Thought for the Day

11th day of April, year 2011

Lessons from the Noah's Ark

ONE: Don't miss the boat.
 
TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat.
 
THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
 
FOUR: Stay fit. When you're 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.

FIVE: Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.

SIX: Build your future on high ground.

SEVEN: For safety's sake, travel in pairs.

EIGHT: Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.

NINE: When you're stressed, float awhile.

TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.

ELEVEN: No matter the storm, when you are with God, there's always a rainbow waiting. 

Thought for the Day

Thought for the Day

TEN SPIRITUAL TONICS

1. Stop worrying. Worry kills life.

2. Begin each day with a prayer. It will arm your soul.

3. Control appetite. Over-indulgence clogs body and mind.

4. Accept your limitations. 

5. Don’t envy. It wastes time and energy.

6. Have faith in people. Cynicism sours the disposition.

7. Find a hobby. It will relax your nerves. 

8. Read a book a week to stimulate imagination and broaden your views.

9. Spend some time alone for the peace of solitude and silence.

10.Want what you have, instead of spending your strength trying to get what you want.

Consider This

• Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
• The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer. His teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing.
• Thomas Edison's teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything.
• Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams." He was expelled and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.
• Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 in chemistry.
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
• Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.
• Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a "soaring" seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

~excerpts from Chicken Soup for the Soul, 1993
  article by Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen

A Creed For Those Who Have Suffered

 I would like to share to you one of my favorite writings I read in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I hope we all pick up some good thoughts or lessons with this. Happy reading!


I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey...

I asked for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things...

I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise...

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God...

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things...

I got nothing I asked for - but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among men, most richly blessed!

~Roy Campanella
Chicken Soup for the Soul, 1993

Don't Be Afraid To Fail

You've failed many times, although you may not remember.
You fell down the first time you tried to walk.
You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn't you?
Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat?
Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.
R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.
Don't worry about failure.
Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.

~A message as published in the Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corporation, Hartford Connecticut

~~Dedicated to my wife on our 71st Months together! 
   Today, 14th of May 2010

Quote for the Day

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.

~Tielhard de Chardin
Chicken Soup for the Soul
1993

Obstacles

We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they may offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

~Viktor E. Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning

Are You Strong Enough To Handle Critics?

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error  and shortcomings, who knows the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the high achievement of triumph and who at worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows his place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Quote for the Day

"There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living."
~David Starr Jordan

The Rules for Being Human

1. You will receive a body.
    You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.  
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 lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid. 
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
    Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the 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 "her", 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 something you love or hate about yourself. 
8. What you make of your life is up to you.
    You have all the tools and 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.
11. You can remember it whenever you want.


~excerpts from Chicken Soup for the Soul 1993

Lenten Season 2010

It's  Lenten Season and I found this article while browsing the net. I hope this can inspire us in any ways.


Read on...

It was one of those days I did not wish to live again. I had been working for weeks to secure a deal that would give me a nice commission. Everything seemed to go perfectly and I had already been joking with co-workers what I would do with the extra income.

I picked up the phone and called to the customer to get the deal finalized, only to hear that the recession had hit the company. My customer told me that half of the staff had been let go and that all purchases were put on hold.

I had so concentrated on this deal that I had not worked much on my other customers and knew that instead of getting a big fat check I’d be having one of the smallest ones I had ever received.

I just couldn’t stay at my desk. I got up and went to get some coffee. The cleaning lady was just washing the vending machine. I slumped to a chair and felt awful.

“Bad day?” she asked.

Startled, I looked up. The cleaning lady was looking at me.

“You could say that again,” I sighed.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

She was a motherly type of a woman with kind eyes. I had seen her around for years but I never said a word to her really. And yet I suddenly found myself telling the whole pitiful story to her. She listened intently, finished cleaning the vending machine and nodded.

“Your situation reminds me of my own father,” she said. “He was also a salesman, but not lucky enough to be able to sit in one office. He was a traveling salesman. You know: big suitcases and all. Vanished for weeks sometimes and came back with an empty bag, pay check and a big hug for us kids and mother.”

I looked at her, not knowing where she was going with this.

“There was a time when he also lost a big sale. It was just before Christmas and he had to tell us children that there would be very few presents. We were disappointed, but he gathered us around him and told a story. I shall always remember those inspirational words. First, he asked us which animals we liked best. My answer was cats. My older brother liked dogs and my younger brother loved ponies. Then, he asked if we wanted to know which animals he admired the most and, of course, we did. The bees, the ants and the spiders, he told us.”

I lifted my eyebrows. The cleaning lady smiled.

“Now, of course, we did not agree with him but asked why ever would he like such nuisances. Didn’t they bite or sting or just look plain ugly? He explained to us and his inspirational words have been my guideline ever since.

“He said he liked the bees because if a bear breaks their nest and steals their honey, they keep on building their honeycombs, making more honey. And he liked the ants because if the same bear destroys their nest, they also immediately start building their nest anew, working together for a common goal. And he liked the spiders because if their webs are destroyed, they start repairing the damage right away — or building a whole new, better one.

“He said that the lesson that he had learned from these little insects was that the world may surprise us sometimes by destroying even our most carefully-built plans but if we choose to be ready to start all over again no matter what, eventually we shall achieve great results. We shall just have to start again, one step at a time.”

At that, the cleaning lady nodded to me and pushed her cart out of the room.

I sat there for a while, thinking of what she had said. Then, I got up, walked back to my desk and started to build my next pay check, one customer at a time.

The Mayonnaise Jar

"When things in your life seem almost too much to handle,
When 24 hours in a day is not enough,
Remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee."

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.
When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar,
And proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.
He shook the jar lightly.
The pebble rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured into the jar.
Of course the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full.
The students responded with a unanimous 'yes'.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table,
And poured the entire contents into the jar,
Effectively filling the empty space between the sand.
The students laughed.

'Now' said the professor, as the laughter subsided,
'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things - family, children, health, friends and favorite passions-
Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained,
You life would still be full.

The pebbles are the things that matter like your job, house and car.
The sand is everything else - the small stuff.

'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued,
There is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff,
You will never have room for the things that are important to you.

So, pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical check ups.
Take your partner out to dinner.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.

'Take care of the golf balls first-
The things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled. 'I'm glad you asked.'

It just goes to show that no matter how full your life may seem,
There's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'

I Believe

I Believe...
That just because two people argue,
It doesn't mean they don't love each other.
And just because they don't argue,
It doesn't mean they do love each other.

I Believe...
That we don't have to change friends,
If we understand that friends change.
That no matter how good a friend is,
They are going to hurt you every once in a while,
And you must forgive them for that.

I Believe...
That we are responsible for what we do,
No matter how we feel.
That either you control your attitude,
Or it controls you.

I Believe...
That sometimes when I am angry,
I have the right to be angry,
But that doesn't give me the right
To be cruel.

I Believe...
That maturity has more to do,
With what experiences you've had,
And what you have learned from them,
And less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I Believe...
That no matter how bad your heart is broken,
The world doesn't stop for your grief.
That it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others,
Sometimes, you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I Believe...
That our background and circumstances,
May have influenced who we are;
But we are responsible for who we have become.

Pointers to Ponder

1. Opposite values are complementary.

2. Whatever you resist will persist.

3. Present moment is inevitable. Live in the present moment.

4. Responsibility is equal to power. Irresponsibility is equal to complaints.

5. Do not see the intention behind other people's mistakes.

6. Be 100% in whatever you do.

7. Do not be a football of other people's opinion.

8. Accept people and situations as they are.

E-mailed Message from my Ninang Edith

I want to share to you another e-mail message from my beloved Ninang Edith. She is currently working in Kuwait, so we keep in touch through the internet.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

-Excerpt from the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling

The central idea of this poem is that success comes from self-control and a true sense of the values of things. In extremes lies danger. A man must not lose heart because of doubts or opposition, yet he must do his best to see the grounds for both. He must not be deceived into thinking either triumph or disaster final; he must use each wisely--and push on. In all things he must hold to the golden mean. If he does, he will own the world, and even better, for his personal reward he will attain the full stature of manhood.

-Joseph Morris