Success is living a life you feel proud of

 

The key to success, and to happiness,
is being fully engaged in life -
leading yourself with inspiration and committed action -
setting your own fine and honorable example.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Albert Schweitzer

Success is getting and achieving what you want.
Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.
- Bernard Meltzer

"Success" isn't about money or fame.
Success is living a life you feel proud of.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Doing Your Best

Wanting is Not Enough

Small Pleasures

Childlike Wonder
    

Difficulties Can Be Blessings in Disguise

 

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

Only when life is difficult, are we challenged to become our greatest selves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When It’s Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life,
your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Further reading: Nothing to look forward to?

Is Hope Futile?

Every Day, a New Day
       

Comfort for your difficult days

May a thread of comfort be woven through your difficult days.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields.
And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.
- Irish Blessing

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather,
always bring your own sunshine.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

Your life within God's arms,
Your dance within God's arms,
Is already Perfect!
- Hafiz

Know that to find comfort, relax into the arms of Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Ten Little Tips To Feel Happier Right Now

Comfort on Difficult Days

The Secret of Happiness

Give Thanks for the Small Miracles

Beyond Your Worries
     

Success is to leave the world a little bit better than you found it

 

Believe in yourself,
in your vision for your future,
and in your ability to take a small step
each day toward achieving your vision.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To leave the world a bit better ... to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Bessie A. Stanley (commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Anyone who proposes to do good
must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,
but must accept his lot calmly,
even if they roll a few stones upon it.
- Albert Schweitzer

True success is bringing joy to yourself and to others.
Success is measured in lives bettered, not in money or power.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We do not need to proselytize
either by our speech or by our writing.
We can only do so really with our lives.
Let our lives be open books for all to study.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Further reading: March On

Pay It Forward

Turn Crisis into Progress

Stand Together
    

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known

 

What does it profit, my brethren,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can faith save him?
- James 2:14

Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want.
It is the belief that God will do what is right.
- Max Lucado

Trust in God's goodness.
Be wary of what humans do in God's name.
Not everyone who claims to speak for God is righteous.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A person who is fanatic in matters of religion,
and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe,
becomes a person who has no faith at all.
- Alan Watts

I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God.
It's religion I'm doubting.
- Bono

To know a person's religion
we need not listen to his profession of faith
but must find his brand of intolerance.
- Eric Hoffer

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
- Michel de Montaigne

Further reading: Where there is Great Love

Know that You have been Blessed

Heaven on Earth

Thank You Prayer
    

Avoid Paralysis by Hesitation

 

When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.
- Honore De Balzac

Action is our greatest weapon against fear.
Left to molder, fear grows upon itself,
but in the face of action,
fear is left in the dust.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak.
Strong convictions precede great actions.
- Louisa May Alcott

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences.
No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
- Thomas Huxley

Live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.
- Bertrand Russell

Further reading: Be an Instrument of Change

Action Beats Inaction

Gain Self Confidence

Feel Your Power       

Stop the Pretense

 

Society is a masked ball,
where everyone hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us,
but our emptiness.
The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
- Eric Hoffer

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Whoever you pretend to be, you must face yourself eventually.
- Al Stewart

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

We all have a social mask, right?
We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image.
But behind that social mask is a personal truth,
what we really, really believe about who we are and what we're capable of.
- Phil McGraw

What if we like our outrageous side best?
We "know" that the "right" thing to do is to suck it up,
put the costume and the happy face back in storage for another year,
re-dress in our frown and gray flannel suit,
and trudge back to job, chores, "responsibilities," and "duty."
Stop! Maybe TODAY is the day to put the frown and gray flannel
into that dusty storage locker, and start to LIVE.
Not just today, but EVERY DAY for the rest of your life!
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
- William Shakespeare

Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance.
- Elbert Hubbard

Recognize the extent to which you hide your true nature from the world.
Consider revealing more of your true self.
...
Society censors our actions,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: How To Not Care What Others Think

Need For Approval

How to Be Yourself

What lessons might Halloween hold for us?     

Go Beyond the Limits

Leap and the net will appear.
- John Burroughs

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
- Anonymous

The only way to discover the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Come to the edge
We can't. We're afraid
We can't. We will fall. Come to the edge
And they came. And he pushed them
And they flew
- Guillaume Apollinaire

Today's affirmation:
When I Come To The Edge of the Familiar,
I Spread My Wings and Fly.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Winds of Grace

The Edge of All You Know

Live Your Life Fully

Accepting Miracles

Soar Your Spirit

Goodness of Humanity

Opportunity for Daily Thanksgiving
       

Be a Master of Patience

 

A person who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile [paraphrase]

A tree that is unbending, is easily broken.
- Lao Tzu

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions,
do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
- Saint Francis de Sales

Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is...
The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
- Dan Millman

Do not attempt to conquer the world with force,
for force only causes resistance.
- Lao Tzu

Read the Aesop fable The Oak and the Reeds

Further reading: The Secret of Happiness

The River of Life

Enjoy the Journey     

What You Call Something or Someone DOES Matter

 

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Shakespeare says, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,"
but I disagree...There is great power in naming.
"Urban wall art" and "graffiti" are very different, even when they are identical.
Think of other word pairs, like "flower" and "weed" - "antique" and "used" - "freedom fighter" and "terrorist"
that greatly color our perception of the object or person being described.
Call a plant beautiful, and it becomes a flower.
Call it ugly, and it becomes a weed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Exercise: Consider the words that you and others in your life use to describe you. If the words are not complimentary, take action to change how you refer to yourself, and encourage others to speak differently of you. For example, if you describe yourself as "shy," choose a more positive term, such as "reserved."

Further reading: It Matters What You Call Something Or Someone

Finding Balance in Life Beats Moderation

        

Stay Flexible and Enjoy the Journey

Life is not always as it seems.
What you have wished for is not always best.
What you have feared may become a blessing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

Change always comes bearing gifts.
- Price Pritchett

Zig as Life Zigs and Zag as Life Zags.
Stay Adaptable, Stay Joyful
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Change of any sort requires courage.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today's affirmation:
I choose to adapt to the circumstances in which I find myself.
I choose to be flexible in my dealings with those around me.
I understand that my way is not the only way -
that inner peace comes from respecting the ways of others,
and that, if I am open, I may gain great insights and happiness
from the ideas and traditions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Go With the Flow

Be Flexible

There is a Way

Enjoy the Journey