|
28 November 2023
| |
|
|
| |
|
Should
you shield the canyons from the windstorms,
you would never see the beauty of their carvings.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
|
|
Success
has nothing to do with what you
gain in life
or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.
Danny
Thomas
|
|
Growth
begins when we start
to accept our own weaknesses.
Jean Vanier
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Everybody
Is a Genius
(an excerpt)
Matthew Kelly
Albert
Einstein wrote: "Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it
will live its whole life believing that it is
stupid." The question I have for you is,
"What is your genius?"
You
see, I believe that we are all capable of doing one thing
better than any other person alive at this time in
history. What is your one thing?
I
know what you may be thinking. You may be thinking
quietly to yourself that you don't have a genius.
You may be tempted to doubt the idea and think that I am
talking only about the extraordinary people.
No. Everybody is a genius; what is your genius?
Who
are the extraordinary people, anyway? Are they the
only ones who possess genius? Surely we cannot count
only those who achieve world acclaim and success.
If
genius belongs only to those who invent things that change
the whole course of human history, create masterpieces
that draw crowds to art galleries for centuries, imagine
symphonies that live on in our hearts forever, or become
great presidents of great nations or great CEOs of great
corporations--if we count only people who set world
records and win gold medals, people who capture our
imaginations and raise our spirits playing Major League
Baseball or Basketball, those who win Oscars and Grammy
Awards, and people who receive enormous amounts of public
attention for going to heroic lengths to serve
humanity--then what is to become of the rest of
us?
|
|
|
Are
we to march off quietly and join Thoreau's masses and
simply lead our lives of quiet desperation?
I
think not.
Let
me explain from another point of view.
My
mother lives in Australia, and probably nobody will ever
write a book about my mother. She doesn't live in
the right suburb on the right street, she doesn't drive an
expensive car, and she didn't go to the right
college. My mother doesn't make a lot of money, she
doesn't have a lot of money, she doesn't wear expensive
clothes with fancy labels on them, she doesn't vacation in
all the right places every year, and she hasn't had a job
outside of the home since she gave birth to my oldest
brother.
My
mother hasn't invented anything that will change the whole
course of human history, she is not the creator of
artistic or musical masterpieces, and she has not, and is
not likely to, become the great president of a great
nation or corporation. Mum doesn't have any world
records, gold medals, Oscars, or Grammy Awards, and she
can go to the supermarket without being bothered by the
paparazzi.
By
all the world's standards, my mother is a complete
failure. But let me assure you, my mother is an
absolute genius.
I
remember as a child coming home from school. Every
afternoon at three-thirty my seven brothers and I would
descend upon the family like some sort of invasion.
Some of us had experienced triumph, and some of us had
experienced tragedy. My mother was able to
instantaneously console the tragedy and celebrate the
triumph.
As
one of eight children, I never felt as though I were being
treated as just part of the crowd. Both my mother
and my father had a phenomenal ability to draw the best
out of each of my brothers and me.
No.
There will be no books about my mother. And as I
said, if judged by all the world's standards, she is a
complete failure. But you know what? My mother
could not care less what the world thinks. Most
people don't know her well enough to compliment her or
criticize her. And she knows that. My mother
could not care less what just about anybody thinks.
Do you know why? Because my mother knows who she is,
and she knows why she is here. She has no illusions
about trying to be someone she is not. My mother has
discovered her genius, pursued her genius, exercised her
genius, and celebrated her genius. And if you and I
can get even the tiniest taste of that peace--the peace
that comes from knowing that who we are, where we are, and
what we are doing makes sense regardless of the outcome or
other people's opinions--then we have discovered our
genius.
Have
we simply been judging ourselves by all the wrong
criteria?
"Everybody
is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability
to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it
is stupid."
What
is your genius? We are all capable of doing one
thing better than any other person alive at this time in
history. What is your one thing?
Your
one thing may be to love your spouse, raise your children,
or be a kindergarten teacher. Your one thing may be
to invent something that changes the whole course of human
history or to become the president of a great
nation. It doesn't matter so much what form your
genius takes as it does that you embrace and celebrate it.
How
will you know when you discover your genius? There
are two signs: joy and a feeling of
timelessness. When I speak and when I write, the
hours pass without notice. This is not work, it is
passion. Is it always like that? No, of course
not. There are times when to squeeze a single
coherent paragraph from my mind takes hours and
hours. But when I experience the joy and the
timelessness of sharing these ideas, I know that I was
born to share these ideas as a fish was created to swim or
a bird to fly. It is simply a part of who I am.
It
is possible that you turned your back on your genius years
ago. Many people cast aside their genius because it
is not spectacular enough or because their family and
friends wanted something different for them. All too
often genius is abandoned because it doesn't make us
enough money.
|
|
more
thoughts and ideas on talent
|
|
| |
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
| |
|
|
| |
Listen
While You Speak
Louise
Morganti Kaelin
Language
provides the key for many of our current views and
beliefs. Unfortunately, we rarely listen to ourselves
with conscious attention and so we miss many clues that could
help us understand our behavior. Here are three areas
where it would benefit us to pay particular attention while we
are speaking. Very often the blocks to our success are
revealed this way.
1. Words that keep us where we are. (The "I've Fallen and
Can't Get Up" syndrome).
Some words, like 'should', 'must' and 'try' keep us locked
where we are. 'Shoulds' and 'musts' are typically other
people's expectations and not our own desires. Because
they're not ours, they never seem to get done, but we carry
the guilt around all the time. 'Trying' is actually a
pre-fabricated excuse for not succeeding. Think back
over the times you've used the word try. How often have you
not even made the attempt at something if you started by
'trying' to do it?
Recommendation: Program yourself to have an alarm go off
every time you use the words 'should', 'must', 'try' and any
others you would like to stop using. That gives you a
chance, in the moment, to look at what you are saying and
provides you the opportunity to rephrase it immediately.
Doing it in the moment is immediately freeing. To
program yourself, all you have to do is make a clear and
definite intention to notice when you are using certain words.
2. Negating thoughts. (The "Way We Were"
syndrome).
I was recently working with a client on a challenging
situation. During the hour she had made some
insightful discoveries and was able to see that the situation
was actually an opportunity and the universe's way of
reminding her it was time to move on. She became very
calm and centered and we moved on to other topics. As we
were winding down the call, she again brought up the situation
and talked about how angry and hurt she was. I asked her
to stop and get clear. Was she feeling angry and hurt in
that moment? Her answer was no. Then why did she
say it? Because she was so used to talking about anger and
hurt when she talked about the situation that the old tape
automatically started playing. Eventually, the old tape
would kill off the new tape she was trying to create and keep
her feeling angry and hurt.
Recommendation: If there is a situation or person that evokes
highly charged energy for you, choose to pay attention to all
conversations about it. You can definitely talk about
what you 'did' feel (honoring those legitimate feelings), but
also bring in your current feelings about it and any
understandings gained. This keeps you in the present and
complete with the past, allowing you to build the future you
desire.
3. The 'other' half of our history. (The "If I
Don't Acknowledge It, It Never Happened" syndrome).
When we believe something strongly, we usually accept without
question anything that supports that belief. The
opposite is also true. When we believe something strongly, we
tend to ignore incidents that would break down that
belief. This is true even when the belief is ultimately
something that undermines our ability to achieve our goals.
As an example, a client of mine has run into blocks in
achieving her goals because of a very critical inner voice,
one that was reinforced by her father. Recently, in
talking about her writing, a recognized strength, she said in
passing: "My father always told me I was a good
writer. He was the only one who believed in me."
I asked her to stop and listen to those words. It took
her a few minutes to accept this picture of nurturing and
integrate it with the view of the stern and critical father
she usually holds. It was a small step, but an essential
one. By acknowledging "all" of our history,
both positive and negative, we make the journey to wholeness.
Recommendation: Are there people or events from long ago
that can trigger your buttons today? If so, program
yourself to have an alarm go off EVERY time you bring up that
person or event. Pay attention to what you say.
Does it conform to your belief around this situation? Is
it true? If it's true but doesn't support your belief,
can you allow yourself to accept it as true? Can you begin to
broaden your picture of the person or event? With this
new idea, can you begin to see that the piece that still hurts
you was probably about them and not about you? Open
yourself up to the possibilities and remember this is to free
you, not them. As we free ourselves from the past, we
are able to make better choices in the present. And the
choices we make here and now are the cornerstone for our
future.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
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. |
|
| |
|
We each
receive certain gifts when we come into this life.
These gifts
take the form of our special talents, interests,
and attributes, as
well as our universal human characteristics,
such as our ability to
love and care for one another. When we
do
our best to live our truth and express ourselves as authentically
as
possible, sharing ourselves as we are genuinely moved to,
we
naturally give our gifts to others and to the world.
Shakti Gawain
|
| |
|
Making
the Most of Time
I think
that time is the clearest indicator of Einstein's theory
of relativity. In my life, time is always
relative. If I'm doing something that I enjoy,
then time flies by quickly, while if I somehow have to
do a tedious, annoying task, then time goes by very,
very slowly. But probably the most important
indicator of the relativity of time for me is the fact
that as I grow older, time goes by much more quickly.
When I
was a child, for example, Christmas always took forever
to arrive. The two or three weeks before Christmas
were always the slowest weeks of the year, and it seemed
that the holiday never would get there. The
anticipation of the gifts and the holiday spirit made me
impatient, and my impatience just seemed to slow things
down even more. For all practical purposes, there
were two or three months crammed into the two or three
weeks before Christmas.
These
days, though, holidays such as Christmas and
Thanksgiving are here--and gone--before I know it.
It seems like just last week that we were making our
ways through September, and Thanksgiving was weeks
away. Now, though, the day is gone--almost a week
past already! And while I enjoyed it immensely, I
do sometimes wish that I could slow time down and spend
more of it enjoying a day like Thanksgiving. And
right now we have four weeks until Christmas--but how
long do you think those four weeks are going to
take? I know that for me, they're going to fly by
as if they were only a week or two, and then we'll be
counting down to the new year.
Perhaps
this happens because as we grow older, we have many more
activities that we're involved in, and our time is full
of more to do and to accomplish. Perhaps as we get
a day closer to our death with each new dawn, we start
to notice time much more. Or perhaps we're more
patient as we age, and we don't spend as much time in
anticipation of the future, which I suppose could slow
things down for us.
No
matter what the reasons for this relativity, I find it
very important these days to learn even more strongly
how to spend my life in each present moment as it
comes. I find it important to cherish these
moments for what they are--treasures that bring to me
wonderful experiences and wonderful memories. And
as time passes more quickly, I realize that it's
important for me to slow down--I think that the passage
of time leads many people to become far too busy, out of
the fear of "missing out" on the potential of
their time. After all, if time's going by so fast,
how can we cram in everything we want and hope to do
with our lives?
But
time isn't our enemy. It's not really our friend,
either--it's pretty neutral. We each have the same
number of hours in each day, and we each can fill those
hours with things we love to do, with positive thoughts
and energy, or with negative things that bring us
down. And the secret of making the most of our
time is the fact that all of our time comes down to
minute-by-minute decisions. How am I going to
spend the next hour? Will I do something that I
need to do to keep me healthy, like go for a walk or
take a nap, or will I sit down and crank out another
hour of work? Will I start on that new project, or
will I continue to procrastinate by watching television?
All of
our decisions require careful examination of where we
are right now, and what we need. If we want to
make the most out of time, we have to know what will
benefit us in the long run. It's very effective to
make lists that help us to see clearly just what we want
to accomplish today, tomorrow, or this week, and then
our decisions may become a bit easier to make.
Time is
relative. But that's okay--that's the way things
are. We can't base our happiness or our production
on time, for time is quite neutral and will never react
how we hope it will. We can, though, do our best
to make sure we use our time well by being aware of our
own needs, and the needs of others. That awareness
will help us to look back after each period of
time--days, weeks, months, years--and see that we have
done many of the things we hoped to do, and that we did
them well.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
HOME
- contents - Daily
Meditations - abundance - acceptance
- achievement
- action
- adversity
-
advertising
- aging - ambition
anger
- anticipation
- anxiety - apathy - appreciation -
arrogance
- art - attitude
- authenticity
- awakening - awareness
-
awe
balance - beauty
-
being yourself
- beliefs
- body
- brooding
- busyness - caring -
celebration
- challenges -
change - character
charity - children
-
choices
-
Christianity
- coincidence
- commitment
- common
sense
- community
- comparison - compassion
competition - complaining
- compliments -
compromise
- confidence - conformity
- conscience
-
contentment - control
- cooperation
courage -
covetousness
- creativity
- crisis - criticism
-
cruelty
- death
- decisions
- desire
- determination
- disappointment
discipline -
discouragement - diversity -
doubt - dreams
- earth - education -
ego - emotions -
encouragement
- enlightenment
enthusiasm - envy
- eternity
- ethics - example - exercise - experience - failure
-
faith
- fame
- family - fate - fathers
-
fault-finding
fear
- feelings - finances
- flowers - forgiveness
-
freedom
- friendship
- frustration - fun - the future
- garden of life - gardening
generosity -
gentleness
- giving
- goals - God
- goodness
- grace -
gratitude
- greatness
- greed
- grief - growing up
- guilt -
habit
happiness
- hatred
- healing
-
health -
heart
- helpfulness
- home - honesty
- hope
- hospitality - humility
- hurry
-
ideals - identity
idleness - idolatry
- ignorance
- illusion -
imagination - impatience
-
individuality
- the inner child - inspiration -
integrity - intimacy
introspection - intuition
- jealousy
- journey of life - joy
- judgment - karma - kindness
-
knowledge - language
- laughter
-
laziness
leadership
-
learning - letting
go - life
- listening - loneliness
- love
- lying - magic - marriage
-
materialism
- meanness
- meditation
mindfulness
- miracles
-
mistakes - mistrust
- moderation - money -
mothers
- motivation - music - mystery
- nature
-
negative
attitude
now -
oneness
- open-mindedness
- opportunity
-
optimism
-
pain - parenting - passion
- the past - patience
-
peace -
perfectionism
perseverance
- perspective - pessimism
- play
- poetry -
positive
thoughts
- possessions
-
potential - poverty -
power - praise
prayer
- prejudice
- pride - principle
- problems - progress
- prosperity
- purpose
- reading -recreation
- reflection
- relationships
religion
- reputation - resentment
-
respect - responsibility
- rest - revenge
-
risk - role models
- running -
ruts - sadness
-
safety
seasons of
life - self - self-love
-
self-pity
-
self-reliance - self-respect
- selfishness - serving others - shame
- silence
- simplicity
slowing
down - smiles
-solitude - sorrow -
spirit -
stories -
strength - stress
- stupidity
- success -
suffering - talent
the tapestry of life - teachers - thoughts
- time
- today - tolerance
-
traditions
-
trees
-
trust
- truth - unfulfilled
dreams
- values
vanity
- virtue
- vulnerability - walking - war
- wealth - weight
issues - wisdom
-
women -
wonder - work
-
worry - worship
youth
- spring - summer
- fall - winter
-
Christmas - Thanksgiving
-
New Year - America
-
Zen sayings -
articles
& excerpts
Native American
wisdom
-
The Law of Attraction -
obstacles to
living
life fully
- e-zine archives
-
quotations
contents
our most recent e-zine - Great
Thinkers - the people behind the words
|
| |
|
 ™
|
|
All contents
© 2023 Living Life Fully™,
all rights reserved.
Please feel
free to re-use material from this site other than
copyrighted articles--
contact each author for permission to use those.
If you use material, it would be
greatly appreciated if you would provide credit and
a link back to the original
source, and let us know where the material is
published. Thank you. |
|
| |
|
Life
is a great and wondrous
mystery, and the only thing
we
know that we have for
sure is what is right here
and
now. Don't miss it.
Leo
Buscaglia
|
|
|
| |
Upon
the Sand
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All love that has not friendship for its base
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Though brave its walls as any in the land,
And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
Though skilful and accomplished artists trace
Most beautiful designs on every hand,
And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place:
Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall,
Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,
Needs friendship's solid mason-work below.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Let
us not get so busy or live
so fast that we can't listen
to the music
of the meadow or the symphony
that glorifies the
forest. Some things
in the world are far more important
than wealth;
one of them is the
ability to enjoy simple things.
Dale
Carnegie
|
| |
|
