Welcome
to spring!
Another new week
has come into our lives, giving us more
opportunities to get the
most out of all that it offers us. We hope
that you're able to find those moments
and situations that are filled with beauty and
wonder and kindness and live them
for all that they're worth, every time they show up
in your life!
Be more concerned with your
character than your reputation,
because your character is what you really
are,
while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
John Wooden
My
view is that to sit back and let fate play its hand out and never
influence it is not the way people were meant to operate.
John
Glenn
People judge you
by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of
gold, but so has a hard-boiled egg.
It is not loving to stay in a place or an experience where you
are happy sometimes, sad most of the time. It is not loving
to convince yourself that it is okay to stay in a place where you
are not loved, honored, and valued the way your heart tells you
you deserve to be. It is not self-loving, nor is it loving to
others involved, to allow yourself to be mentally, emotionally, or
physically abused in hope that things can, or will, get
better. When you participate in actions and activities that
are not loving toward you, you are helping them do things that
hurt you, and that is not a loving thing to do.
It is easy
to convince yourself that you must stay where you are because you
have no place else to go; or because you know things could be
worse, or because you know things could get better. It is
easy to overlook things that eat away at your sense of self, your
sense of value, your sense of well-being. As easy as it may
be to blame someone else, to try to ignore what you feel, to call
your pain a sacrifice for love, you are not being loving or wise
to do so. Eventually, you will be held responsible for
everything you experience and how you have responded to it.
Love does
not ask us to lose ourselves, harm ourselves, or sacrifice
ourselves for its sake. Love offers to us, measure for
measure, what we offer it.
If you are being dishonored,
disrespected, physically harmed for the love you give, you must
ask yourself, "Am I really giving love, or am I simply afraid
to leave?"
Until
today, you may have participated in being unloving toward
yourself. Just for today, allow yourself to stand in the
truth, honor and peace of love. Ask yourself, "Am I
receiving all that I am giving?" If not, ask yourself,
"Why not?"
Today
I am devoted to loving myself, honoring myself,
and removing myself from unloving experiences.
We
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The problem with waiting
until tomorrow is that when it finally arrives, it is called
today. Today is yesterday's tomorrow. The question
is what did we do with its opportunity? All too often we
will waste tomorrow as we wasted yesterday, and as we are
wasting today. All that could have been accomplished can
easily elude us, despite our intentions, until we inevitably
discover that the things that might have been have slipped from
our embrace a single, unused day at a time.
Each of us must pause frequently to remind ourselves that the
clock is ticking. The same clock that began to tick from
the moment we drew our first breath will also someday cease.
Time is the great equalizer of all mankind. It has taken
away the best and the worst of us without regard for
either. Time offers opportunity but demands a sense of
urgency.
When the game of life I finally over, there is no second chance
to correct our errors. The clock that is ticking away the
moments of our lives does not care about winners and
losers. It does not care about who succeeds or who
fails. It does not care about excuses, fairness or
equality. The only essential issue is how we played the
game.
Regardless of a person's current age, there is a sense of
urgency that should drive them into action now--this very
moment. We should be constantly aware of the value of each
and every moment of our lives--moments that seem so
insignificant that their loss often goes unnoticed.
We still have all the time we need. We still have lots of
chances--lots of opportunities--lots of years to show what we
can do. For most of us, there will be a tomorrow, a next
week, a next month, and a next year. But unless we develop
a sense of urgency, those brief windows of time will be sadly
wasted, as were the weeks and months and years before
them. There isn't an endless supply!
So, as you think of your dreams and goals of your future
tomorrow, begin today to take those very important first steps
to making them all come to life.
* * * *
Excerpted
from the book The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle.
Reproduced
with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
I
shall open my eyes and ears.Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree,
a flower, a
cloud, or a person.I
shall not then be concerned at all to ask
what they are but
simply be glad that they are.I shall joyfully allow them
their "divine, magical,
and ecstatic" existence.
Clyde
S. Kilby
Responsibility
I cannot live
my life fully if I do not accept the responsibility that I have
for my actions, my words, my reactions, my plans, the ways I treat
other people. Our society teaches us often that we aren't
responsible for things, that they're other people's fault, that we
don't have to take responsibility if we don't want to. But
we do have to do so if we want to live happy and fulfilling
lives. Without recognizing, accepting, and living up to our
responsibilities, we end up as empty shells of people, wondering
why the world is treating us poorly.
The good news, though, is that we can start to take responsibility
and live up to it at any moment in our lives, no matter what our
circumstances. And once we do that, we start feeling better
about ourselves, we gain more confidence and self-respect, and we
start to learn more and better ways of dealing with life and
living in all its pain and glory.
There are several types of responsibility that we need to be aware
of. The first is the responsibility for our own lives, for
being aware that we ourselves--and no one else--are responsible
for ourselves and our own happiness. We can't go through
life moaning about how unfair life is or whining about how others
get more or better chances than we do. We have to face life
full on and if we don't see chances, we need to make them.
And if we don't know how to make them, we need to learn how--and
there are plenty of books and programs out there that can teach us
how to do just that. Money problems? Learn about money
and how to make more of it and how to budget it and save it.
Relationship problems? Learn how to deal with people more
effectively; learn about your own unrealistic expectations of
others that may be keeping you from having deep and fulfilling
relationships.
The willingness to accept responsibility
for one's own life
is the source from which self-respect springs.
Joan Didion
It can be very
easy to decide that all of our problems are caused
by outside sources, and that we're not responsible
for our own misery or unhappiness. When we
stop blaming others, though, that doesn't mean that
we start blaming ourselves. The blame game is
a destructive one, and it doesn't help us to grow or
advance at all. Taking responsibility for
ourselves doesn't mean that we beat ourselves up for
our mistakes--rather, it means that we carefully and
thoughtfully examine where we are and how we are,
and then make decisions about how we're going to
adjust our paths. Mistakes? Don't cry
over them or waste time worrying about them--fix
them. And then move on. Only when we do
this are we being responsible for and about
ourselves.
It's also important that we live up to the
responsibilities that arise in our worlds, making
sure that we fulfill our duties and obligations to
others. There are other people on this planet,
and just as we depend on them, they should be able
to depend on us. We depend on dairy farmers to
get milk to distributors; we depend on people to
make and repair our roads; we depend on agencies to
regulate things that need to be regulated, such as
foods and air pollution. In the same way,
people depend upon us, and it's our responsibility
to make sure that we don't let them down.
Of course, many people take on far too much
responsibility, seeing themselves as responsible for
much, much more than they really are responsible
for. They feel themselves to be responsible
for the success of every endeavor, even those that
are really the responsibility of others, but they're
not. They feel that they're responsible to
make sure that other people's problems turn out
okay, but they're not. They feel that they're
responsible to make sure that everything is and
turns out perfect, yet they're not. These
people are often running themselves ragged, setting
standards that are impossibly high to meet, and
dooming themselves to a life full of self-created
frustration and annoyance.
The best years of your life are the ones
in which you
decide
your problems are your own. You do not blame
them on
your mother,
the ecology, or the president.
You realize that you
control your own destiny.
Albert Ellis
We are
responsible for our lives and our own
attitudes. I've heard many a student tell me,
"Of course I see the world as hopeless--life's
given me plenty of messages that tell me it's
hopeless." Yet I see others who get those
same messages and who see beauty, wonder, and hope
instead of frustration and hopelessness.
Whatever messages life is giving us, we are
responsible for the interpretation of those messages
and our own reactions to them. We often lean
on others when things go badly, and that can be very
helpful--we can demonstrate responsibility by asking
for help, as contradictory as that may sound.
Seeking the aid of another person is a strategy that
can help us to see hope and to keep our spirits
high, and that's definitely a responsible action.
I
am responsible. Although
I may
not be able to
prevent
the worst
from happening,
I am responsible
for
my attitude toward the
inevitable misfortunes
that
darken life. Bad
things do
happen; how
I respond to
them
defines my character.
Walter
Anderson
Learning
responsibility is one of the most important tasks
that we can undertake, and living up to our
responsibilities in all their different forms is
definitely something that can help us to define
ourselves as human beings. Our
responsibilities to our neighbors, our families, our
co-workers, our planet, and ourselves are as
important as anything else in our lives, and making
sure that we fulfill them can help us to keep our
lives on an even keel, and to make our lives
something that we're proud of when we look back on
what we have done and what we haven't done.
One's philosophy is
not best
expressed in words; it is
expressed in the
choices one
makes. . . In the long run, we
shape our
lives and we shape
ourselves. The process never
ends
until we die. And the
choices we make are
ultimately our
responsibility.
The thing wrong with the world is that people don't have
instructions. We were told almost three hundred years ago that people would be
coming to us and asking for our instructions. We were told that back
in the 1700s that there'd be a day when white people would be coming
to us, asking for instructions and finding out the way we think.
Indians joke that when they see a white man coming,
they see a question
mark walking down the road. That's not one of the things I laugh about.
I feel for the ones who feel lost. I tell them to use common sense and
listen. The Creator has the answers. A lot of people are searching for what
they don't have. They're searching for the wisdom of a whole way of life.
So they come to the Indians. That's why I say it's in the prophecies
that they are coming to us, because they are wanting to learn our way of life,
what it is all about. It's true, I get a lot of people, even college
people,
who want to know how to be a "Human Being." We don't laugh at
the
white people, Most of the Indians can't laugh because even they haven't
been brought up in the Longhouse like I have. They've got to learn too.
Even some of the chiefs have had to learn and I don't know
how much they have learned.
Leon Shenandoah
Every thought
which enters the mind, every word we utter, every deed
we perform,
makes
its impression upon the inmost fiber of our being and
the result of these
impressions
is our character. The study of books, of
music, or of
the fine arts is not essential to a lofty character.
It rests
with
the worker whether a rude piece of marble shall be squared into a
horse-block
or carved into an Apollo, a Psyche, or a Venus di Milo.
It is
yours, if you choose, to develop
a spiritual form more beautiful
than any
of these, instinct with immortal life,
refulgent with all the
glory of character.
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
™
