Month: January 2017

Keep starting over

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Leaning tower of Pisa.jpg

Research by Carol Dweck at Stanford University says that it is better if we develop a “growth mindset”  which sees challenges and mistakes as opportunities to grow and does not give up when things go wrong. A learning organization is one that is prepared to make mistakes. And, as someone said to me yesterday, even the challenge of a person’s mood can be an occasion to learn:

If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like…. but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . .

If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live.

If you have learned only how to be a success,

your life has probably been wasted

Thomas Merton

photo: cc-by-2.5

The life that’s waiting

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File:PSM V50 D193 Kew gardens cumberland gate with guard.jpg

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned,

so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Doors

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Old red church door in village.jpg

Close some doors today.

Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance,

but simply because they lead you nowhere

Paulo Coelho.

Sunday Quote: our inner resource

Karl Duffy4 Comments

reflected

May we all grow in grace and peace,
and not neglect the silence that is printed
in the centre of our being.
It will not fail us.

Thomas Merton

Saturday: learning by doing nothing

Karl Duffy5 Comments

trees quote 1

The dream of my life

is to lie down by a slow river

and stare at the light in the trees –

To learn something by being nothing

a little while but the rich

lens of attention

Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom

Step through again and again

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How do we work with this tendency to block and to freeze and to refuse to take another step toward the unknown? If our edge is like a huge stone wall with a door in it, how do we learn to open the door and step through it again and again, so that life becomes a process of growing up, becoming more and more fearless and flexible, more and more able to play like a raven in the wind?

The wilder the weather is, the more the ravens love it. They have the time of their lives in the winter, when the wind gets much stronger and there’s lots of ice and snow. They challenge the wind. They get up on the tops of the trees and hold on with their claws and then they grab on with their beaks as well. At some point they just let go into the wind and let it blow them away.  They have had to develop a zest for challenge and for life. 

Pema Chodron

photo Ingrid Taylar