The First Step is the Dream

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.
For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
- Henry David Thoreau

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,
then they seem improbable, and then,
when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable.
- Christopher Reeve

Winners Dream Big Dreams.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We come this way but once.
We can either tiptoe through life
and hope we get to death without being badly bruised
or we can live a full, complete life achieving
our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.
- Bob Proctor

Further reading: Don’t Quit

Hold Fast to Your Dreams

What You Become

Boldly Sail the Storms of Life
       

Appreciate Your Life

I will greet this day with love in my heart.
And how will I do this?
Henceforth will I look on all things with love and be born again.
I will love the sun for it warms my bones;
yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit.
I will love the light for it shows me the way;
yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.
I will welcome happiness as it enlarges my heart;
yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul.
I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due;
yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.
- Og Mandino

The key to forgiveness is to forgive from the heart -
not from the mind.
- Sheri Rosenthal

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The heart is always right -
if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart -
because mind is a creation of the society.
It has been educated.
You have been given it by the society, not by existence.
The heart is unpolluted.

- Osho

Further reading: Your Heart's Longing

Honor Your Heart

Listen To Your Heart

Follow Your Heart

Changing Your Heart
     

Seek Action or Acceptance Rather than Fear

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded,
but the fear of pain or death.
- Epictetus

It is idle to dread what you cannot avoid.

- Publilius Syrus

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death.
These are part of scenery, not the seer,
who is immune to any form of change.
This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.
- Deepak Chopra

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
- Henry Van Dyke

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

- Felix Frankfurter

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering
is worse than the suffering itself.
- Paulo Coelho

There can be no happiness when one lives in fear.
Whatever the future holds, fear will not improve tomorrow,
and it will destroy your happiness today.
Action is empowering, fear is disempowering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: My Thoughts about Fear (particularly recommended)

A Life Without Fear

Choose to be Courageous

Beyond Fear
    

Honesty and Integrity in Action and Thought

To be a person of honor is to live with honesty and integrity in action and thought.

This is my simple religion.
There is no need for temples;
no need for complicated philosophy.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple;
the philosophy is kindness.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Honor, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Choice,
Vision, Action, Celebration, Unity -
The Values of an Inspired Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's project:
Meaningful and joyful lives are lived by adhering to one's personal value system - one's principles. Today, write your six to eight most important values on an index card, and refer to that card as you go about your life today.

Further reading: What We Are Made Of

Do What You Know Is Right

Secret of Happiness

Things Divine
     

Build Your Inspired Future

Create your future from your future not your past.
Begin building the future through
"conversation for possibility."
- Werner Erhard

Imagine the future you want.
Then design that future.
Then implement that future.
Choose.
Choose to soar.
Choose to be of service.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie FYI:

The golden age is before us, not behind us.
- William Shakespeare

Life is the future, not the past.
- Terry Goodkind

Fill your heart with the creative power
to accept the past,
decorate the present
and transform the future.
- Osho

Today's affirmation:
I trust my intuition to deliver
powerful visions of my inspired future,
and I empower my intent to
transform those visions into reality.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What Are You Going To Do About It?

Create Your Own Future

Embrace Change
        

Consider Doing Something New

Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.
- Henri de Lubac

Life is defined more by its risks than by its samenesses.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history
to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
- Edith Wharton

Repetition can be a choice, but often it isn't.
The athlete or pianist who practices the same routine
day after day, year after year, has their eye on a goal.
The unending repetition is a conscious choice
in the pursuit of a life dream.
But what about the sameness of most lives?
Observe the morning commute, the after-work drink,
the Sunday football game or religious service -
how many of those people are consciously following their dream,
training their mind, body, and spirit through that daily repetition?
And how many are mindlessly slogging through each day
out of habit and boredom?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Curious - Adventurous

The Myth of Security

The Power of Courage
           

Cultivate Empathy for All Others

If everyone howled at every injustice,
every act of barbarism, every act of unkindness,
then we would be taking the first step towards a real humanity.
- Nelson DeMille

There is no neutrality.
There is only greater or lesser
awareness of one's bias.
- Phyllis Rose

Do not judge another person
until you have walked a mile
in their moccasins.
- Native American (various wordings)

It is not our differences that divide us.
It is our inability to recognize, accept,
and celebrate those differences.
- Audre Lorde

In the century following Columbus' arrival in the Americas, 95% of the 70 million Native Americans were either killed by Europeans, or died from diseases brought by the Europeans.

Further reading: Your Point of View

Through the Eyes of Another

Why I Choose to Believe that Others are Never the Cause of My Unhappiness

Byron Katie - The Work - No one can give you freedom but you