Don't trust until trust is earned

It is wonderful to have Faith,
but don't confuse trust with being gullible.
Balance trust with conscious thought.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You may be deceived if you trust too much,
but you will live in torment
if you don't trust enough.
- Frank Crane

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
- African Proverb

Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters
cannot be trusted in large ones either.
- Albert Einstein

It takes years to build up trust,
and only seconds to destroy it.
- Anonymous

Further reading: What or who do you trust? 

Trust in the Light

Take Nothing On Authority

Can you trust and if so who?

7 Secrets of Happy Couples
     

Be Patient and Gentle

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water,
yet nothing can resist it.
- Lao Tzu

Choose your battles wisely.
While your core principles and your life goals are important,
most of what you let upset you is not worth an argument or lost sleep.
Take Lao Tzu's advice and become softer and more flexible.

Patience, persistence, and perseverance.
A little more each day, a little better each day.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions,
do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
- Saint Francis de Sales

Patience can't be acquired overnight.
It is just like building up a muscle.
Every day you need to work on it.
- Eknath Easwaran

The key to everything is patience.
You get the chicken by hatching the egg,
not by smashing it open.
- Arnold H. Glasgow

Gentleness Surpasses Rigidity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Tread Lightly

Be Gentle with Yourself

Aesop: Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail

The Oak and the Reeds - a fable by Aesop
    

The Challenge is to Become Your Greatest Self

Only when life is difficult, are we challenged to become our greatest selves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
- Japanese Proverb

It is not because life is difficult
that we do not dare.
Life is difficult
because we do not dare.
- Seneca

All things at first appear difficult.
- Chinese proverb

Difficulties show men what they are.
In case of any difficulty,
remember that God has pitted you
against a rough antagonist
that you may be a conqueror,
and this cannot be without toil.
- Epictetus

Further reading: Choose to be Positive

Difficulties Offer Opportunities

Beyond Failure

Why is This Happening?
      

Open Mind, Clean Hands, Loving Heart

God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.
- Publilius Syrus

You can learn a lot from people who view the world differently than you do.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo
 
Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which
you must see the world.
- George Bernard Shaw

Today's affirmation:
I approach life with an Open Mind,
Clean Hands, and a Loving Heart.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Art of Seeing

Choose the World You See

Each Other's Eyes

Simply Marvelous
    

Life operates in subtleties rather than in absolutes

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past
have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
- George S. Patton

Life only appears complicated when one is worrying.
Relax, and life becomes simple again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The contradictions are what make human behavior
so maddening and yet so fascinating,
all at the same time.
- Joan D. Vinge

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.
- Carl Rogers

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem.
We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.
- Harold Evans

I think wholeness is God's design for us;
and that often amounts to embracing contradictions.
- Bono

Life operates in subtleties rather than in absolutes.
Life plays out in shades of gray rather than in blacks and whites.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Overflowing Cup of Tea - Zen Koan

Maybe So, Maybe Not. - Ancient Taoist Proverb

Yin-Yang

Balance in All Things
      

Seek Balance In All Things

To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

We have an obligation to live in harmony with God's creation.
- Bruce Babbitt

One has to find a balance between
what people need from you
and what you need for yourself.
- Jessye Norman

A time for everything: a time to relax and a time to be busy,
a time to frolic and a time to lay up food for the winter,
a time to receive and a time to give,
a time to begin and a time to finish.
A time for work, a time for play -
balance in all things.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency.
- Ron D. Burton

The ending of a job or a relationship
may appear as the darkest night,
but it is merely the Winter season -
the time of renewal and rebirth
that precedes the new planting -
the beginning of the next great cycle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Balance vs. Moderation: Eight Ways to Balance Your Life

Live in Harmony

Creating Balance

Renew Yourself

A List of Gratitudes

Yin-Yang
   

Man does not live to produce bread

Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
- Leonardo da Vinci

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The world is moved along, not only
by the mighty shoves of its heroes,
but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes
of each honest worker.
- Helen Keller

Everything that is really great and inspiring
is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
- Albert Einstein

The end of labor is to gain leisure.
- Aristotle

Man does not live to produce bread,
he produces bread to live. 
Work is not the purpose of life. 
- Robert G. Lewis

 "Man does not live, therefore, to produce bread. He produces bread to live. The distinction is enormously important and relevant. Obviously man must have food, and so far as our experience goes, he must work to produce It, But work is not the purpose of life. Production is not the purpose of life. Instead, human lives are the entire purpose and the reason for all work and for all production.
- Robert G. Lewis - speaking about the issues of family farms at the annual meeting of the Interorganization Committee on Problems for Rural Youth in 1957

Further reading: A Balanced Life

Take Time For Yourself

Called to be a Street Sweeper