Caring, Dreaming, Striving

Excellence is the result of
caring more than others think wise,
risking more than others think safe,
dreaming more than others think practical,
and expecting more than others think possible.
- Anonymous

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty;
it is its own reward.
Everything else is in God's hands.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
- Thomas Merton

Good enough never is.
- Debbi Fields

Excellence is not a destination to be arrived at,
but a path of continual attention and improvement.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's affirmation:
While I choose never to be dissatisfied or unhappy
with my current level of knowledge or accomplishment,
I constantly seek excellence in all domains that truly matter to me.

Further reading: Do Not Compare

Fake It 'Til You Make It

My Highest Aspirations

5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits
  

Dance with the Storm

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain.
- Vivian Greene

Instead of dwelling on negative thoughts,
cause your mind to dwell on peace and joy.
- Ernest Holmes

Have NO EXPECTATIONS.
Life will not meet your expectations.
Choose joy anyway.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Count Your Blessings - Not Your Troubles

Calm During Storms

Beyond Your Worries

When It's Darkest

Choose Joy Anyway
     

Our Destination is Not a Place

One's destination is never a place but rather a new
way of looking at things.
- Henry Miller

Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.
- Burton Hills

Life is a continuity always and always.
There is no final destination it is going towards.
Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life,
not reaching to some point,
no goal - just dancing and being in pilgrimage,
moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.
- Osho

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life
as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
- Helen Keller

Further reading: Purpose and Direction

Through the Eyes of Another

Where You're Going
    

Make A Positive Difference In The Lives Of Others

A good character is the best tombstone.
Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember
you when forget-me-nots have withered.
Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.
- Charles Spurgeon

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
- Albert Pike

What do you want written on your tombstone?
It won't be there if you haven't done it.
If you want "never missed a day of work," go for it,
but if you want it said that you radiated happiness to all around -
put a smile on every face - inspired us all to be the best we could be,
was a good friend, perhaps a loving spouse and parent,
you might want to start today to lighten up, and start to put happiness -
yours, your family's, and your friends -
ahead of material success or "achievement."

If you want to do it, do it - TODAY.
What you do TODAY is what others will remember. Make today count.

How do you want to be remembered? Live life full out - Begin today.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: To Do That Which Will Endure

Legacy to Future Generations

Seeds You Plant
      

Cherish Your Lifelong Voyage of Discovery

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust

That is what learning is.
You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life,
but in a new way.
- Doris Lessing

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

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

True learning is not about facts,
but about conscious appreciation of the experience of living.
Let each day be a time to learn new appreciation for life.
To learn more about ourselves and the nature of life.
To learn what brings happiness to ourselves and to those around us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Question Your Questions

The Nature of Learning

Learning From History
        

Be Your Own Self

Always be a first-rate version of yourself,
instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
- Judy Garland

Since you are the one who has to live with your choices,
be sure they are your own.
- Alan Cohen

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

To free us from the expectations of others,
to give us back to ourselves -
there lies the great singular power of self-respect.
- Joan Didion

Be simply yourself and don't compare or compete.
- Lao Tzu

Further reading: Have Confidence in Yourself

Believe in Yourself

Trust Your Own Advice

Think for Yourself
       

Contentment, Not Envy

Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy,
to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter,
and to lead but not manipulate.
- William Arthur Ward (1921-1994 writer, educator, and church lay leader)

The more generous we are, the more joyous we become.
The more cooperative we are, the more valuable we become.
The more enthusiastic we are, the more productive we become.
The more serving we are, the more prosperous we become.
- William Arthur Ward

He who is contented is rich.
- Lao Tzu

It is not our circumstances that create
our discontent or contentment.
It is us.
- Vivian Greene

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A good life isn't measured in material goods.
There is no quicker path to misery than coveting your neighbors' stuff.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What You Have That Money Can't Buy

Simple Joys, the Essence of Life

Contentment in Ourselves
    

Where There Is Great Love

Where there is great love there are always miracles.
- Willa Cather

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the
gift of unconditional love and acceptance.
- Brian Tracy

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As selfishness and complaint
pervert and cloud the mind,
so love with its joy
clears and sharpens the vision.
- Helen Keller

Love is the greatest force for good.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Where love is, there God is also.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Further reading: Love: the Greatest Force for Good.

Where There is Love, Nothing is Missing - a Parable

Miracles are Expressions of Love
       

Everyday Miracles

The best portion of a good man's life
is his little, nameless, unremembered
acts of kindness and of love.
- William Wordsworth

A coincidence is a small miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous.
- Anonymous

Miracles happen everyday,
change your perception of what a miracle is
and you'll see them all around you.
- Jon Bon Jovi

Our "Rainbows and Butterflies" are the small miracles of our life -
the little things that are so easy to overlook,
yet so awe inspiring when we take a moment
to notice and to pay attention.
Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures - large and small,
for the bright blue sky and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh,
for the touch of a hand and the whispered "I love you."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Everything is a Miracle

Appreciate Your Blessings

Appreciate Today

Have Gratitude for All Life
       

Reality

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are,
and doing things as they ought to be done.
- Josh Billings

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
- Aldous Huxley

There's a world of difference between truth and facts.
Facts can obscure truth.
- Maya Angelou

You have a choice about the perspective you take on life.
See tragedy, and the world is tragic -
see beauty, and the world is beautiful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

All that is real is seen with the heart.
- Vivian Greene

Reality = Facts + Emotions
Read my article What Is Reality?

Further reading: Seeing, Really Seeing

Dream To Reality

Perspective
     

What is Important

Take a step back,
evaluate what is important,
and enjoy life.
- Teri Garr

Laughter gives us distance.
It allows us to step back from an event,
deal with it and then move on.
- Bob Newhart

At some point everything gets a little stale
and you have to step away from it.
- Les Claypool

Winners have the ability to step back
from the canvas of their lives
like an artist gaining perspective.
- Denis Waitley

Put some distance between yourself
and whatever is concerning you.
Distance in space or time
always creates a new perspective.
Take time to contemplate -
away from the opinions and influence of others -
what you really want
and what you believe to be important in your life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Through the Eyes of Another

Appreciate the Commonplace

Kick Back

Perspective on Diversity
   

Shining Mountains

When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill

If only the people who worry about their liabilities
would think about the riches they do possess,
they would stop worrying.
- Dale Carnegie

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
- William James

To me, faith means not worrying.
- John Dewey

Inaction breeds doubt and fear.
Action breeds confidence and courage.
If you want to conquer fear,
do not sit home and think about it.
Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie

Today's affirmation:
I reach toward the shining mountains,
beyond the fog of daily worries.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: How to Stop Worrying

Time to Smell the Flowers

Not Too Serious

The Shadow of Worry
    

Presidents' Day 2020

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson (third President of the United States)
[Declaration of Independence, and inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial]

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd President of the United States)

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman,
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams (sixth President of the United States)

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.
- George Washington (first President of the United States)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy (35th President of the United States)

With self-discipline most anything is possible.
- Theodore Roosevelt (26nd President of the United States)

Nothing is more important in our national life
than the welfare of our children.
- Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States)

Further reading: Save Only the Best of the Old Ways

Independence Day

Make a Difference, Vote

Hold Your Anger
      

God is All - All is God

Everything is God
- don Miguel Ruiz

To be at one with God is to be at peace...
peace is to be found only within,
and unless one finds it there,
he will never find it at all.
Peace lies not in the external world.
It lies within one's own soul.
- Ralph W. Trine

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself,
and know that everything in life has purpose.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Don't seek God in temples.
He is close to you.
He is within you.
Only you should surrender to Him
and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.
- Leo Tolstoy

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky,
you look in you.
- Alan Watts

Surrender to a Higher Power is a central tenet of 12-step programs,
and is the key to recovering from depression, worry, and fear as well.

Today's affirmation:
When I see Spirit in everything, Peace is at hand.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Breath by Breath

How to Cope With Life

How to Forgive and Move On

Alcoholism in a Relationship - When to Stay, When to Leave
      

Opinion is Not Truth

The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion
is not assurance of its truth.
- Pierre Bayle

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

If you wish to see the truth,
then hold no opinion for or against.
- Osho

Having a personal opinion is great.
Believing that one's personal opinion is absolute truth
leads to most of the world's troubles.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Even the truth, when believed, is a lie.
You must experience the truth, not believe it.
- Werner Erhard

Further reading: What is "The Truth?"

Not As It Appears

The Work - Four Questions

Art of Seeing
     

Valentine's Day 2020

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.
- Harville Hendrix

No partner in a love relationship should feel
that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.
- May Sarton

The greatest lovers are like twin blooms,
each reflecting the passion and the glory of the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You are my ground and you are my rainbow.
You are my butterfly and you are my ecstasy.
You are the start of my journeys and always my destination.
You are my home - the place to which I always return.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: 7 Secrets of Happy Couples

A Loving Relationship

Love and Relationship

Marriage
   

Count Blessings, Not Troubles

In a society that has you counting money, pounds, calories, and steps,
be a rebel and count your blessings instead.
- Rev. Lisa Heckman

If only the people who worry about their liabilities
would think about the riches they do possess,
they would stop worrying.
- Dale Carnegie

It is always a good day to be grateful for all of life -
grateful for large blessings and small.
Especially to be grateful for the symbolic blessings -
the rainbows and butterflies that come into our lives
when we least expect and most need them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Count your blessings - not your troubles.
- Dale Carnegie

Further reading: Beyond Worries

Step Back, Gain Perspective

May You Be Blessed
    

Go Ahead and Weep

There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness,
but of power.
They speak more eloquently
than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of
overwhelming grief ...
and unspeakable love.
- Washington Irving

Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart,
don't know how to laugh either
- Golda Meir

The dew of compassion is a tear.
- Lord Byron

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.
- Alfred Austin

Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
- Natalie Clifford Barney

The bitterest tears shed over graves
are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Are you holding back long-suppressed emotions? Let your feelings flow, right now.

While some of us wear our emotions on our sleeve, others keep feelings bottled up for decades. Strike a balance. If you are suffering with unexpressed frustration or grief, let the tears flow. Then find a friend to laugh with. Laughter, however artificial it feels, lightens the saddest moments and bonds us to family and friends.

Tears and laughter cleanse the heart.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Coping With Loss, Grief, and the Fear Of Your Own Mortality

Promise of Rainbows

Missing Those We Love

Coping with Heartbreak
    

The Goodness of Life

Believe in the goodness of life.
Believe in the power of time to heal and to renew.
Believe in the power of forgiveness and gratitude.
Believe in the gift of rainbows and butterflies.
Believe in the laughter of children.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Believe in love.
Believe in magic.
Believe in others.
Believe in yourself.
Believe in your dreams.
If you don't, who will?
- Jon Bon Jovi

Being part of the natural world reminds me
that innocence isn't ever lost completely;
we just need to maintain our goodness to regain it.
- Jewel

Further reading: Natural Goodness

Our Opportunity

Renewing Yourself

Believe in Humanity
    

Humor Creates Distance From Tragedy

A person without a sense of humor
is like a wagon without springs.
It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
- Henry Ward Beecher

We laugh to survive.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective:
an awareness that some things are really important, others not;
and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
- Christopher Morley

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

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

Laugh as much as possible, always laugh.
It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself and one's fellow human beings.
- Maya Angelou

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties
and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Humor Creates Distance From Tragedy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Need for Humor

Be as a Child

Not Too Serious

Cherish the Whimsey
    

Affirming Inner Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further reading: Highest and Innermost God

Life Without Stress

Experience This Moment

The Enemy Within
     

Your Wayward Mind

The monsters are in your own head.
- Paula Cole

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Rattlesnake of the Mind" is a metaphor inspired by the Zen term, "Monkey Mind," which refers to the mind's tendency to invent an unending sequence of creative stories about everything we see and hear.

Life does not consist mainly,
or even largely, of facts or happenings.
It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts
that is forever flowing through one's head.
- Mark Twain

If you want peace, stop fighting.
If you want peace of mind,
stop fighting with your thoughts.
- Peter McWilliams

You are not your mind. You, a Spiritual BEing,
are neither your mind nor your body.
Mind and body are your tools - to use as you choose.
Sometimes your body appears to have a will of its own,
as when it twitches or pains.
Likewise, your mind often appears to have its own will.
That incessant chattering of regret, disappointment, guilt,
shame, foreboding, worry, and fear
is your Rattlesnake Mind striking off on its own.
Know that your mind can be a vicious rattlesnake, and be cautious.
The mind can be tamed, but only with conscious effort and patience.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Still Your Mind

Ten Little Tips to Feel Happier Right Now

Overflowing Cup of Tea - Zen Koan
      

Listen, Seek to Understand

Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Stephen Covey

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening
when you'd have preferred to talk.
- Doug Larson

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous

Most of the successful people I've known are the ones
who do more listening than talking.
- Bernard Baruch

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;
they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey

Give whatever you are doing
and whoever you are with
the gift of your attention.
- Jim Rohn

Further reading: Pay Attention

Through the Eyes of Another

True Understanding

Be Aware
   

The Winter Season

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
- Anton Chekhov

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there
was in me an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
- Hal Borland

The ending of a job or a relationship
may appear as the darkest night,
but it is merely the Winter season -
the time of renewal and rebirth
that precedes the new planting -
the beginning of the next great cycle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Honor a season for rest and renewal

Winter Blahs

A Joyous Season of Renewal
        

Time Has No Inherent Meaning

Time, like life itself, has no inherent meaning.
We give our own meaning to time as to life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is only one time that is important - NOW!
It is the most important time because
it is the only time that we have any power.
- Leo Tolstoy

Do not dwell in the past,
do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment.
- The Buddha

You will never find time for anything.
If you want time you must make it.
- Charles Buxton

We must use time creatively.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who forces time is pushed back by time;
who yields to time finds time on his side.
- The Talmud

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Don't fight against time.
Develop a comfort and friendship with time.
Time enjoyed is never time wasted.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's affirmation: Time is my friend.

Further reading: Your Relationship with Time

Master of Patience Make

Time For Yourself

Everything Happens In Its Own Time

Your To-Do List
        

A Life Rooted

Take care of all your memories.
For you cannot relive them.
- Bob Dylan

People living deeply have no fear of death.
- Anais Nin

How different our lives are when we
really know what is deeply important to us,
and keeping that picture in mind,
we manage ourselves each day
to be and to do what really matters most
- Stephen Covey

It is a better thing to weigh and measure priorities
in the illuminating light of your own mission
than to have your activities formed by the
impressions and expectations of others.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

One thing I know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer

How much do you engage yourself in what's truly real
and important in life? That's the individual question.
- Ted Danson

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
- Jean Baptiste Massieu

A life rooted deeply lives and grows in memory.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Further reading: Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life

Mastering Time

Living Your Inspired Life

The Edge of All We Know
          

Appreciate the Beauty

Pause to appreciate the beauty around you.
Whether rainbow or butterfly, mountain or tree, painting or poem -
whether crafted by nature or by a human hand -
beauty adds a magical element to life that surpasses logic and science.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is full of beauty. Notice it.
Notice the bumble bee, the small child,
and the smiling faces.
Smell the rain, and feel the wind.
Live your life to the fullest potential,
and fight for your dreams.
- Ashley Smith

See beauty in unexpected places.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Believe in your heart
that you're meant to live a life full of passion,
purpose, magic and miracles.
- Roy T. Bennett

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
- Franz Kafka 

Magic exists.
Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers,
the music of the wind and the silence of the stars?
Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic.
It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.
- Nora Roberts

Further reading: Inner Beauty

What You See

Your Point of View
    

Little Spark of Celestial Fire

The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire,
called conscience.
- George Washington

Today's affirmation:
I shine my light of love and hope into the darkness of negativity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What Lies Within Us

Create Light
      

Violence Solves Nothing

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
- Isaac Asimov

Where there is no emotion,
there is no motive for violence.
- the character Spock in the Star Trek television series
[More about Causes of Violence]

Peace cannot be achieved through violence,
it can only be attained through understanding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

The cause of violence ... is self-interest.
- William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

War does not determine who is right -
only who is left.
- Bertrand Russell 

Further reading: Revenge, the Deadliest Sin?

How to Deal with Anger - How to Deal with Fear

Your Whole Toolkit