 1:79

If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances
but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself.
- Joy Page

Today's affirmation:
I am at peace with myself,
and with all that is.

Further reading: Life Without Stress

Highest and Innermost God

Experience This Moment

The Enemy Within