Accept the fact that everything changes

Equanimity (or composure) is the state of being calm, balanced,
and in control of one's emotions, even under stress or in the midst of difficulty.

Affirmation:
I choose to respond to life's provocations,
not with anger, resentment, or regret,
but with equanimity and a focus on positive action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I know, to banish anger altogether
from one's breast is a difficult task.
It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort.
It can be done only by God's grace.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity
opinions which differ from
the prejudices of their social environment.
Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

Without accepting the fact that everything changes,
we cannot find perfect composure.
But unfortunately, although it is true,
it is difficult for us to accept it.
Because we cannot accept the truth of transience,
we suffer.
- Shunryu Suzuki

Further reading: Complaining Creates Unhappiness

Stillness

Ancient Wisdom about Uncertain Times

Restraint

Stay Positive
     

Naming Matters

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Shakespeare says, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,"
but I disagree...There is great power in naming.
"Urban wall art" and "graffiti" are very different, even when they are identical.
Think of other word pairs, like "flower" and "weed" - "antique" and "used" - "freedom fighter" and "terrorist"
that greatly color our perception of the object or person being described.
Call a plant beautiful, and it becomes a flower.
Call it ugly, and it becomes a weed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Exercise: Consider the words that you and others in your life use to describe you. If the words are not complimentary, take action to change how you refer to yourself, and encourage others to speak differently of you. For example, if you describe yourself as "shy," choose a more positive term, such as "reserved."

Further reading: It Matters What You Call Something Or Someone

Finding Balance in Life Beats Moderation 
         

Our Vision is Biased by What We Expect to See or Fear to See

Choose the World You See,
and See the World You Choose.
You have a choice
about the perspective you take on life.
See tragedy, and the world is tragic -
see beauty, and the world is beautiful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

People seem not to see that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
- John Lubbock

It all depends on how we look at things,
and not how they are in themselves.
- Carl Jung

Our Vision is Always Biased by What We Expect or Fear to See.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What You See

Your Attitude is Your Window

What We Perceive
      

Choosing Compassion Toward ALL is Heroic

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

The opposite of courage in our society
is not cowardice, it is conformity.
- Rollo May

Life is a sum of all your choices.
- Albert Camus

Today's affirmation
I CHOOSE with Open Mind and Open Heart.
I renounce all assumptions and expectations.
I thoughtfully consider all possibilities.
I CHOOSE with courage, awareness, consciousness, and compassion toward all.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Trouble with Conformity

Make Decisions

Embrace Change

Do What You Know Is Right

Try Being Outrageous
       

Courage and Perseverance

When you get into a tight place
and everything goes against you,
till it seems you cannot hold on a minute longer,
never give up then, for that is just
the place and time the tide will turn.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman,
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams

Obstacles are those frightful things you see
when you take your eyes off your goals.
- Henry Ford

Stand up to your obstacles
and do something about them.
You will find that they haven't
half the strength you think they have.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Today's affirmation:
Even when I am afraid or unsure,
I choose to move in the direction of my goal.
Whenever I fall, I stand up,
brush myself off, and keep moving.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Photo: Talking to relatives across the Berlin Wall 1961.

Further reading: Beyond Failure

Keep Moving

Choose to Soar

Wanting is Not Enough
     

Trust Yourself - Only You Can Live Your Life

If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
  And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
...
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same: 
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools; 
...
 - Rudyard Kipling

Confidence comes not from always being right
but from not fearing to be wrong.
- Peter T. Mcintyre

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.
- Vince Lombardi

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it...
that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
- Dale Carnegie

Trust yourself. Only you can live your life.
Only you can taste your victories.
Only you can suffer the sting of your defeats.
Make your own choices, and accept your own consequences -
for better or worse.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Stand Tall and Proud

Have Confidence in Yourself

Feeling Tired?

Blaze Your Own Trail
      

LOOK, Don't Just Assume What You Will See

Change what you see,
by changing how you see.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau

A flower is a weed seen through joyful eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Call a plant beautiful, and it becomes a flower.
Call it ugly, and it becomes a weed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
- Helen Keller

Look for the Unexpected in the Commonplace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
- John Lubbock

We never see what we are not ready to see.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further Reading: What I Know - What I Don't Know
            

For Any Provocation, You Can Choose Your Response

We cannot choose our external circumstances,
but we can always choose how to respond to them.
- Epictetus

You don't have the power to make life "fair,"
but you do have the power to make life joyful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am determined to be cheerful and happy
in whatever situation I may find myself.
For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness
is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.
- Martha Washington

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
- Charles R. Swindoll

CHOOSE Your Response to Life's Provocations.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Joy is a Choice - but Not an Easy Choice

Life as a Dance

Your attitude determines the quality of your life
    

Clearly Understand What You Want; THEN Take Action

If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Read: How to Choose Your Life Purpose

If you don't know what port you are steering for,
no wind is favorable to you.
- Seneca [paraphrase]

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- John F. Kennedy

The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
- Benjamin Mays

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

Further reading: Where Are You Going?

Choosing Your Destination

To Live, Not Merely To Exist

What is my happiness supposed to look like?

Creating Your Own Future
    

Never Ignore the Beauty in Life

Even those things which seem out of reach of our choice
are governed by how we choose to perceive them.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Much in life can be seen as ugly or beautiful - it's our choice.
Why would we choose to see any part of life as ugly?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is nothing true anywhere,
The true is nowhere to be seen;
If you say you see the true,
This seeing is not the true one.
- Abraham Lincoln paraphrasing Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching

Always Look, with Gratitude, for the Best in Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Seeing the light is a choice, not seeing the light is no choice.
- Douglas Horton

Change what you see,
by changing how you see.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Labels

Opinions

Finding Beauty
    

Keep Your Focus on What's Most Important

Clarity affords focus.
- Thomas Leonard

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Instead of focusing on that circumstances that you cannot change -
focus strongly and powerfully on the circumstances that you can.
- Joy Page

Keep your attention focused entirely
on what is truly your own concern,
and be clear that what belongs to others
is their business and none of yours.
- Epictetus

Remember that there are a million "wrong things" in the world
(as well as a billion "right things"),
so focus your energies on addressing with courage the few issues closest to your heart,
and accept the rest of life with serenity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Main Thing is to Keep
The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey

Further reading: Fork in the Road

Life Begins When You Do

A decision about Who You Are

Aesops Fables: The Miller, His Son, and the Ass
     

First, Understand What IS

First, Understand What IS!
You can't improve the world until you understand how it functions today.
Especially regarding human nature, understand what is baked-in and what is malleable.
Study psychology; study history of the world.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What I recognized is that you can't put it together.
It's already together, and what you have to do
is experience it being together.
- Werner Erhard

If you want reality to be different than it is,
you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.
- Byron Katie

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
- Henry David Thoreau

We don't live in the world of reality,
we live in the world of how we perceive reality.
- Bryan Singer

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious
privilege it is to be alive -
to breathe,
to think, to enjoy, to love.
- Marcus Aurelius

Not what we experience,
but how we perceive what we experience,
determines our fate.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Further reading: Seeking

Solitary Cell

Perspective
             

Breathe; Let Go; Relax; Forgive - and Smile

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you find peace within yourself,
you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
- Peace Pilgrim

If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Breathe; let go; relax; forgive.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

It's not the situation that's causing your stress,
it's your thoughts,
and you can change that right here and now.
You can choose to be peaceful right here and now.
[Inner] Peace is a choice,
and it has nothing to do with what other people do or think.
- Gerald Jampolsky

No one can find inner peace except by working,
not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.
- Peace Pilgrim

Further reading: Focus on Peace

A Life of Harmony

Bring Peace

Forgiveness: Path to Inner Peace

Choose Inner Peace

The War Within Yourself
    

Consistent Common Sense

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are,
and doing things as they ought to be done.
- Josh Billings

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.
- An Wang

Common sense in an uncommon degree
is what the world calls wisdom.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it,
or who said it, no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense.
- The Buddha

A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
- William James

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal
to reason and is in conflict with morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Pause. Take the time to THINK before you act.

Further reading: Take Nothing On Authority

Trust Reason

Consciousness

See, Really See
       

Personal Transformation

If you begin to understand what you are
without trying to change it,
then what you are undergoes a transformation.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Today's affirmation:
I am the master of my emotions -
I transform fear to love, anger to compassion,
pain to comfort, scarcity to abundance,
expectation to gratitude, and jealousy to generosity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

At all times and under all circumstances,
we have the power to transform the quality of our lives.
- Werner Erhard

Personal transformation can and does have global effects.
As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us.
The revolution that will save the world
is ultimately a personal one.
- Marianne Williamson

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.
- Toni Cade Bambara

Transformation in the world happens when people are
healed and start investing in other people.
- Michael W. Smith

Further reading: The Power of Transformation

Be an Instrument of Change

What is Transformation?

A Great Future
  

Choose to Create Joy

We cannot choose our external circumstances,
but we can always choose how to respond to them.
- Epictetus

It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are,
or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.
It is what you think about.
- Dale Carnegie

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
- Charles R. Swindoll

Could we change our attitude,
we should not only see life differently,
but life itself would be different.
- Katherine Mansfield

We can always choose to perceive things differently.
You can focus on what's wrong in your life,
or you can focus on what's right.
- Marianne Williamson

Today's affirmation:
I choose to create joy in my life.
Whatever my external circumstances,
I choose to see all of life through joyful eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Your attitude determines the quality of your life

You are the Window

Look Beyond the Cloud 
         

Motivation Requires Daily Renewal

 

Question: Can't I just fix myself so I will stay motivated and inspired all the time?
My answer: It will probably always be a daily task to keep yourself on track.

People often say that motivation doesn't last.
Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured
by his special exertions,
but by his habitual acts.
- Blaise Pascal

Our daily decisions create the scrapbook of our life.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

What you don't do daily, you probably won't do weekly either.
What you make a habit of putting-off
just keeps getting pushed away again and again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You will never change your life
until you change something you do daily.
- Mike Murdock

Our character is basically a composite of our habits.
Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns,
they constantly, daily, express our character.
- Stephen Covey

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
- Brian Tracy

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

Today, examine your beliefs, your actions, your wants,
to determine whether they still represent your highest purpose.

Choose your Habits, Choose your Life.
Your Habits Are Your Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: 5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits 

Choose Your Focus

Be the Melody in Your Own Life

You are the Captain

Habits - Like Water to a Fish

How to Change Bad Habits

Seek to Understand
      

Serenity, Courage, Wisdom

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)

There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
- the character Morpheus in the movie The Matrix

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding:
you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
- Charles Kettering

Know the power of perspective.
Be a passionate observer of life.
See the events, feel the emotions,
and recognize the difference.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading:  More About the Serenity Prayer

Great Truths

Consciously Choosing Your Truth

Different and Yet the Same
      

Growth Requires Change

 

Change of any sort requires courage.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

If we don't change, we don't grow.
If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
- Gail Sheehy

Change always comes bearing gifts.
- Price Pritchett

He who rejects change is the architect of decay.
- Harold Wilson

To live is to choose. But to choose well,
you must know who you are and what you stand for,
where you want to go and why you want to get there.
- Kofi Annan

The nature of life is constant change, yet we fight against it. Why do we fight change? Humans are creatures of habit and instinctively fear the unknown.

Affirmation: Change is the Great Adventure of Life. I welcome change.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading:  Accept Change

Success Tip: Drive Change

Take Action - Now

Better Alternatives to Complaining

How to Change the World
      

Do Not Fear the Unknown

 

Refuse to be average.
Let your heart soar as high as it will.
- Aiden Wilson Tozer

Choose what lies in the shadows to be a matter
for discovery and adventure, rather than fear.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
- Raymond Lindquist

Today's affirmation:
I release the familiar that I may better discover my inspiring future.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Curious - Adventurous

Impulse to Soar

Understand More, Fear Less