Forced to change our attitude

When something is out of your control, and you try to change it over and over again to no avail, you are faced with one last option – to change your attitude about it.

Can you accept it?  Make sense of it?  Understand it?  Forgive it?  Make use of it?  See the good in it?

With no other choice…I bet you can. 

Sooner is better than later.

Did God put you here to be what you are now?

What do you think?

Get busy!

Unsure?  Unconfident?  Unhappy?

Get busy working toward a meaningful goal!

“The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.” – George Bernard Shaw

Choose and get after it!

The thorn of experience

Recently I had some 19 and 20-year-olds from the city to my place to ride four-wheelers.  I have them up about once a year, and each year I instruct them and tell them about the dangers of pushing the boundaries.  Nevertheless, each year it ends with one of them getting hurt.  This year was no different.

I reflected on why this is and it is clear.  Often we can get instruction on a thing, but there is no substitute for trying it and messing it up yourself.  When you learn by getting hurt, physically, emotionally, or financially you don’t soon forget and you develop the caution and judgment necessary for the future.

“One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.” – James Russell Lowell

Perhaps you can learn from those who failed by listening closely to their story, so you do not make the same mistakes and can save yourself some pain.

Clarity

What the major goal in your life right now?

Would anyone who watched you go through your day be able to tell?

Every man dies…

…not every man lives.

If you died today, what would you regret not doing?

Get to it.

Placing your happiness outside yourself

If your happiness depends on pleasing others, what others think of you or living up to their expectations, you’re going to have trouble being happy because you have given control of it to others.

Make you proud.  Do what makes you happy and fills your personal legend. 

This you have control over.

A product of our habits

First we make our habits, then our habits make us.

“The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”– Feodor Dostoevski

What do you do every day?  What are your routines?

Until we meet again…

Make the most of this opportunity, this chance, this day together; for these days are limited. 

They are, in fact, the “good ol’ days”.

“Each one of us must release the hand of one we love into the hand of One we have not seen.”

Last year's language

In 2014 our family home was completely destroyed in a fire. Eleven days later Katherine Korik, Jessica Saldamarco, and Kellie Santiago gave me a new leather journal – empty save for one verse on the inside cover by T.S. Eliot.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

Indeed.