Creating Your Masterwork

It is not our circumstances that create
our discontent or contentment.
It is us.
- Vivian Greene

No man is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus

Be avid.
Create apart from perfection.
Risk failure.
Cover your words with sweat.
Run a little
Touch excruciatingly.
Laugh until you cry.
Dance with your eyes closed.
Care.
Understand you die a little in every moment.
Be Enlivened
- Mary Anne Radmacher

You are in charge of your life.
The people you interact with every day are mostly focused
on their own fears and needs,
and generally don't make the extra effort to be kind to you.
Forgive them, and take responsibility
for creating your own life as your masterwork.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's affirmation:
I sail the seas of life as the MASTER of my ship.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Be the Melody

Choose to Follow Your Heart

How To Not Care What Others Think

Dream. Begin. Persevere.

Creating Your Own Future

Your Heart Drum

Accepting Our Friends' Uniqueness

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer

One measure of friendship consists
not in the number of things friends can discuss,
but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
- Clifton Fadiman

Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us,
but because they will laugh at us;
Through them we learn a little objectivity,
a little modesty, a little courtesy.
- Will Durant

We may have our private opinions,
 but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Appreciate your friends.
Grant them the freedom to be lovable, but fully imperfect.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Appreciating Friends

Happy Friends, Happy You

Tears and Laughter

Choosing Your Friends

True Friends

If Life were Predictable

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen

If life were predictable
it would cease to be life,
and be without flavor.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
- William Ellery Channing

The only thing that makes life possible
is permanent, intolerable uncertainty;
not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

If our world were as predictable as we believe it should be,
we would never be inspired to be creative or adventurous.
Let us give thanks that our world is designed to challenge us
and to bring out the best of the human spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Progress of the Human Mind

Never Try To Stop The Music

An Uncertain World

Predictable?

Is Now a Time to be Reasonable?

Box of Chocolates

Presidents Day 2015

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd President of the United States)

With self-discipline most anything is possible.
- Theodore Roosevelt (26nd President of the United States)

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.
- George Washington (first President of the United States)

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams (sixth President of the United States)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy (35th President of the United States)

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion,
in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson (third President of the United States)

Nothing is more important in our national life
than the welfare of our children.
- Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States)

Further reading: Do What You Can

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Independence - Freedom - Liberty

Choose To Be Fearless

Life as Currency

Do a Kindness Today

You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever there is a human being,
there is an opportunity for a kindness.
- Seneca

Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

The smallest act of kindness
is worth more than the grandest intention.
- Oscar Wilde

Further reading: Let Us Be Kind

Empathy

Brotherly Love

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Valentine's Day 2015

The greatest lovers are like twin blooms,
each reflecting the passion and the glory of the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people stay for awhile, and move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to a new understanding,
leave footprints on our hearts,
and we are never, ever the same.
- Flavia Weedn

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.
- Harville Hendrix

No partner in a love relationship should feel
that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.
- May Sarton

I love you not only for what you are,
but for what I am when I am with you.
I love you not only for what you have made of yourself,
but for what you are making of me.
I love you for that part of me you bring out.
- Roy Croft

Love is not a mere sentiment.
Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

You are my ground and you are my rainbow.
You are my butterfly and you are my ecstasy.
You are the start of my journeys and always my destination.
You are my home - the place to which I always return.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The #1 Secret of Great Relationships

Happy Valentine's Day - I love You Just the Way You Are

What is Love?

Renewing Love

How to Avoid Falling in Love With Love

Sweet Love Quotes

Personal Boundaries

Set and enforce your personal boundaries.
You and only YOU get to choose how much influence
you allow others to exert over your life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never allow a person to tell you NO
who doesn't have the power to say YES.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can give you better advice than yourself.
- Cicero

Never be bullied into silence.
Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
Accept no one's definition of your life;
define yourself.
- Harvey Fierstein

A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater
than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please,
or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Believe in yourself, and trust your own wisdom
rather than being swayed by the opinions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: To Thine Own Self Be True

The Power of Saying NO to the Demands of Others

Appreciate Yourself

Thinking for Yourself

Be Yourself

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865)

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
- Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865)

If you look for the bad in people
expecting to find it, you surely will.
- Abraham Lincoln

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any other one thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

You cannot escape the responsibility
of tomorrow by evading it today.
- Abraham Lincoln

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count.
It's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln

Further reading: Planting Flowers

Feeding the Children

Independence - Liberty - Freedom

How To Know What To Do

Character

Granting Space

Love is granting another the space
to be the way they are
and the way they are not.
- Werner Erhard

We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
You have no ability whatsoever to change anyone other than yourself.
You can only cause yourself great suffering if you try.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love is saying "I feel differently," instead of "You're wrong."
- Anonymous

Real love is accepting other people the way they are
without trying to change them.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Unsolicited Advice Is Always Meddling.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Read my thoughts on meddling in the affairs of others.

Further reading: Live and Let Live

The Problem with Advice

The #1 Secret of Great Relationships

Don't Take It Personally

God Grant Me The Wisdom

Giving Love and Comfort

Scared of What MIGHT Happen

Life is always lived in the eye-of-the-storm
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Read more about this...

How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson

When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill

A few minutes ago every tree was excited,
bowing to the roaring storm,
waving, swirling, tossing their branches
in glorious enthusiasm like worship.
But though to the outer ear these trees
are now silent, their songs never cease.
- John Muir

The Eye-of-the-Storm.
Surrounded by the winds and the rain,
yet peaceful in its own unworldly way -
an unnatural ruddy-cloudy misty-bright kind of way.
Whatever comes next, the eye of the storm is
a moment of serenity among the challenge -
a time for repose and contemplation.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Tested by Storms

How to Stop Worrying

Beyond Fear

Daily Worries

Don't Miss Out On Life

If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty,
then we wait forever.
And miss the entire point.
- Dirk Benedict

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.
- Katharine Hepburn

In your days - things like this happen to you...
You get a tap, a nudge, a gentle shake,
and life whispers to you, "I know you're tired -
but I don't want you to miss this."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Opportunities are like sunrises.
If you wait too long, you miss them.
- William Arthur Ward

Love is life.
And if you miss love, you miss life.
- Leo Buscaglia

Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
- Jonathan Larson

Further reading: Where There is Love, Nothing is Missing - a Parable

We Come This Way But Once

Living Deeply

Enjoy Your Life

Dancing Through Life

Live Fully

Love Tenderly

Friends share our pain and touch our wounds
with a gentle and tender hand.
- Henri Nouwen

Share your heart as deeply as you can reach.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving
and tolerant of the weak and the strong.
Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
- George Washington Carver

This is what the Lord asks of you: only this,
to act justly, to love tenderly,
and to walk humbly with your God.
- Micah 6:8

There never was any heart truly great and generous,
that was not also tender and compassionate.
- Robert Frost

Further reading: What Does Love Look Like?

The Universal Sacrament of Compassion

Feeding the Children

What Does Compassion Look Like?

Proactive in Our Love

Choose to Love Life

The Great Mirror

Life is a mirror, and will reflect back
to the thinker what he thinks into it.
- Ernest Holmes
Read more about this quote.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself -
your own thinking coming back at you.
- Byron Katie

What others say and do is a projection of their own reality.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Smile and the world smiles with you.
- Anonymous

Today's affirmation:
I am a Mirror for Love and Light,
but never for Anger or Fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Hate Reflects Hate

We never see Life as it really is

The Power of Your Intention

Creating Your Own Future

We see what we expect to see

Your Point of View

A Simple Life

He who is contented is rich.
- Lao Tzu

Wealth consists not in having great possessions,
but in having few wants.
- Epictetus 

He is richest who is content with the least,
for content is the wealth of nature.
- Socrates

A good life isn't measured in material goods.
There is no quicker path to misery than coveting your neighbors' stuff.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Small Pleasures

Gratitude, Not Worry

Burden of Jealousy

Welcome Abundance

Living in the Present

Emulate the Patience of Nature

Allow Love to Conquer Hate

Hate is never conquered by hate,
Hate is only conquered by love.
- The Buddha

When you pray for anyone, you tend to
modify your personal attitude toward them.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear,
and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
- Lester B. Pearson

Hate is like fire; it burns those who hold it.
- Alden Loveshade

Fear makes strangers of people
who would otherwise be friends.
- Shirley MacLaine

Further reading: Revenge, the Deadliest Sin?

The Power of Your Intention

Hatred vs. Love

End Your Anger

The Unworkability of Vengeance

Love even those who hate you

Inner Life - Outer Life

The outer conditions of a person's life will always
be found to reflect their inner beliefs.
- James Lane Allen

It is those who have a deep and real inner life
who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
- Evelyn Underhill

Begin with your own inner peace.
Then use that inner peace
as a platform from which
to approach the outer world
with perspective, understanding, and patience.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances
but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself.
- Joy Page

We're so engaged in doing things
to achieve purposes of outer value
that we forget the inner value,
the rapture that is associated
with being alive, is what it is all about.
- Joseph Campbell

Further reading: What Really Matters

Master of My Emotions

Your Attitude is Your Window

Mastering Time

Renewal

Life Really Is Good

Life is Not Hopeless

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams.
Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.
Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in,
but with what it is still possible for you to do.
- Pope John XXIII

Sometimes good things fall apart
so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe

There are no hopeless situations;
there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.
- Clare Boothe Luce

When you say a situation or a person is hopeless,
you are slamming the door in the face of God.
- Charles L. Allen

Life only appears to be rushing toward us.
Perhaps life is not as threatening as it appears.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our serenity
is our fear of the future - our fear of the unknown.
Perhaps, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said,
"The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Not Fair, But Joyful

How to Stop Worrying

The Edge of All We Know

Welcome the Unknown

Life: Mystery and Riddle

An Unknowable Future

 

Choose to Soar

Like a bird in flight, your life can soar above the troubles of the world.
Breathe deep, choose, and break the shackles of your past.
Fly Life on Free Wings, and Sing to its Glory.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
- Langston Hughes

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves.
But if we look at our lives we will see that most of the time
we do things just to please others ...
The worst part is that most of us are not even aware that we are not free.
- Don Miguel Ruiz

Further reading: Without change, there would be no butterflies

The Edge

Need For Approval

Trust in the Light

The path of the adventurer is a path of joy - jlh

Worrying about Tomorrow

Every tomorrow has two handles.
We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety
or the handle of faith.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow,
it only saps today of its joy.
- Leo Buscaglia

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Anonymous

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
- Winston Churchill

It is not work that kills men; it is worry.
Worry is rust upon the blade.
- Henry Ward Beecher

If you believe that a task will be difficult, it will be -
and you will have suffered with worry beforehand.
Approach life with joy and optimism.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Power of Faith

End Overwhelm, Fear, and Worry

The Paradox Of Living In The Moment

Beyond Your Worries

Gratitude and Thanksgiving