Don’t you think we’re taking this whole Social Media thing a bit too seriously?

Who wants to be on their deathbed  and say” I wish I had more Twitter followers.”

How many Facebook “friends” and Linked In “professional contacts” will attend your funeral?

When my wife wants to get my attention, she asks me; “who will be sitting in the front row at your funeral.”    “Your iPhone, your iPad , your laptop?”

Don’t get me wrong! These are great tools of communication, but how much is too much?

Let’s try to put things in perspective.

My passion or obsession is with time and I wonder, if recently, I have been overindulging and over- investing my very limited time on those platforms.

Let’s put down all our latest gadgets and gizmos, let’s play with our kids, let’s spend time with our wives and husbands, girlfriends or boyfriends while we can.

 

“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”

Corrie ten Boom

Holocaust survivor

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It’s not how long we live that is important, it’s the difference we make in this world.

“The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it – every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.”John D. Rockefeller,
Industrialist
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Here is a link of an interesting TED conference…
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“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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“Science prolongs life. To consist of what ? Eating, drinking and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life?

All this is nothing without the charm of art.”

Sarah Bernhardt

French actress

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

Byron Katie

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“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?

“Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.”

Zig Ziglar

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How much time and energy do you invest for the accumulation of money?

Is this what you really care about?

What if there would be something else to run after?

Awake

Open your eyes.

REALLY love those around you.

Do everything, everyday like it matters.

Taste.

Smell.

Feel.

Your beauty will be felt by all.

Never forget the magic of life itself.

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Hugh MacLeod

“In truth, each one of us since the moment of our birth has been given a death sentence, only the date is unknown. However, the fact of death is always present in the deepest part of our subconcious mind. Between the time of birth and the time of death , we do the best we know how.”

Chin-Ning Chu

Writer

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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 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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Time, like life itself, has no inherent meaning.
We give our own meaning to time as to life.

JLH

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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?

“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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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

“Sometimes I wish life had a fast-forward button.”

Dan Chopin

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When it’s time to pay the bills,

When it’s time to take out the garbage,

When it’s time to clean the house,

When it’s time for a rainy day,

When we experience illness,

Of course most of us don’t enjoy these moments, but how could we really appreciate the good times if we always have good times?

We enjoy earning money and after we pay the bills.

We produce garbage with our lifestyle, then we must get rid of it.

We live in our houses and have to clean them once in a while.

We enjoy the sun especially after a couple of rainy days.

We enjoy feeling energetic after being slowed down by the flu.

So yes, sometimes I wish life would have a fast-forward button, but it’s only a wish, it’s  not reality.

Change is constant in the world we live in. We all know that but somehow, many of us seem to forget this at times.

Why? It is not change most people resist, but rather the pain and discomfort during the period of transition. From birth on, we are constantly changing with never ending new experiences. Our bodies change with time, our thoughts and emotions, our relationships, our finances and our health. Every thing within us and around us is changing constantly.

The change is sometimes so slow that we don’t pay attention to it. If you find yourself resisting to change without being aware of it, I recommend that you hide a fresh banana somewhere for 30 days. Take it out of its hiding place after a month and you will witness the transformation in action. The banana experiment is a clear demonstration of the nature of change. Not all changes will be so noticeable, but the principle of change remains the same.

Winston Churchill said something like this many years ago;

“Take change by the hand before change grabs you by the throat”

It means to me; accept and cooperate with the change that is inevitable before it will be imposed on us.

Do you find yourself resisting to change in some areas of your life?

If your answer is yes, is it because of fear, comfort or any other reasons?

“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?

“My life is my message.”

Mahatma Gandhi.

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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?

“Life is like a hot bath. It feels good while you’re in it, but the longer you stay in, the more wrinkled you get.”

Robbert Oustin
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“Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst.”

William Penn

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

Rabindranath Tagore

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“People always make time to do the things they really want to do.”

Stephen Lafond

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How creative do we become when we really want to do something? It is too bad we are not as motivated when we have to do something. Then again we are extremely motivated when we must.

So is it possible that only intense desire and extreme fear are the most effective motivators?

In the middle, aren’t we just bored?

What do you think?

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”

C.S.Lewis

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