2013-45 - Pathway to achievement...

The best way to figure out how to do something is to do it. Make the commitment to make it happen, and you'll start working your way through the details.

Don't get bogged down speculating on how something will come about. Instead, get started on the best approach you have, and follow the path wherever it may lead.

When traveling along a road, you can never see the entire road at once, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is successfully making your way through the portion of the road that is right in front of you.

Work through the things that are to be done right now, and you'll put yourself in position to handle the things that come along later. Travel down this section of the road, and you'll then be able to travel the next section, and the next.

If you put all your energy into worrying about every little detail of how to reach your goal, you won't ever get started. Instead, put your energy into reminding yourself why you have chosen to go there, and then do whatever it takes along the way.

You'll never know precisely how something is to be done until you actually do it. So go ahead, get started, and discover your own unique pathway to achievement.

~ Ralph Marston

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"Action is the foundational key to all success."

~ Pablo Picasso

2013-44 - The child within us...

We must listen to the child that we once were, and who still lives within us.

This child understands about magic instants.

We can muffle his sobbing, but we can’t hush his voice.

If we aren’t reborn, if we don’t see life again with the innocence and enthusiasm of childhood, then there is no more sense to living.

Let’s allow the child within us to take the reins of our existence a little. This child says that one day is different from another.

Let’s make the child feel loved again. Let’s please this child – even if it means acting in a way that we’re not used to, even if it seems foolish in the eyes of others.

If we listen to the child we bear in our soul, our eyes will shine once more. If we don’t lose contact with this child, we won’t lose contact with life.

~ Paulo Coelho

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Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

~ Confucius

2013-43 - Hiding Behind Masks...

A man came back from a weekend retreat experience, and when a neighbour asked him how it had gone, he said, "I died!"

Puzzled, the neighbour asked him what he meant. "You see," the man answered, "I went to this thing not knowing what to expect. But in the process of that long weekend, I discovered that I had spent my whole life hiding behind a lot of masks. I realized that I had never even let my wife see me as I really was. I'd been playing games with her, and playing games with my children, and playing games with others - never letting anybody know who I really am. The worst of it was to discover that even I didn't know myself. I was not in touch with my own honest feelings about myself. And, as all of this was being exposed over the weekend, I died over and over again."

He went on, "It is a painful thing for a middle-aged man to discover that he is not even in touch with his own honest feelings about himself. I am convinced," he said, "that I had to go through this death experience in order to become the new person that I hope to be now."

~ Author Unknown

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"We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it."

~ Rick Warren

2013-42 - Wreckers or Builders…

I watched them tearing a building down,

A gang of men in a busy town.

With a ho-heave-ho and lusty yell,

They swung a beam and a sidewall fell.

I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled,

As the men you’d hire if you had to build?”

He gave me a laugh and said, “No indeed!

Just common labor is all I need.

I can easily wreck in a day or two

What builders have taken a year to do.”

And I tho’t to myself as I went my way,

Which of these two roles have I tried to play?

Am I a builder who works with care,

Measuring life by the rule and square?

Am I shaping my deeds by a well-made plan,

Patiently doing the best I can?

Or am I a wrecker who walks the town,

Content with the labor of tearing down?

~ Author Unknown

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Do you want to know what you are? You are a creator. At every moment you are creating. The real question is, what are you creating?

~ Bryant H. McGill

2013-41 - The Next Horizon...

The steeper and more difficult the climb becomes, the closer you are to the summit. The more you feel like quitting, the more there is to be gained by continuing to persist.

When it seems you cannot go on any more, that means you're getting closer and closer. Find a way to keep going and soon you'll make it all the way there. With every difficulty that arises, the eventual accomplishment becomes that much more fulfilling. The more effort and sacrifice that's demanded of you, the more value you are creating.

What a shame it would be to turn back when the goal is almost within sight. For the sake of all your previous efforts, keep going and make those efforts count for something truly great.

Every bit of weariness you feel is proof that you've already made much progress. What a blessing it is that you have what it takes to keep moving steadily forward.

Keep going, especially now, for just over the next horizon is where you were meant to be.

~ Ralph Marston

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"Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line."

~ Warren G Bennis