Tough times never last, but tough people do. – Robert H. Schulle

75 Reminders for Tough Times

  1. You never know how strong you really are until being strong is the only choice you have.
  2. Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
  3. You cannot change what you refuse to confront.
  4. Nobody is perfect, and nobody deserves to be perfect.  Nobody has it easy.  You never know what people are going through.  Every one of us has issues.  So don’t belittle yourself or anyone else.  Everybody is fighting their own unique war.
  5. Crying doesn’t indicate that you’re weak.  Since birth, it has always been a sign that you’re alive and full of potential.
  6. No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.  (Read Unstoppable.)
  7. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.
  8. Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.  Let it go.
  9. Making one person smile can change the world.  Maybe not the whole world, but their world.  Start small.  Start now.
  10. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
  11. Never let success get to your head, and never let failure get to your heart.
  12. You have to fight through some bad days to earn the best days of your life.
  13. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
  14. You can learn great things from your mistakes when you aren’t busy denying them.
  15. Give up worrying about what others think of you.  What they think isn’t important.  What is important is how you feel about yourself.
    http://www.marcandangel.com/2011/07/17/75-reminders-for-tough-times/

Continue reading

The Four Agreements

Rooted in traditional Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements as taught by Don Miguel Ruiz offer steps toward personal freedom and a life of peace, grace, and unconditional love. The Toltec strived for mastery of awareness through personal discipline. The agreements are simple but profound; here is the essence of each of them:

Continue reading

real thing or mere reflection of self…

Sufi mystic Shibli was asked, “Who guided you in the Path?”

He said: “A dog. One day I saw him, almost dead with thirst, standing by the water’s edge. Every time he looked at his reflection in the water he was frightened, and withdrew, because he thought it was another dog.

“Finally, such was his necessity, he cast away fear and leapt into the water; at which the ‘other dog’ vanished.“The dog found that the obstacle, which was himself, the barrier between him and what he sought, melted away.

“In this same way my own obstacle vanished, when I knew that it was what I took to be my own self. And my Way was first shown to me by the behavior of a dog.”

Reflection collie dog

Continue reading

If you are young and nervous, don’t be.

If you are young and nervous, don’t be. I urge you to be curious.undefinedQuestion society and what you are told. You don’t have to live the life that has been laid about before you. You don’t have to live the life your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have lived. Feed your potential by moving around, by stirring things up.I want to protect youth from false guilt that is projected onto them when deciding what path is their own. You don’t have to answer your neighbor when they condescendingly ask about your plans are after high school. Breathe, collect your thoughts, try things, see what falls in your lap and recognize what feels true. What is time? It’s subjective. You are not the same. You are you. Why are we told we must decide by a certain age? Pressured into decisions with their deadlines, we’re told we won’t be great if we don’t follow through into traditional schooling. Why are we conformed into school systems that control our minds for eight hours a day, telling us we must learn this way, speak this way, perform this way, obey until we graduate, and then live this way, retire, die? The natural latter seems like death to creativity in so many of the young, leaving them silent and straight jacketed walking in a straight line to predictability.

It’s always your choosing to decide whether you’ll live a curious life or a comfortable one. Maybe I’m crazy for not following a path I know that would lead me to a stable life, maybe I’m crazy for following my passions. Maybe I won’t have a big yard or an abundance in my bank account, but I’ll have stories and a heart bigger than my body, a brain with stretch marks. I’ll have films and images, an archive of my life of adventure. My life of constant hunger for better understanding of Earth and my spirit within it.

There are always other options.

Challenge your comfort, let yourself unfold.

– Madison Dube from thewanderlustchild.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, What do you do?

Life is more than “what you do” We live in a society that likes to define us by our job titles, how much money we make, who we know, and how cool our business card looks.
Continue reading

Cultural Leadership : actions that midwives the future

“…. cultural leadership is distinct from political and administrative leadership. While political leaders primarily make rules and administrative leaders primarily enforce rules, cultural leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa find principled and imaginative ways to transgress those rules that inhibit the emergence of cultural sovereignty and creativity.

Continue reading