Always Giving Your Best
Imagine that you are at a golf driving range, or batting range, or hitting a tennis ball machine. You can see the bucket of balls, so you know there are many. Does that make it easy for you to not put your best swing into each ball? Do you say to yourself “eh, I’ll get the next one”?
What if you couldn’t see the bucket and therefore didn’t know how many balls there were? How would you approach each ball?
What if you knew that there might only be one ball? How would you hit that ball or each ball? What would you put into that swing? Presumably, you would give it your best attempt/swing.
In order to make it the best swing, you would focus on all parts. You would start with the purpose, and to get there you would focus on your stance, your grip, and finally and very importantly the follow through.
Each swing is done with best of you at that moment. If there is another ball, the purpose in the next swing, is to improve on the last one. Each ball if approached with your best, is another opportunity for growth. If approached this way, you will get closer and closer to becoming the human your were created to be and needed for. You can get there by constantly tapping into all of your possibilities. Isn’t that exciting and inspiring?
We always have room to grow. In order to “climb your mountain” requires constantly growing.
So let’s all hit the ball as if it were the only one
Always giving your best in all you do, makes each moment the best one yet
Be Good Do Good Think Good Be Healthy
One Liners
Quick Thoughts That Deserve A Lot Of Thought
I’ll see it, when I believe it.
Don’t predict your future, just be prepared for it
Finish what you start and that will make you stronger, healthier, better
If it’s worth starting, it’s worth that much more when you finish
More is not always better. Better is always more
Once you have found your goal, make sure that all of your actions are aimed at that goal
To find your purpose, do everything with purposefulness
You cannot lower your mountain, but you can elevate yourself
You cannot climb your mountain by staying on a flat road
If you demand your best, you can command your best
What you do and how you do it determines who and what you ultimately become
Believe in yourself, if you don’t, no one else will, and if you don’t why should they
The question shouldn’t be how is life treating you, but rather how are you treating life
Your power is in your follow through
Your best is yet to come
Your persistence says how much you want it
Feed the “I”, so that it is nourished enough to feed others
The ego-centric I is a taker. The other-centric true you is a giver
Are your words or actions a giving or a taking
People want their lives to change, but are they willing to make changes
Don’t measure your self worth by your net worth
What you do for a living is not who you are, but how you do it is
Be Good Do Good Think Good Be Healthy
Let Yourself Grow
The Jewish people are about to celebrate Passover, remembering their Emancipation and Exodus from many years of slavery in Egypt. There are many valuable lessons in this celebration that apply to everyone. Let me share two of my favorites with you
Here Is One
Many Jews chose to stay in Egypt, despite the brutal conditions of slavery. Why? The life they were living was what they knew, and despite wanting better, fear held them back. No matter how uncomfortable their situation was, it had become their comfort zone. Sound familiar? Fear…. of the unknown, failure, success,……….
Here’s Another One
Jews are commanded to constantly remember the slavery of their ancestors. More than that, they are commanded to remember it as though they themselves were there as slaves.
One of the universal messages of this remembering, is the lesson that while we are no longer physical slaves, we are still slaves. This time we are our own Pharaoh and the slavery is of the self-imposed spiritual and emotional variety.
We hold ourselves back from becoming the person we were created and meant to become.
We hold ourselves back with the “I can’ts” (see the inner-speak series). How we speak to our self and about our self, translates into who we are. We each have inner the voice of a Pharaoh that tries to enslave us by saying “You can’t, You’re not good enough…..”. We also have the inner voice of a Moses that can free us by saying “You can, You are good enough and more….. Listening to that voice gives us the freedom to continually grow into ourselves and find joy. Who would you rather listen to? Who do you really, really believe?
The only one who can free you now is you!
“Let Yourself Grow”
*updated again from a previous post
Life Is A Super Highway
Here is another metaphor on your life’s journey
Think of your life as a highway, even more so, think of it as a super-highway. Each of it’s many lanes representing a different aspect of your life. There is a separate lane for your family, your friends, acquaintances, strangers you come across, your job/career, co-workers, customers/clients, athletics, working out, leisure time,……
Each lane is traveled on purpose, with and for a purpose, expressing and finding meaning along the way.
If all of your lanes are lanes filled with morality, ethics, kindness, empathy, love, charity, and overall the best of you in each moment, then all lanes will be headed in the same direction. Then they will eventually all merge into one lane. That one lane will be the true you and you will have found your purpose and value.
If any of your lanes are not filled with all of this, then you will not be going anywhere in those lanes, let alone forward. Even worse, you will be slowing down or holding back the progress of the other lanes towards merging into the one lane.
If everyone travels the purposeful way on their super highway, we will all merge our one lane onto a lane on the universal super highway. When we are all on that universal super highway, we will all merge into one lane, bringing to it our individual unique value, “all makes and models”.
Here’s hoping for a very crowded lane soon!
Be Good Do Good Think Good Be Healthy
Quotes You Will Love On Love
Here are some quotes on Love, once posted before with new additions.
I love these quotes. I loved compiling them. I know you will love them too
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle
“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones
“What love we’ve given, we’ll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.” – Leo Buscaglia
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” – Khalil Gibran
“Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.’ – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The first duty of love is to listen.” – Paul Tillich
“The salvation of man is through love and in love.” – Dr.Viktor Frankl
“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” — Erich Segal
“Fall in love and you can fall out of love.
Create love and it will last forever.” – Rabbi Tzvi Freeman“Love is a ladder; it allows us to climb out of ourselves”. – Noah benShea
“Do not seek the because – in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” – Anais Nin
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert Heinlein
“Any love that is dependent on something — when the thing ceases, the love also ceases. But a love that is not dependent on any thing never ceases…” – Ethics of the Fathers, 5:16
“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides” – David Viscott
“You don’t truly love someone until you can take what they need to give you.” – David Suissa
“I’ve learned…. That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them” – Andy Rooney
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Theodor Seuss Geisel
“We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.” – Bernard Meltzer
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
“Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them.” – Bill Russell
“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.” – Erich Fromm
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu
“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.” – Michel de Montaigne
“Love is a game that two can play and both win.” – Eva Gabor
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.” – Katherine Hepburn
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” – Sam Keen
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” – Morrie Schwartz
“Love has no age, no limit; and no death.” – John Galsworthy
“I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.” – Judy Garland
“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
“I am to my beloved, and my beloved is to me” – Song of Songs 6:3
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“To love another person is to see the face of G-d.” – Victor Hugo
“In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.” – Marc Chagall
“Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.” – Duke Ellington
“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” – Benjamin Franklin
“True love stories never have endings” – Richard Bach
To read all the past writings, more than just quotes, on love click here They are thoughts on love for those that have it and those still searching
Be Good Do Good Think Good Be Healthy And Love
We Need Stitches
Very sadly, the United States of America is now anything but United
We have become torn apart like a big gash that requires stitches to bring us together, and then we can begin healing. I’m writing this in the hopes that all, no matter what side you’re on, will take an honest look at yourself, your side, and become a stitch.
Here is a story (posted here several times before) and some quotes to read, re-read, and digest.
I am again sharing this true story* below in the hope that it will cause some personal reflection for each and everyone of us. That this story will then help bring some stitching and begin to bring us all together.
There were two young brothers ages eight and ten. The younger brother was the taller one. We all know, and men certainly remember that for boys, height is really important. So naturally the older, shorter brother was very jealous of his younger, taller brother.
One day, while playing in the backyard, the older, shorter brother pushed the younger, taller brother into a little ditch. This wasn’t done in order to hurt or knock him down, but rather to make him appear shorter. At which point the older, now looking taller brother gave a “Nah, nah, nehnahna, I’m taller than you!” Their father witnessed this and called over the older brother. The Father told him to bring over a chair and he did. The Father then told him to stand on it. The boy didn’t understand but he complied and then asked why he was standing on a chair, and his father said,
“Whenever you want to be bigger, you raise yourself up, instead of pushing someone else down.”
Some Thoughts to Begin Stitching
To become a stitch starts with recognizing that you may bear some responsibility in creating the gash in the first place
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
“Man is endowed by nature with two eyes: one to see his neighbors’ virtues, the other to see his own faults.” – Chasidic Proverb
“Interesting, isn’t it, how one can detect a speck on another’s hair, but can’t see flies on his own nose?” — Mendel Moicher Sefarim
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” – Virginia Woolf
“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” – Henry Winkler
In reading this story and the following quotes, avoid the quick natural instinct of ‘yeah, that’s what they do”. Instead, take an honest moment and ask yourself, is that what I and or my side does?
“Eyesight is of no avail if the heart is blind.” – Rabbi Shlomo ben Yehudah
“A man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.” – Sir Francis Bacon
“When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.” — Walter Lippmann
“Not caring about contradiction is the same as not caring about the truth.” – Jamie Whyte
“The human mind is capable of rationalizing and modifying morality to meet a person’s needs or desires.” – Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski
“We don’t always see things as they are, we see things as we are” Anais Nin
“When you celebrate the death of your ideological opponents it is worth wondering what your ideology has made of you.” – Rabbi David Wolpe
Until and when we see the other, and not as another, but as a human being, we can’t and won’t heal.
“Love your fellow as yourself” —Leviticus
Be A Stitch
Be Good Do Good Think Good Be Healthy
*The story is attributed to the 5th Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. Rabbi Shalom Dov Ber Schneerson. He recounted this story of his youth that happened with him and his older brother, Zalman Aron
