Choices of Being Human

1. You Will Receive a Body
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for your entire life. How you treat it is up to you.
2. You Will Learn Lessons
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn life lessons.
How receptive you are to these lessons, is up to you.
3. Mistakes Become Lessons, If You Let Them
Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation.
The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the learning process, as the experiment that ultimately works.
4. A Lesson Is Repeated Until Learned
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.
When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning Lessons Does Not End
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons.
If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. "There" Is No Better Than "Here"
When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here".
7. Others Are Merely Mirrors of You
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate in yourself.
8. What You Make of Your Life Is Up To You
You have the resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.
The choice is yours.
9. Your Answers Lie Inside You
The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You Will Forget All This..!!

....Anonymous

It only takes a minute to find a special person,
an hour to appreciate them,
A day to love them...
but then an entire Life
to forget them.

I've learned that even when I have pains,
I don't have be one."
Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Maya Angelou

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the number of moments that take our breath away." 
Author Unknown

"You can learn more about a person in an hour's worth of play,
than in a day of conversation." 
Plato

Judge with compassion.
The universe was created to teach us, not for us to judge.
Yet we judge ourselves and our world.
Those quick to judge are slow to compassion.
Those slow to compassion have forgotten that
hurtful people don’t go to hell;
they are already in hell;
that is why they behave as they do—
and ultimately no one gets away with anything.
Resenting people only allows others
to live in our head rent-free.
And despite our judgments,
reality happens anyway.
So let us judge with compassion,
until we finally realize that
our primary business is not forgiving others
but asking forgiveness.

HOW TO TURN WHAT YOU KNOW INTO WHAT YOU DO:
To progress in the direction of your dreams, you will need to choose
between one of two fundamental approaches below:

1. Find a way to quiet your mind, create empowering beliefs, practice
positive self-talk, find your focus, affirm your power, free your
emotions, and visualize positive outcomes so that you can develop the confidence, generate the courage, and find the determination to make the commitment to feel sufficiently motivated to do whatever it is you need to do.

Or you can --

2. Just do it.
Dan Millman

A Tale of Two Cities...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness;
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity;
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness;
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair . . .
Charles Dickens

The Journey of Socrates
When I was young, I believed that life
might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations.
But now I understand that the Way winds like a river,
always changing, ever onward, following God’s gravity
toward the Great Sea of Being.
My journeys revealed that
the Way itself creates the warrior;
that every path leads to peace,
every choice to wisdom.
And that life has always been,
and will always be,
arising in Mystery.
Dan Millman, 2005

Ways of the Peaceful Warrior
LIFE ON EARTH CAN BE DIFFICULT.
It takes effort over time to progress toward our chosen goals.

WE CAN CONTROL OUR EFFORTS, BUT NOT THE OUTCOMES.
But our efforts increase the odds of achieving those outcomes. We
make zero percent of the shots we don't take.

ACTIONS COUNT MORE THAN WORDS OR THOUGHTS.
(the smallest good deed surpasses the grandest good intention).
Thoughts and intentions provide a map and direction; we still have to
make the journey. So don't think without acting or act without
thinking. No matter what you may feel or think, your life will be
shaped largely by what you do, moment to moment.
Thoughts and feelings create tendencies to behave a certain way — yet we are here to overcome tendencies as we submit to a
higher will.
DAN MILLMAN, 2005

THE INTERVIEW WITH GOD
I dreamed I had an interview with God.
“So you would like to interview me?” God asked.“If you have the time” I said.

God smiled. “My time is eternity.”
“What questions do you have in mind for me?”

“What surprises you most about humankind?”

God answered...

“That they get bored with childhood,
they rush to grow up,
and then long to be children again.”

“That they lose their health to make money...
and then lose their money to restore their health.”

“That by thinking anxiously about the future,
they forget the present,
such that they live in neither the present nor the future.”

"That they live as if they will never die,
and die as though they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine and we were silent for a while.
And then I asked...

“As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons
you want your children to learn?”

“To learn they cannot make anyone
love them. All they can do
is let themselves be loved.”

“To learn that it is not good
to compare themselves to others.”

“To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness.”

“To learn that it only takes a few seconds
to open profound wounds in those they love,
and it can take many years to heal them.”

“To learn that a rich person
is not one who has the most,
but is one who needs the least.”

“To learn that there are people
who love them dearly,
but simply have not yet learned
how to express or show their feelings.”

“To learn that two people can
look at the same thing
and see it differently.”

“To learn that it is not enough that they
forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.”

"Thank you for your time," I said humbly. "Is there anything else
you would like your children to know?"

God smiled and said,
“Just know that I am here... always.”
Author Unknown

St. Theresa's Prayer
"May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into our bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of you."

"So often we try to alter circumstances to suit ourselves,
instead of letting them alter us,
which is what they are meant to do."
-Mother Maribel

"What lies before us and what lies behind us,
are small matters compared to
what lies within us.
And when we bring what is within
out into the world,
miracles happen."
Henry David Thoreau

A handwritten note above a jar for tips:
"If you fear change, leave it here."

Change is a process, not an immediate outcome--
a journey, rather than a destination.
Rhonda Abrams

Gettysburg Address
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of the people, by the people,
for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln

"We cannot teach people anything;
we can only help them discover it
within themselves."
Galileo Galilei

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember,
I do and then I understand.
Confuscious

Think Global, Act Local

"Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you,
because the greatest secrets are always hidden,
in the most unlikely places.
Those who don't believe in magic, will never find it."
-Ralph Steadman

"Your Character is Your Destiny"
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
-Frank Outlaw