The War Within Yourself

Life is way too short to spend another day at war with yourself.
- Anonymous

Above all, don't lie to yourself.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie
comes to a point that he cannot
distinguish the truth within him, or around him,
and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha

We carry our worst enemies within us.
- Charles Spurgeon

Today's affirmation:
I lay aside the battles within my own mind,
and grant myself peace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Creating Peace Within Yourself

Managing Your Wayward Mind

Our Own Worst Enemy

Stilling Your Mind

Recognizing Our Abundance

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
- Epicurus

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Our journey into consciousness of wealth begins
with the realization that we have already arrived!
- Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith

Life is unlimited - it expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that you contribute.
-Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
- Epictetus

Further reading: How good things really are

Bounty of the Earth

True Riches

Enjoy Life

Release the Struggle

Do Not Compare

Do not compare, do not measure.
No other way is like yours.
All other ways deceive and tempt you.
You must fulfill the way that is in you.
- Carl Jung

Comparisons are odious.
- Old English Saying

Never mind what others do; do better than yourself,
beat your own record from day to day, and you are a success.
- William J. H. Boetcker

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others.
He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.
- The Buddha

Happiness in the present is only shattered by comparison with the past.
- Douglas Horton

Further reading: Avoid Comparison, Prevent Suffering

Value Honor, Not Ego

Each To Their Own

Cheer Whenever Others Succeed

Criticism and Complaint

Live Your Life Fully

Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Continue to learn.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece.
I challenge you to join the ranks of those people
who live what they teach, who walk their talk.
- Tony Robbins

Today's affirmation: Today, I will do my best... and then relax in the knowing that I have done all I could.

Further reading: Beyond Your Limits

Enthusiasm and Passion

Dancing Through Life

Confidence and Action

The Power of Your Intention

Mary Anne Radmacher: Frankie's Story (The origin of Live With Intention)

 

Like Angels

We are each of us are angels with only one wing,
and we can only fly by embracing one another.
- Lucretius

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

There are choirs singing in your head.
If you listen, you will hear the music.
It is the song of angels.
Pay no attention to the sounds of the world.
They are just noises, and even when
added up all together
they have no value, make no sense.
Strain to hear the song of angels.
Listen to the melody within your soul.
- Neale Donald Walsch

Friends are angels who lift us to our feet
when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.
- Anonymous

Further reading: Stand Together

A Shared Dream

Mutually Beneficial

Tread Lightly

Soar Your Spirit

Step Up to the Plate

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
- Babe Ruth

It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail.
It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.
- Charles Kettering

Success comes from knowing that you did your best
to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
- John Wooden

Whenever you're scared of something,
don't let that define you.
We all feel it, but step up.
- Vince Vaughn

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength,
not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
- Vince Lombardi

There comes a time in each person's life,
when the choice is to step up to the plate,
or to admit to a lack of commitment to one's principles.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: DO IT

The Darkest Night

Choose To Be Fearless

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life

Simply Do Your Best

How to Motivate Yourself

Not Too Serious

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
- Oscar Wilde

Seriousness is a sickness; your sense of humor
makes you more human, more humble.
The sense of humor - according to me -
is one of the most essential parts of religiousness.
- Osho

"Worry" is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world.
Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak.
Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor,
and your picture begins to lighten up.
- Allen Klein

Smile.
Today would be a wonderful day
not to take life so seriously.
Today may end up the way you prefer -
and it may not.
Happiness is not about being a winner -
it's about being gentle with life -
being gentle with yourself.
Let life be a dance,
and choose the kind of
dance you want for today -
perhaps a gentle loving dance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Inner Peace in a World at War

What If Every Day Were Your Day - Celebrate Whimsey Today

As a Child Again

Tread Lightly

Sense of Humor

Today is Your Day

Knowledge is Soon Changed

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
- Gene Wolfe

I remind myself every morning:
Nothing I say this day will teach me anything.
So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening.
- Larry King

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

Develop a passion for learning.
If you do, you will never cease to grow.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong
process of keeping abreast of change.
And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
- Peter Drucker

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
- John Wooden

Further reading: The Illusion of Knowledge

Lifelong Learning

How Life Teaches

Question Your Questions

Conscious Learning

What We Perceive

Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius

There is no truth.
There is only perception.
- Gustave Flaubert

Not what we experience,
but how we perceive what we experience,
determines our fate.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

We don't live in the world of reality,
we live in the world of how we perceive reality.
- Bryan Singer

The perception of beauty is a moral test.
- Henry David Thoreau

Look closely... See with new eyes...
Don't just pass by what is familiar without a thought.
Pay attention and look closely.
There is beauty - there is discovery -
there in a whole new world hiding
beneath the face of the familiar.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Beauty is Everywhere

Natural Goodness

Seeking

Is your glass of life half empty? Or half full?

Perspective

Beauty is whatever gives joy

We Are What We Do Consistently.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured
by his special exertions,
but by his habitual acts.
- Blaise Pascal

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
- Brian Tracy

Change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency.
- Ron D. Burton

Today, examine your beliefs, your actions, your wants,
to determine whether they still represent your highest purpose.

Choose your Habits, Choose your Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Be the Melody in Your Own Life

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life

Habits - Like Water to a Fish

Adjust Your Sails

Changing Bad Habits

Approve of Yourself

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
- Lao Tzu

If you find yourself unwilling to take actions that others disapprove of,
you have lost control of your own life and have given your destiny to others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One of the natural, but unfortunate, human characteristics is the sense of a need for approval.
It is wonderful to show your appreciation of others and to thank them whenever possible.
It is also pleasing when others show appreciation and thank you.
But making any significant life choices based on whether or not others approve
sets one on a course of emotional destruction.

Make your important choices in life based on your values and your long-term objectives
rather than on a need for approval.

Further reading: Thinking for Yourself

Blaze Your Own Trail

Dealing With Rejection

Stand Tall and Proud

How To Not Care What Others Think

Anger is a Killing Thing

Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful
to us than the injury that provokes it.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy -
unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time.
Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive
and you have the power to choose either.
- Wayne Dyer

Anger is a Dagger Twisted into the Soul of the World.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: End Your Anger

Cultivate Awareness

Revenge, the Deadliest Sin?

Stress, Anger, and Forgiveness

Hatred vs. Love

Don't Give Up

Don't give up.
There are too many nay-sayers out there who will try to discourage you.
Don't listen to them.
The only one who can make you give up is yourself.
- Sidney Sheldon

Keep moving. Don't stop. But don't rush.
Don't race around.
Sure and steady gets you there every time.
- Neale Donald Walsch

You make a mistake, you keep going.
- Linda Gray

Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

True courage is taking another small step each day
toward achieving your vision.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Stand Up To Your Obstacles

Beyond Failure

What is Defeat?

Keep Moving

One More Step

The Nature of Learning

We Learn...
10% of what we read,
20% of what we hear,
30% of what we see,
50% of what we see and hear,
70% of what we discuss,
80% of what we experience,
95% of what we teach others.
- William Glasser

Education is not the answer to the question.
Education is the means to the answer to all questions.
- William Allin

Learning is the beginning of wealth.
Learning is the beginning of health.
Learning is the beginning of spirituality.
Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.
- Jim Rohn

True learning is not about facts,
but about conscious appreciation of the experience of living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Learning Through Observation

Learning From History

How Life Teaches

Life: Mystery and Riddle

Lifelong Learning

Finding A Way

Where there's a will, there's a way.
- old English proverb

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman,
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.
If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
- Norman Vincent Peale

In their own way, problems can be blessings.
They can be the prod to get us out of our complacency and into action.

Problems create an opportunity for us to exercise our ingenuity,
to plan, to persevere, to interact with our social network,
and to feel a sense of accomplishment when we finally overcome the unexpected roadblock.

Further reading: Another Door Opens

Problem-Solving Abilities

Rising Again

Ask Better Questions

When Life Kicks You

Be Flexible

A Life of Harmony

Happiness is when
what you think,
what you say,
and what you do
are in harmony.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Happiness is not a matter of intensity
but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
- Thomas Merton

He who lives in harmony with himself
lives in harmony with the universe.
- Marcus Aurelius

The life of inner peace,
being harmonious and without stress,
is the easiest type of existence.
- Norman Vincent Peale

One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas.
That is probably the only way to achieve a measure
of harmony in one's life.
- Napoleon Hill

The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures,
the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations -
each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy,
bound together by cosmic harmony.
- Ruth Bernhard

What is happiness except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads?
- Albert Camus

Harmony (the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole)
is one of the qualities of a great life.
Let all the aspects of your nature be in harmony with each other,
and let your existence be in harmony with all of creation.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Balance Your Life

Living in the Present

Let me bring peace into moments of chaos

Balance in All Things

Break the Cycle of Self-Inflicted Suffering

Be Boldly Decisive

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

It's better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong
than to agonize at length and be right too late.
- Marilyn Moats Kennedy

Confidence comes not from always being right
but from not fearing to be wrong.
- Peter T. Mcintyre

To live a creative life
we must lose our fear of being wrong.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the
human condition there is no shame in being wrong,
only in failing to correct our mistakes.
- George Soros

Further reading: Never Second Guess Yourself

Forgive Yourself

The Power of Courage

Make a Decision

Fear of Striking Out

Follow Your Bliss

When you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you
that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.
- Joseph Campbell

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
- Walt Whitman

Everyone should carefully observe
which way his heart draws him,
and then choose that way with all his strength.
- Hasidic Proverb

If you get to the point where someone is telling you
that you are not great or not good enough,
just follow your heart
and don't let anybody crush your dream.
- Patti LaBelle

Further reading: The Canvas Of Life

Climb Every Mountain

Creating Your Future

Live Your Life in Bold Colors

Choose to Follow Your Heart

Encourage Me

A friend encourages your dreams and offers advice -
but when you don't follow it, they still respect and love you.
- Doris Wild Helmering

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us
to be what we know we could be.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Flatter me, and I may not believe you.
Criticize me, and I may not like you.
Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.
Encourage me, and I will not forget you.
- William Arthur Ward

Being human, we are imperfect.
That's why we need each other.
To catch each other when we falter.
To encourage each other when we lose heart.
Some may lead; others may follow;
but none of us can go it alone.
- Hillary Clinton

Live your life joyfully by your own rules.
Support and encourage others to live their own joyful and fulfilling lives,
while you avoid trying to make their choices for them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: A Little Help from My Friends

Offering Comfort

Meddling - 5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Offering Helpful Advice

Pay It Forward

Our Children Need Encouragement

Letting Go and Accepting This Moment

Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is,
and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling,
in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome
which comes out of allowing things to be as they are
without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them,
in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all.
What is happening? What do you feel?
What do you see? What do you hear?
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dwell in stillness.
Observe without reacting and without judging.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Further reading: Just Stop It

Cease Striving

Live in the Present

Cultivate Awareness

Cherish This Moment

Choose Inner Peace

Experts and Authorities

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it,
or who said it, no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
- The Buddha

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.
- Grace Hopper

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
- Laurence J. Peter

Always listen to the experts.
They'll tell you what can't be done and why.
Then do it.
- Robert A. Heinlein

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic,
for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
- Robert Lindner

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
- Robert A. Heinlein

Further reading: Trust Reason

Take Charge of Your Life

Common Sense

Exercising Your Free Will

Valley of Death

What If Happiness...

What if happiness were found in the serenity of simple pleasures?
What if we didn't need the newest gizmo... the highest high?
What if happiness is in the air we breathe...
slowly, deeply, and consciously?
What if happiness is one fresh grape, savored with gratitude?
What if happiness is in our oneness with all creation?
What if happiness is about enjoying life exactly as it comes to us -
without chasing after it?
What if happiness is something we CHOOSE...
regardless of our circumstances?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
- Henry David Thoreau

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation,
the greatest pleasures cease to please.
- Epictetus

The best things in life are free.
- Anonymous

What we enjoy constitutes our abundance.
- Epicurus

Further reading: Simple Pleasures

Life Really Is Good

Loving Life

Dance Gently With Life

The Secret of Happiness

How to be Happier in Life

Each Other's Eyes

Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau

Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous

Everything that irritates us about others
can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung

Understanding is a two-way street.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Further reading: Of all the keys to happiness, Service to Others is the big one

Perspective on Diversity

Independence - Liberty - Freedom

Opportunity for Kindness

The Art of Listening

Open Your Mind

Choice, Not Obligation

Happiness cannot thrive within the prison of obligation.
Live wild, life free, live as master of your own fate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be of service because you CHOOSE to be,
never because of a feeling of obligation.

Is freedom anything else than the right
to live as we wish? Nothing else.
- Epictetus

To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying Amen
to what the world tells you you ought to prefer,
is to have kept your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Choose the whole of your environment, things and events,
based upon the value, meaning and function they hold.
Do not allow obligation or immediacy
to bind you to physical things or specific actions.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

We disrespect ourselves and our free-will
whenever we say that we NEED to do something.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Social Obligations (in contrast to legal or moral obligations)

Your To-Do List

Expectations are Demands

Gifts freely given are never obligations

Question Every Assumption and Expectation

 

Setting Your Rhythm

Set Life’s Rhythm with Your Heart-Drum
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

March to the beat of your own drum.
- Proverb

Do what you feel in your heart to be right.
You'll be criticized anyway.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.
- The Buddha

You can choose to follow your heart always.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Your visions will become clear only
when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.
- Carl Jung

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
- Confucius

Further reading: The Beat of the Universe

Choose to Follow Your Heart

Choosing Inner Peace

Living from Your Heart

Changing Your Heart

Easter 2015

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection,
not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.
- Martin Luther

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

This is what the Lord asks of you: only this,
to act justly, to love tenderly,
and to walk humbly with your God.
- Micah 6:8

The great gift of Easter is hope -
Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God,
in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love,
which nothing can shake.
- Basil C. Hume

Love one another.
- Jesus of Nazareth (John 13:34)

On this day, let us affirm the core values of unconditional love of all humans and an uncompromising commitment to caring for all who are sick, infirm, or troubled - as expressed in the biblical story of the Good Samaritan. (Read more on Loving your enemies, the Golden Rule, and the parable of The Good Samaritan)

Further reading: Jesus own Words about Forgiveness and Unconditional Love

Hypocrisy

Hatred vs. Love

The Power of Unconditional Love

Go and Do Likewise

The Seeds You Plant

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring,
who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.
- B. C. Forbes

Look around for a place to sow a few seeds.
- Henry Van Dyke

Gardening is all about optimism.
I put a seed in the ground.
I consistently tend it,
confident I will see the results, in time,
of the nurture I have provided.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Actions are the seed of fate.
Deeds grow into destiny.
- Harry S. Truman

Plant trees for your great-grandchildren -
for future generations.
Create the legacy of a better world.
Leave this world a better place than you found it.
Literally planting trees for
your great-grandchildren is a wonderful idea,
but far more important...
use this symbolism - this imagery -
to represent the kind of legacy
you want to leave to future generations.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: For Our Grandchildren

Tending the Garden of Our Lives

Pay It Forward

Optimism and Hard Work

The Edge of All You Know

Faith:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
...
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly
- Patrick Overton - from his book of poems: The Leaning Tree, 1975
[Widely mis-attributed to Barbara J. Winter, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and others]

Further reading: An Unknowable Future

Everything is a Miracle

Faith Before Dawn

Eternity

Serenity in Times of Crisis

Gift of Love

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.
You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard
or just think it's going to get on by itself.
You've got to keep watering it.
You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
- John Lennon

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
- Jean Anouilh

A gift consists not in what is done or given,
but in the intention of the giver or doer.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Good works are links that form a chain of love.
- Mother Teresa

Further reading: Giving Love and Comfort

Giving of Yourself

Extending Love

Proactive in Our Love

Channels Made for Sharing

April Fool 2015

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
- William Shakespeare

Life is short,
Break the Rules.
Forgive quickly,
Kiss SLOWLY.
Love truly.
Laugh uncontrollably
And never regret
ANYTHING
That makes you smile
- Mark Twain

The burden of the self is lightened when I laugh at myself.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Dare to wear the foolish clown face.
- Frank Sinatra

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
- e. e. cummings

Further reading: Power of Laughter

Never Let Anyone Get Your Goat

Life Is Not Meant to be Serious

Sense of Humor

As a Child Again