Stay Flexible, Stay Joyful

Life is not always as it seems.
What you have wished for is not always best.
What you have feared may become a blessing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

Change always comes bearing gifts.
- Price Pritchett

Zig as Life Zigs and Zag as Life Zags.
Stay Adaptable, Stay Joyful
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Change of any sort requires courage.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today's affirmation:
I choose to adapt to the circumstances in which I find myself.
I choose to be flexible in my dealings with those around me.
I understand that my way is not the only way -
that inner peace comes from respecting the ways of others,
and that, if I am open, I may gain great insights and happiness
from the ideas and traditions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Go With the Flow

Be Flexible

There is a Way

Enjoy the Journey
      

Choose to Care About Others

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good,
but for neglecting his neighbor's.
- Richard Whately

Each of us must decide whether
to walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. [paraphrase]

Personal importance, or taking things personally,
is the maximum expression of selfishness
because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live,
it is demanding that others live as one wishes that they live.
- Oscar Wilde [paraphrase]

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
- Immanuel Kant 

Further Reading: Nobody is Self-Made

Be the First to Condemn Injustice

This God Called Money

Let there never be a day ...
        

Enjoy the Journey of Life

The journey between what you once were
and who you are now becoming
is where the dance of Life really takes place.
- Barbara De Angelis

Life is a Journey - Enjoy the Journey.
Life is not a race to test
who can finish first or who can end up with the most loot.
Rather, life is best enjoyed as a meander -
watching the view to left and right - above and below -
as the days slowly move past in dress review.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward
is to move toward perfection.
March on, and fear not the thorns,
or the sharp stones on life's path.
- Khalil Gibran

It is better to travel well than to arrive.
- The Buddha

Further reading: Enjoy Life

Be Flexible

Choose to Love Life

The Secret of Happiness

Simple Pleasures

Love Life
      

Consider Trying a New Approach

Sometimes success requires persistence and hard work. Sometimes an ingenious new approach is needed. Or it may be time for a whole new beginning. Think, and choose wisely whether to try harder or to try something new.

The very nature of the world is constant change. You set a goal and create a plan to achieve it; then the assumptions on which you based your plan change - they always do. The challenge is to retain your goals while adapting your tactics. Relax and stay flexible in order to reach your goals and maintain your happiness.

The phrase "tilting at windmills" (from the fictional character Don Quixote - shown in today's picture) epitomizes the hopelessness of a determined but inflexible approach. Far better to change your tactics than to fail - however nobly.

Persistence only takes you so far.
Then you need to try a different approach.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Stay committed to your decisions,
but stay flexible in your approach.
- Tony Robbins

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
- Sun Tzu

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
- Stephen Hawking

Further reading: Stay Adaptable

Learn to Surmount Obstacles

Begin Anew Today

Multiple Ways to Your Goal
      

Don't Expect People to be Logical

We should not pretend to understand the world
only by the intellect.
The judgment of the intellect
is only part of the truth.
- Carl Jung

Feelings are much stronger than thoughts.
We are all led by instinct,
and our intellect catches up later.
- Bono

When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie

Humans do have an amazing capacity
for believing what they choose,
and excluding that which is painful.
- Spock (character in Star Trek television series)

At the most basic level, the human emotions that drive all our actions
are the emotion of Love, and the emotion of Fear.
Love expresses itself through compassion, kindness, generosity, and understanding.
Fear expresses itself through self-centeredness, greed, jealousy, and exclusion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Have compassion for those whose actions are driven by fear,
even when those actions cause serious harm to others.

Further reading: There are Only Fear and Love

Master of My Emotions

Learning To Live Together

Choose the World You Live In
     

Kindness is the quality that makes human life worth living

Kindness is perhaps the most essential quality of being fully human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
- Dalai Lama

Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu

Kindness is the quality that makes human life worth living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Albert Pike: What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us.

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

The Cab Ride
     

The Myth of the "Self-Made Man"

None of us got where we are solely by
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
- Thurgood Marshall

Ingratitude often hides behind a mask of independence or self-sufficiency.
An assertion of being "self-made" is a rejection of God, one's ancestors, and society.
Your Genes, Place of Birth, and Upbringing are God's Gift to You.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Those who have succeeded at anything
and don't mention luck
are kidding themselves.
- Larry King

If I have seen further, it is
by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness
of the interdependence of all these living beings,
which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
- Thomas Merton

Civilization is not a spontaneous generation
with any race or nation known to history,
but the torch to be handed down from race to race from age to age.
- Kelly Millar

Success is a result of hard work,
plus being blessed with good genes, food,
a good country, an opportunity for education,
and much more which we never "earned"
or "deserved," and for which we owe
everlasting gratitude.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Debt to Those Who are Kind

Appreciating Our Blessings

Give Thanks

Gratitude for This Food