Norman Vincent Peale

Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger people!  Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Phillips Brooks

I did not want simply to live or simply to live happily or well; I wanted to serve and do and make with some nobility.

H.G. Wells

Jesse Jackson

Processionary caterpillars travel in long, undulating lines, one creature behind the other.  Jean Henri Fabre, the French entomologist, once led a group of these caterpillars onto the rim of a large flowerpot, so that the leader of the procession found itself nose to tail with the last caterpillar in the procession, forming a circle without end or beginning.

Through sheer force of habit and, of course, instinct, the ring of caterpillars circled the flowerpot for seven days and seven nights, until they died from exhaustion and starvation.  An ample supply of food was close at hand and plainly visible, but it was outside the range of the circle, so the caterpillars continued along the beaten path.

People often behave in a similar way.  Habit patterns and ways of thinking become deeply established, and it seems easier and more comforting to follow them than to cope with change, even when change may represent freedom and achievement.

If someone shouts, "Fire!" it is automatic to blindly follow the crowd, and many thousands have needlessly died because of it.  How many stop to ask themselves:  Is this really the best way out of here?

So many people miss the boat because it's easier and more comforting to follow--to follow without questioning the qualifications of the people just ahead--than to do some independent thinking and checking.

A hard thing for most people to fully understand is that people in such numbers can be so wrong, like the caterpillars going around and around the edge of the flowerpot, with life and food just a short distance away.  If most people are living that way, it must be right, they think.  But a little checking will reveal that throughout all recorded history, the majority of mankind has an unbroken record of being wrong about most things, especially the important things. 

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully.  Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything--a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening.

But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them--like the caterpillars going around in circles, waiting for sustenance, following nose to tail--living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully.

It's a good idea to step out of the line every once in a while and look up ahead to see if the line is going where we want it to go.  If it is, it could be the first time.

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Small Steps

One of the most important lessons of my lifetime is one that I'm very thankful that I've learned well--that of taking small steps, and even more importantly, being satisfied with those small steps.  I've always tended to want things done now, or even five minutes ago, but life has been very good at teaching me that not only is that not always possible, but it's usually not even desirable.

I've always been the kind of person who would take a painting class and want to paint a masterpiece on my first outing.  I'd start to build a bookcase and want it all done in an hour, and I'd want it to be perfect.  I'd start a school program and want my degree in a matter of months, but I'd be told that it would take years.  It took me three years to complete my doctorate; for me, that was an eternity, but I know that for other people, three years is pretty quick.

Don't worry--I'm not the kind of person who would rant and rail about things being "too slow"--all of my discontent was inside of me, more in the way I felt than the way I acted.  One of the problems that contributed to this bigger problem is the fact that I'm usually pretty good at whatever I do--I learn very quickly, and I'm almost always able to work at an accelerated pace, so slowness frustrates me a lot.  But I do realize that not everyone learns at the same pace; many people need things to go more slowly, so it's important that I be patient and understand that things won't always go at my pace.

I've seen this ability reflected in the work that goes into writing a novel-- inside, I want the book to be done as quickly as possible.  But first I have to write each chapter--and actually, I have to write a series of many sentences, paragraphs, and sections.  Then I have to go back and edit and proofread it.  I have to make sure that the action makes sense, and that everything in the novel ties together well.  I have to make corrections and changes, and then finally I have a finished product.  Then comes the task of getting it published.

Cooking is another activity that allows one to focus on the process instead of an immediate finished product.  Even something as simple as making a salad forces one to work first with the lettuce, then with the tomatoes, then with the cucumbers. . . .  It can't be done immediately.  Unfortunately, though, we live in the age of meals in a box, and people don't have to learn the process any more--they just have to boil some water or throw things into the microwave.

Is it any wonder, then, that we have a hard time honoring the processes of life, and allowing ourselves to flow with them at the speed they take naturally?  We're so used to getting everything done at once that we don't have time to take the small steps and actually enjoy them for what they are--pieces in a larger process that leads to a finished product in which we can take pride.

The ability to be satisfied with small steps is a reflection of my growth in letting go of control of situations over which I have no control, especially as far as time is concerned.  I don't see doing something slowly as a reflection on me any longer, and I don't see not being finished as a negative, no matter how someone else may look at it.  I can't tell you how many times people have asked "You're not finished yet?" when I've been taking my time through a process so that the finished product is as good as I know it can be.  If I can take an extra day or two on something and know that its quality will be immensely greater, then I will take the extra time; I haven't always been this way.

Life is a process, and we must honor it.  All of our years and all of our days don't come at once, so we must learn and grow as the lessons come to us, and we must let them change us at their pace, and not try to force things to happen.  If we can do this, we'll find the peace that the gardener feels knowing that the vegetables won't be ready for harvest for months, and the peace that the rancher or farmer feels when new calves are born and they must grow and develop before they're a productive part of the ranch or farm.  It's the peace that comes from doing what we can do when we can do it, and leaving the rest for the right time to do the rest.

Once there was a sociologist who was doing a study on the effect of environment on young people.

Two of the young men she included in her study were brothers.  They had been brought up in a low-income area, where there were many problems with gangs and drugs.

Their father had been a criminal, was convicted of murder and had died in prison.  The boys had little interaction with him.  Their mother worked two jobs to support the family.

One brother followed in his father's footsteps.  He got involved in the street culture and dropped out of school.  He got into trouble with the law, and wound up in jail.

The other brother worked hard to get decent grades in school and got a part time job after school to help out at home.  He graduated, worked his way through college, got a good job, married, and had a nice home and family.

The sociologist went to each of these young men and asked them the same question.  Each of them gave her exactly the same answer.

The question was:  "Why do you think your life has turned out the way it has?"

The answer was:  "With a father like I had, how else could it have turned out?"

Though they had the same environment and example, each one of them determined how that example would influence their destiny.

We cannot control the circumstances of our lives, but we can always control what we do with what we learn from them.  The decision is ours and ours alone.

You are not powerless to impact your destiny and what kind of a life you will have.  What you base it on has more to do with what you believe about yourself than what anyone else believes about you.  Then you can BE TRUE TO YOU.

One of the greatest challenges you will have in life will be TO BE YOURSELF no matter what happens around you.

There are people whose lives will never be the same because of you.  You will never know who some of these people are.  You also may never know how many people care about you and how your life turns out.  You may never know how many people believe in you and will never give up on you.

You have more power than you can possibly imagine.  Think you can't change the world? You already have! It was changed for the better the minute you were born. Your very presence makes an impact and a difference to many people.

Have a Great Day and be good to yourself.  You deserve it!

Copyright Gail Pursell Elliott.  All rights reserved.  Contact Gail at info@innovations-training.com.  Visit her at www.innovations-training.com

The art of living does not
consist in preserving and
clinging to a particular mode
of happiness, but in allowing
happiness to change its form
without being disappointed
by the change; happiness,
like a child, must be
allowed to grow up.

Charles L. Morgan

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