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In other words, we should try to be fully aware of each moment, to do one thing at the time with people, to be active and productive and to simply be ourselves.

If Time is our most valuable asset, why we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it?

Don’t mistake movement for achievement.

It’s easy to get faked out by being busy.

The question is: Busy doing what?

I don’t know…

But I know this…

Days are expensive.

When you spend a day you have one less day to spend.

So make sure you spend each one wisely.

Will you?

Drive your business or your business will drive thee.

Benjamin Franklin

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Something will master and something will serve.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Either you run the business or the business runs you.

Either you take charge of your life or life will unfold itself without waiting for you.

Which one will you choose?

Let me to-day do something that shall take

A little sadness from the world’s vast store,
And may I be so favoured as to make
Of joy’s too scanty sum a little more
Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed
Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend;
Nor would I pass, unseeing, worthy need,
Or sin by silence when I should defend.
However meagre be my worldly wealth,
Let me give something that shall aid my. kind –
A word of courage, or a thought of health,
Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find.
Let me to-night look back across the span
‘Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say –
Because of some good act to beast or man –
“The world is better that I lived to-day.”

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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Ella Wheeler was born in 1850 on a farm in Johnstown, Wisconsin, east of Janesville, the youngest of four children. The family soon moved north of Madison. She started writing poetry at a very early age, and was well known as a poet in her own state by the time she graduated from high school.

Her most famous poem, “Solitude”, was first published in the February 25, 1883 issue of The New York Sun. The inspiration for the poem came as she was travelling to attend the Governor’s inaugural ball in Madison, Wisconsin. On her way to the celebration, there was a young woman dressed in black sitting across the aisle from her. The woman was crying. Miss Wheeler sat next to her and sought to comfort her for the rest of the journey. When they arrived, the poet was so depressed that she could barely attend the scheduled festivities. As she looked at her own radiant face in the mirror, she suddenly recalled the sorrowful widow. It was at that moment that she wrote the opening lines of “Solitude”:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone

With every rising of the sun

Think of your life as just begun.

The past has shrived and buried deep
All yesterdays – there let them sleep,

Nor seek to summon back one ghost
Of that innumerable host.

Concern yourself with but to-day;
Woo it and teach it to obey

Your wish and will. Since time began
To-day has been the friend of man.

But in his blindness and his sorrow
He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her best-known work wasPoems of Passion. Her most enduring work was “Solitude”, which contains the lines: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone”. Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.

Source: Wikipedia, October 15, 2011

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

John Barrymore

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With 204 countries ( Sovereign states) to visit,

With thousands of cities to discover,

With 7  billion people living on this planet,

With more than 3 000 000 wine bottles to taste,

With millions of books to read.

With millions of songs to listen.

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?

Most of us underestimate the power of incremental change over time.

It seems to me that we have a tendency to  think that we must take dramatic steps in order to achieve something significant.

Confucius said:  A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Everything in life starts with a single step.

You learn to walk and you fall.

You learn your ABC and you forget at first.

You learn to add, substract and multiply and make mistakes.

You jump in the pool and sink under until someone teaches you how to swim.

Do you remember learning how to drive the shift stick?

Enough examples…

Why do so many people give up before they even start?

I believe that one of the reasons is that they start with unrealistic expectations.

In fact, so unrealistic that you can’t help but become discouraged.

The solution for this is to set for yourself some realistic goals that you are certain to achieve.

And reward yourself as soon as you reach your objective.

Then aim for another goal A.S.A.P.

Reward yourself again.

Rewarding yourself is very important especially if the challenge is difficult.

Over time, you will look back and realize how much you have accomplished or how much you have learned.

I encourage you to make small, daily investments that will soon lead to big results.

Just like the painter, with each stroke of the brush is getting closer to his masterpiece.

Each incremental change will bring you closer to your overall goal.

Your life will be your own living masterpiece.

Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

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Steve Jobs was able to create the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the iCloud for millions of users.

He was able to earn a lot of iMoney for Apple and for himself in the process.

He had iAdmiration, iFame, iPower, iRespect and iCreativity.

His influence have been so great that we even use his iVocabulary and iLanguage.

Steve was considered to be an iGenius by many people.

But…

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Even with all these accomplisments to his credit, the two things he would have had created if possible…

Real iTime and real iLife.

How do you feel about asking other people for help?

I’ve noticed that many of us get uncomfortable about requesting support. While we’re all different and we each have our own unique perspective and talents, it seems that this can be quite a challlenge for most of us to ask for help.

When I feel stressed out, when I try to do everything myself, either because I feel insecure about asking for help or because I think that I’m the only one who can do it the “right” way.  At other times, I can be quite pushy with my “demands” for help.

I’ve also experienced personally and seen in others many times throughout my life, that there is a middle way between going it all alone and demanding help from others. So many times in the past, I tried to do it all, read it all, check it all and not sleep at all. I had to learn how to stop doing “the one-man-show”.

The irony of this whole thing is that most of us like to help others, while many of us find it difficult asking others for help ourselves.

Asking for help can make us feel vulnerable. We usually think that we should be able to do everything ourselves or that by admitting we need help, we are somehow being weak.  In addition, many of us are sensitive about being told NO and by asking others to help us we put ourselves out there and risk being rejected.

What if we had more freedom to ask for what we wanted and for specific help from other people? What if we could make requests in a confident and humble way? What if we remembered that we are worthy of other people’s help and that our ability to both ask for and receive it not only supports us, but also gives them an opportunity to contribute. It always surprises that most people really want to help.

It can be a little scary, we may get our feelings hurt from time to time, and on occasion people may have some opinions or reactions to what we ask for or how we do so. But, when we give ourselves permission and remind ourselves that it’s not only okay, but essential for us to ask for help, we can create a true sense of support in our lives.

Alone it seems to go faster, together we go further!

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day and every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.

What would you do?

Draw out every cent of course and figure out how to spend it later! Well we do have such a bank; its name is the bank of time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off as lost, whatever you failed to invest to good purpose. How much time do you write off at the end of the day?

Do you know?

Planning in advance will help you determine what you’ll do next as you arrange the order for accomplishing the activities on your list.

The challenge is that our most important resource, our time, is limited.

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Everyone suffers from stress. And the stress we suffer takes a heavy toll on our bodies, emotions and minds. Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but it is not recommended.. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter.

Today, try to find a moment with complete silence for at least 1 hour.

How?

Turn off the TV, mp3 player, radio, and your computer for a while.

Attend a yoga class. It’s a great method for relaxation.

Go for a walk in the woods if possible and listen to the calmness of nature.

Take a nap in the middle of the day. It’s Sunday…

Take the time to breath properly. It is one of the easiest methods to relax. Most of us have forgotten how to breath naturally. Take a deep breathe.

One great way to relax is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the touch of person delivering it to you.

It will be a good investment of time.

Today is a time to take care of yourself. Tomorrow will be another hectic day.

 I think it is good to be “Voracious”.

“Voracious” means to be very greedy or eager in some desire or pursuit.

The intensity of your desire will determine how long it takes for you to reach your goal. When it comes to reading, writing, respecting some deadlines, exercising, traveling, learning new skills, and meeting new and different people, I consider myself to be extremely “Voracious”.

What is good about being “Voracious” it that it saves a lot of time.When we enjoy doing an activity, it takes a lot less energy. That is why it is so important to invest more time on our natural strengths. On the other hand, we can delegate or eliminate what we don’t like to do.

This is the way to keep our level of voraciousness extremely high.

Do you consider yourself “Voracious” ?

Steve Jobs knew his life was ending soon; he had to make it count. Here’s an excerpt from his famous Stanford commencement speech:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Mr. Jobs at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

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Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate, our deepest fear is that we
are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that
most frightens us. We ask ourselves,

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?” Actually, who
are you NOT to be?

As we are liberated from our own
fear, our presence automatically
liberates others.

Attributed to Nelson Mandela

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What do we really fear?

More specifically, what is YOUR unique fear?

Or mine?

We forget our own potential when we consider our own small footprint in a lifetime, and it terrifies us.

But remember…this terror is a good thing. It motivates us to step out of our comfort zones and into worlds of possibility.

Then the question arises…

Why do anything at all?

Not because we want to impress someone or become more popular, but because there’s a point to our existence.

We just have to define it for ourselves.

I think it’s a good idea to always be thinking about our greatest fears.

These fears can paralyze us or can be used as stepping stones towards new challenges and greater achievements.

It inspires creativity in ourselves and in others.

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”

Aldous Huxley

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This is so true. But why is it so hard to admit or to accept?

Gandhi said;

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Will you try it today?

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

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Albert Einstein

“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

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 This is risky business! But when we are convinced that our ideas are the right ones, we must fight for them. Just think of Galileo, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King…

This time, like all times, is a very good one,
if we but know what to do with it.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Week ends are the right time to catch up things that you really care about.

Make the best of it!

Monday will be knocking on your door very soon.

An abstract concept that caught on about 6000 years ago and

resulted in the concepts of both the deadline and the heart attack!

That’s It !

“The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

Stephen R. Covey

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Most of us are busier than we’d like to be.

The real question is:  Busy doing what exactly?

But how do we schedule our priorities?

If or when Life doesn’t do it for us, one of the best ways to do this is to write down your own personal mission statement.

Why?

Because if you don’t, you are running the risk of drifting aimlessly and without direction on the ocean of life.

A personal mission statement is simply a promise that you make to yourself directed towards goal achievement. It gives you the necessary focus in different aspects of your life, to attain those goals that you have always desired but never been able to achieve. You may call it a goal setting tool that helps you develop a vision for your future. The only way you can appreciate the effects of a personal mission statement is by writing one and experiencing the advantages it gives you.
How?

Writing a personal mission statement is simple, but writing a good personal mission statement is what is going to take a little time. Though it is meant to be short, choosing the right words and drafting it in a concise manner requires some time as well as the need to follow these tips:

Determine your Passion: Some of you may not be aware of it, but you’re sure to have some kind of passion, some driving force to get you where you want to be. First identify this driving force. Then point out things you are naturally good at, or things you like doing, or both. Some of you may be creative, socially active, or good managers. Whatever you think your abilities are, make a note of them.

Determine your Principles and Values: Principles guide the manner in which you go about attaining your goals. When you make a note of these, you are promising yourself to follow these to give you a direction toward your final destination. These principles also help you decide the kind of impact you want to have on the people around you, the causes you are passionate about, and the virtues that you think are necessary to achieve your goal. An important note to make is that principles are simply guidelines and can be altered as the situation demands. However, your core values such as simplicity or respect, will remain the same. So what are the principles and values you live by? Write them down.

Determine Your Goals: Why are you writing a mission statement? What is your ultimate goal? What do you intend to achieve by utilizing your abilities and your values? Identify all these to complete your mission statement.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that the moment has to offer.

Barbara de Angelis

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It seems to me that we are stubborn students of life.

Life seems to tell us; here is a situation you need to face for your own developpement, and yet, most of the time, we will try to avoid the lesson. Why? Because it’s too damned hard! The funny thing about this is; the lesson we try to avoid seems to come back to us in many unexpected ways. Somehow, we can’t escape it.

When we focus on the moment and accept to face what we have to, it is difficult, but it is one of the best ways to grow.

What does this post have to do with time?

The sooner we understand this concept and that we put it in practice, the more time we will save to do other activities that we really enjoy. Have a nice day.

No matter what you do, time marches on at its own pace; tic, toc, tic, toc and there’s nothing you can do to change that .Time is a great equalizer; it runs at the same speed for everybody, rich or poor, jet pilot or snail farmer. You can’t manufacture time, you can’t reproduce time, you can’t slow time down or turn it around and make it run in the other direction. You can’t trade bad hours for good ones, either.

What you can manage, however, is your attention. Attention is a resource we all possess. Your attention reflects your conscious decisions about which activities will occupy your time. You are where your attention is… not necessarily where your body is.

The first step is to precisely understand your priorities. There’s a big difference between managing your attention to accomplish priorities and checking off items on your to-do list. Our natural tendency is to do what is fun, convenient, or absolutely necessary at any given time—but your true priorities may not fit into any of those categories. So, here’s a question to ask yourself, “If I could accomplish only one thing right now, what would that one thing be?”

Your answer will quickly identify your top priority, where you should be directing your attention.

“To lose patience is to lose the battle”

Mahatma Gandhi

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We don’t always have to be or look impatient to lose patience.

When we give up on something or on someone, we lose patience.

When we procrastinate with a task or a responsibility, we lose patience.

When we avoid doing what we must do, we lose patience.

It is so easy to lose patience because we rarely suffer the consequences of our procrastination right away; if we did, we would modify our behavior immediately.

The more we do what we must do when we should do it, the quicker the time will come that we will do what we want  to do when we want to do it.

Take time to laugh.

It is the music of the soul.

Take time to think.

It is the source of power.

Take time to play.

It is the source of perpetual youth.

Take time to read.

It is the fountain of wisdom.

Take time to be friendly.

It is the road to happiness.

Take time to give.

It is too short a day to be selfish.

Take time to work.

It is the price of success.

 Anonymous

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Here’s a fascinating, but little known fact about adversity.

For most people, your success is going to be in similar proportion to how much defeat and failure you have already experienced.

But…

This is only true when you have used any setbacks as learning experiences, and made the necessary changes to overcome or by-pass the obstacles.

If you haven’t, Life has a tendency to send you the same lesson again and again.

If you have, you move on to your next challenge.

And you will save time.

LISBONNE – Le Portugais Manoel de Oliveira, doyen des cinéastes encore en activité, a commencé à l’âge de 102 ans à tourner son prochain film dans un studio parisien, a-t-on appris vendredi auprès de sa société de production portugaise.

Le tournage de Gebo et l’ombre, une adaptation de la pièce de théâtre éponyme de l’écrivain portugais Raul Brandao, a débuté jeudi et doit se conclure fin octobre, a indiqué à l’AFP la société de production O som e a furia.

Au casting de cette comédie dramatique, co-produite avec la société française MACT Productions, figurent notamment le comédien franco-britannique Michael Lonsdale, l’Italienne Claudia Cardinale et la Française Jeanne Moreau.

Contrairement à ce qui avait été annoncé dans un premier temps, l’acteur français Michel Piccoli ne participera pas à ce projet.

Depuis son premier film, Douro, travail fluvial, réalisé en 1931, Manoel de Oliveira a tourné une cinquantaine de longs métrages de fiction et documentaires. Son dernier film sorti dans les salles de cinéma, L’étrange cas d’Angélique, avait été présenté l’année dernière au Festival de Cannes.

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Source. Canoe.ca September 23, 2011

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Khalil Gibran

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Giving some of our money is difficult, but we can always earn more.

Giving of ourselves is a bigger challenge because it is giving of our personal time.

Giving of our personal time is giving of our lives.

One minute at the time. One hour at the time. One day at the time.

These minutes, these hours and these days will be gone forever.

The image of an hourglass, for me,  is a constant reminder of the brevity of our personal time.

The ticking sound of an old fashion clock.

If you have a lot of money, and you give some away, it is not a big sacrifice.

If you have a lot of time, and you give some away, it is not a big sacrifice.

It is when your money and- or your personal time are limited that it becomes a true gift.

Why?

Because you are giving a resource that is valuable for you.

I have met some people who are very generous with their money even when they had little.

I have seen people with very busy schedule giving a lot of their personal time.

In these two examples, we are watching a true giver in action.

Another example…

I have witnessed many times that if you want to get things done quickly, you ask it to someone who is already very busy.

They usually deliver what you need faster than anyone else.

In this last example, they are not only generous, but they are very efficient.

Some of you may think, how can you give of what you don’t have enough?

In this case, I would say the the gift is even more precious and valuable.