Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said….It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime
Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Dr. Haim G. Ginott, 1922 – 1973, School teacher, Child psychologist and psychotherapist, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers.
Sometimes falsely attributed to Goethe. Thanks to Kim for pointing this out.
The best way to say, “Thank you God,” is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. You were born with the right to be happy. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it.
Don Miguel Ruiz
It’s not the load that breaks you down.
It’s the way you carry it
C.S. Lewis
At some point in your growth, it starts to become quieter inside. This happens quite naturally as you take a deeper seat within yourself. You then come to realize that although you have always been in there, you have been completely overwhelmed by the constant barrage of thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs that draw on your consciousness. As you see this, it begins to dawn on you that you might actually be able to go beyond all these disturbances. The more you sit in the seat of witness consciousness, the more you realize that since you are completely independent of what you are watching, there must be a way to break free of the magical hold that the psyche has on your awareness.
Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
You must stop talking to yourself. Every one of us does that…..we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his talking. This is the last point you have to know if you want to live like a warrior.
Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan
Mindfulbalance 