Dreams and History

Every calamity is a spur and a valuable hint. – Emerson Yes, I am riffing off the recent political meme in the post title. (“Never let a crisis go to waste.” (Attributed, I believe, to Rahm Emanuel).) That aside, Emerson’s words are an extremely valuable reminder. We ignore “failures” and “calamities” at our peril. Every…

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. – The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama) Happiness is not something you buy. Happiness is not some place you get to. Happiness is not something you trade misery for. Happiness is something you create – by your thoughts, feelings and actions. What…

Until you commit your goals to paper, you have intentions that are seeds without soil. – Anonymous The mind loves clarity. Without clarity the mind – actually, our emotions – reverts to safety. Safety, for our emotional brain (the limbic system), is habit and routines and whatever has been shown to contribute to our survival (even if…

Keep these concepts in mind: You’ve failed many times, although you don’t remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim . . . . Don’t worry about failure. My suggestion to each of you: Worry about the chances you miss when you…

I was reading a recent AdvantEdge newsletter from Nightingale Conant and wanted to excerpt a paragraph from something Zig Ziglar wrote about discipline: Stay Disciplined in your Approach In today’s social climate, many people look with disfavor on the word discipline because they simply do not understand that discipline means “to instruct or educate, to…

One of my mentors (Steve Chandler) offers a powerful distinction useful in just about every area of life: expectations vs. agreements. Most of us have expectations. Expectations about how life should go and how people should behave. Invariably, many of these expectations are not met. As a result we are disappointed, frustrated and upset. We…