Awareness


“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Pericles

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Wow!  I like this quote from Pericles.

It reminded me of what was woven into my own life.

The person who had the most influence on my of thinking has passed away in 1912.

How did he influence me?

With a great book that he had published in 1902-03.

This book that he left is his legacy to the world. Millions of people have been influenced by this masterpiece and still are today.

The title of the book is: As_a_Man_Thinketh . It is available for free on the web at many places.

It is now in the public domain within the United States and most other countries. It was released the 1st of October 2003 as a Project Gutenberg eText edition

File:James Allen.jpg

The mystery litterary Man: James_Allen_(author)

This book is one of the shortest I ever read, one of the easiest to understand, and yet, one of the hardest to put into practice.

I have read this book dozens of time and plan to read it over and over again.

Why will I read it again and again? Because even if I understand it very well, I still don’t apply many of its principles.

I recommend  this book to you very much. To read with absolutely no distraction or noise…

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

Tallulah Bankhead

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It’s good to make mistakes!!!

Repeat after me,

It’s good to make mistakes!!!

Forget about what others will say.

You will experience failure many times in your life. Not all the time, but you will. If you don’t fail enough, it’s probably because you don’t try new things very often.

We can do this with our dreams; wish them away, let them slip away because we are afraid to fail, afraid to get started or because we are waiting for the right moment. The right moment? Most of the time, is an excuse or at best, an illusion.

I make so many mistakes all the time. Am I a slow learner? It’s possible, however, it’s the only way to improve anything. Every time I take a chance to make a mistake, I also get a chance to do something right.

An exemple?  The top scorer in the NHL will miss his shots more often than he will score a goal, but we don’t remember when he misses, we add up the goals.

We will always miss 100 % of the shots we don’t take.

Some of you may argue that we should learn from what we are doing good, and I agree. We should always repeat our good experiences to the extent that we benefit from them.

However, we should not let ourselves be paralyzed with inaction because of the fear of making mistakes. The young baby who is learning to walk will fall. The one who is learning to swim or to dance will not be very elegant at first. The failing is part of the learning process.

Will you risk making a mistake today?   At least one…

“I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at the time.”

Charles Schulz, Peanuts, cartoon

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A while ago, a lady went to a restaurant in downtown Montreal to celebrate her birthday with her husband , as they entered the restaurant, apparently they asked the hostess for a seat near the window to get access to a better view…

This is an excerpt of the Montreal Gazette July 17, 2009

“MONTREAL – One minute Thursday night, a couple was quietly celebrating a birthday inside the Mikasa Sushi Bar on Peel St.; the next minute, a concrete slab crashed through the glass skylight above them, killing the 33-year-old woman instantly.

Her husband of two years, also 33, lay next to her lifeless body screaming, “Ma femme! Ma femme! Stay with me!”

He pleaded for help, but other diners and staff were paralyzed with shock. Minutes later, sobbing and screaming, the man was loaded into an ambulance, his right hand wrapped in a blood-soaked napkin, two single tracks of blood running down his cheek.

“Her birthday was Monday, that’s what they were celebrating,” said the nurse, who spoke on condition that her name not be published. The concrete panel from the 18th floor of the Marriott Residence Inn crashed through the sloping glass ceiling of the restaurant, which lies directly below at street level, and hit the woman “directly” – while she was seated at her table, said Montreal police Constable Olivier Lapointe.”

The last thing this couple was expecting on that evening was a piece of concrete to fall on the woman’s head…  33 years old.   (12 045 days)

The reason why I bring up this story today is to show that when we have regrets about the past or worries about the future, we waste precious time and energy. We must focus on the present.

This is where our attention should be because this is where we have a little more control over what happens to us. This lady didn’t have much control over what happened to her that night.

Today, try to focus your attention on what you can influence and the rest will take care of itself.

I agree with the creator of Peanuts; we should only “dread one day at a time”

How many days to you “dread” in advance?

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils”

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) French composer

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Time is a great teacher when we dare to make mistakes.

Time is a greater and more effective teacher when we accept to learn from our mistakes.

Time is the greatest and wisest teacher when we learn from the mistakes of others and avoid to make them ourselves.

Time will eventually kill all of us, and since we don’t know when, one of the most important lessons Time can teach us is:  To live each day to the fullest..

What did Time teach you recently?

What would you do differently if you learned that you had 3 months left to live?

Oh really!    

Why wait?

“Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.”

 
Henry Miller

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When I can drive a car…

When I get my degree…

When I find Mister Right or Miss Perfect…

When I have kids…

When I have a better job or salary…

When the kids leave home…

When I retire…

When… fill your own excuse here ______________________

When… when…when will you stop making excusessss?

“I think I’ve discovered the secret of life; you just hang around until you get used to it.” 

Charles Schulz

American cartoonist ( Creator of Peanuts)

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“When you argue with reality, you lose, but only one hundred percent of the time.”

Byron Katie

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When will you start taking yourself seriously. You know when you need a break. You know when you need a rest. You know what to get worked up about and what to get rid of. And you know when it’s time to take care of yourself, for yourself. To do something that makes you stronger, faster, more complete. Because you know it’s never too late to have a life. And never too late to change one.”

Text from an advertisement from the Nike company

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

“The future will depend on what we do in the present”

Mahatma Gandhi

(1869-1948)

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We all know this, it is so simple to understand when we read it. However, the challenge is not only to read it and understand it, the real challenge is to practice what we understand so well.

Yes, practice it day in day out, especially when you have distractions, a bad day or a good day.

Whatever is your dream, your project, your goal, pursue it relentlessly without wasting time.

You need a burning desire to keep you absorbed and focused, even when you have so many responsibilities and distractions.

Will you?

“The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.” 

John Barrymore

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 With 203 countries ( Sovereign states) to visit,

With thousands of cities to discover,

 With 6,8 billion people living on this planet,

With more than 3 000 000 wine bottles to taste,

With millions of books to read,

With thousands of movies to watch,

With so many skills to learn,

With so many things to experience,

With so many people in need or living in poverty,

I could go on and on…

And  a potential of only 36525 days to live.

How dare you being bored?

“If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions.”

“If you want to know your future, look into your present ACTIONS.”

Chinese proverb

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“I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

 Lewis Carroll

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We cannot change the past, we can learn from the past and we can avoid repeating the same mistakes too many times over.

Someone will say;  “This is so obvious!”

Yes it is!

Why do so many of us let our lives be governed by our personal history if we can’t go back to yerterday?

Does adult life have to be full of boredom and compromise?

No, the reason we feel this way sometimes is because we live according to other people’s expectations. We forget ourselves when we try to match society’s standards of what is right, what is success, what we should be doing…instead of remembering our childhood dreams and fantasies.

But when we make a conscious effort to focus on some of our dreams and spend less time living according to our society’s standards, I believe we can drastically improve our quality of life.

It is however a conscious choice and a daily discipline to live this way.

“Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.”

Anton Chekhov

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There is a lot of truth in this quote! Sometimes, we are at our personal best when we are in the middle of a crisis. Somehow, we find the energy and the courage to fight when everything seems to be hopeless. On the other hand, the routine of the day to day can sometimes drain more energy from us than a big crisis.

Why would this be?   It seems to me that our focus is better and that we are less distracted when times are hard than when times are easy.

What do you think?

See all we have in life is time. From the moment of our first breath, the clock started ticking. The sands of time started to fall down the hourglass and the fuse of our life started to burn down.

Until I value myself, I won’t value my time……..

Unknown author

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“Life is a one-way street, and we are not coming back.”

Anon

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Many of us spend and waste a lot of time thinking that things will be better WHEN we lose weight, get promoted, move into a nicer place, make more money, get married, have children, get out of debt, have more free time, get the kids out of the house, retire, recover from a specific injury, illness, or whatever else it is we think needs to change in order for us to be happy.

Life is not “WHEN” ; it is TODAY.

Stephen Lafond

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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“Before my cancer, I was often afraid to try new things or do something different. But I just began singing lessons and this summer I’m off on my first kayak camping trip. I have a chance at living again, and I try to take a moment every day to really appreciate just being alive.”

Joshua, 24 years old, testicular cancer, 2-year survivor

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“Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.”

Author unknown

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I don’t know who wrote this, but he or she probably had some hedonistic tendancies or a good sense of humor.

It brings to my mind the following questions;

It is better to live a very long  life and experience illness, old age and slowly losing  most of our physical and mental capacities or is it better to live fully and die younger before we experience all these inconvenients?

I don’t know, what are the pros and cons?

What do you think?

Which one would you prefer?

A good friend of mine wrote this little note after one of his good friends passed away;

What is life?

“Sometimes life goes by too fast for anyone to see what is really going on around them.Why do we always wait for someone we love to leave this world for everyone around them to realize how little time we have? We have to see the sadness in the people we love before asking ourselves the same question over and over. What else am I going to miss in life before I decide to slow down?”

Ritz Pesce

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Why, why, why???

“There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.” 

Coco Chanel

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After she lost the love of life ( Arthur “Boy” Capel), all was left to Coco Chanel was time for the other passion in her life; her work. This is where she put her time and look at the results that she produced. Concentrated efforts can sometimes give impressive results.

Many times when you like what you do for a living, work becomes play, and play becomes productive and both of them together can be very enjoyable.

What do you do to have fun at work and still be productive?

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”

Ashleigh Brilliant

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“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

Rabindranath Tagore

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“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.”
 
— Jackson Brown Jr., writer
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“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”

Auguste Rodin

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This quote from Auguste Rodin was sent to me from a good friend. I really like this quote because it says;

Nothing is a waste of time… if … which implies that we can learn from good and bad things happening to us,

if and only if we use the experience wisely.

I know it is easier said than done.

Do you experience wisely what is happening to you?

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”

Denis Waitley

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“Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.”

Josh Billings

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When I was 5 years old, I couldn’t care less about time.

When I was 15 years old, it seemed to me that everything was always taking too long to happen.

When I was 25 years old, it seemed like I was always so busy and running out of time.

When I was 35 years old, with a wife and children, a business to run, and bills to pay, I really had less and less time.

Now at almost 45 years old, I know that we never have enough time to do everything but we always have time to do the most important.

The more pressure we have with time, the more productive we seem to become.

Are you making the most of the time you have?

“Don’t feel entitled to anything you don’t sweat and struggle for”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939- )

American activist and founder of the Children’s Defence Fund

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Did you ever hear the saying “Easy come, easy go”? There seems to be an unwritten law in nature that takes away what we don’t deserve or what we didn’t work hard enough for. There is no way to prove it, but we can witness it over and over again in the form of people winning the lottery and spending everything very quickly, or children who inherit from rich parents without having to work for their money. Another variaton of this is when people have such an easy life that they are unable to cope when disaster strikes.

Do you often try to take some shortcut in order to get what you want?

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

— Mother Teresa, charity worker

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When we give a sincere compliment, it costs us nothing, but it enriches the person who receives it. It usually doesn’t take much of our time, but it has a long lasting effect on the recipient.

Why don’t we take time to give more compliments?

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