Favorite Inspirational Quotes

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.

Booker T. Washington

The world also cares very little about what you say you want or will do (unless you are a politician).  It is still what you actually do that is important.  The world won’t stand still or pay attention to dreamers.  It’s the ones that actually accomplish something that change the world, even if just a tiny piece of it.

All this just goes back to the fact that you have to take action.  That is something that just was not stressed enough in The Secret.  Focusing on your goal and then taking action till you reach your goal is the real secret.  And that action has to lead you toward your goal and not away from it.  That is one of the basic principles of Simpleology 101;  does this action take me to my goal or lead me away from it?

Getting back to the quote, to paraphrase a Moody Blues’ song, don’t just tell me you want to change the world, go take action and do it.  It is not what you say or know that counts.  It is what you do with what you know that counts.

Study without action is futile.

Tags: action, inspirational quotes

Happiness doesn’t depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have.  We can be happy with little and miserable with much.

William Dempster Hoard

I’ve actually been doing some reading on this topic of happiness lately and it’s given me a lot to think about.  Hoard is correct that our happiness doesn’t depend on things.  If it does, we are in sad shape for those things can be taken from us at any time.

We can lose them through accident, theft, fire, tornado, hurricane, war, etc, as too many people know around the world.  I faced this possibility already once this year, the possibility of losing almost everything including livestock, as I was forced to evacuate from a very nearby fire.  I am intimately aware of the loss that can happen.  I know of others who did lose everything including family pets and livestock.  Looking at your window and seeing your cows and horses on fire and not being able to do anything but run is not something to experience.

This goes for the people in our lives as well, unfortunately.  Our happiness cannot depend upon the people in our lives either.  People come and go.

Our happiness cannot depend upon anything outside of us.  That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy those things and maybe collect or get the things I enjoy.  I enjoy the people around me as well.  But, if they are taken away, does my enjoyment go as well.  Or can I still enjoy the memory of those things and people?

So if our happiness does not, simply cannot, depend on what we have, then what does it depend upon?  Well, as the saying goes, “Happiness is an inside job.”  We have to work on us and on our attitudes.  It truly is only what goes on inside of us that matters.  Everything else can be taken.  But what we have inside us, what we are deep down, goes with us wherever we are.  That is where we must put our attention.

Tags: William Dempster Hoard, Think Right Now

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.

Henry Ford

This would be a very inspirational quote if I simply knew or could understand how you do what you’re afraid you can’t do.  Maybe he means that you just keep slogging away to reach a goal and one day you wake up and realize you’ve accomplished it.

That’s where persistence and determination come in.  But if you have no faith in achieving something, how do you keep that up?  I mean, that if you are afraid you can’t do it, then you don’t have the belief that you can.  You won’t keep going over the hurdles to achieve you goal.

Maybe this is more in line with Nike’s motto, “Do it now!” or maybe even better is one I learned but don’t remember where; “Do it scared!”  Even if you are afraid, even if you doubt, you just keep going on and taking action until one day you make a great discovery that you have done what you were afraid you couldn’t do.

Tags: self help, do it scared