Those words that inspire us
I have tried to mention the source of those following inspiring words whenever I could and I apologize to the author if I could not find the source.
Family
=
Father
And
Mother
I Love
You
The Bank
Every morning, you are given 86 400 dollars with the only constraint of having to spend them all during that same day. Any remaining money is taken away when you go to bed. But this gift from heaven can stop anytime. So the question is, whay would you do if you were given such a gift?....
This magic bank, we all have it, it is the time! Every morning, when you wake up, you are given 86 400 seconds of life for the day and when we go to bed at night there is no left over, what has not been lived during the day is lost, today is over.....
Every morning, this magic starts over again, we are given 86 400 seconds of life and we all play with this unchangeable rule: the bank can close our account at anytime without prior notice; at any moment life can stop. So what do we do with our daily 86 400 seconds? Are not those seconds of life more important than dollars? So I please, let's enjoy every second that is given to us.....
Marc Levy from "Et si c'était vrai?"....
Everything I needed
I asked for Strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problem to solve
I asked for prosperity and God gave me a brain and brawn to work
I asked for Courage and God gave me obstacles to overcome
I asked for Love and God gave me troubled people to help
I asked for Favors and God gave me opportunities
I received nothing I wanted but I received Everything I needed.....
The Difference
I got up early one morning
and rushed right into the day,
I had so much to accomplish
that I didn’t have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled about me
and heavier came each task.
“Why doesn’t God help me ?” I wondered.
He answered, “You didn’t ask.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty,
but the day toiled on, gray and bleak.
I wondered why God didn’t show me;
He said, “But you didn’t seek.”
I tried to come into God’s presence,
I used all the keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided,
“My child, you didn’t knock.”
I woke up early this morning
and paused before entering the day,
I had so much to accomplish
that I had to take time to pray.
Think Positive
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you won’t.
Success begins with your own will…
It’s all in your state of mind.
Life’s battles are not always won
By those who are stronger or faster;
Sooner or later the person who wins
Is the person who thinks he can.
Everything is possible.
Everything is possible, it is a question of time, the time to understand how it is possible.
Marc Levy
Real Life
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacles in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were "my life". This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.
So, stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until you car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you're off welfare, until you die, until you're born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey not a destination.
Happiness...
We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids are not old enough and we'll be content when they are.
After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We'll certainly be happy when they're out of that stage.
We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?
Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway.
Happiness Strategy
1. Dont worry, choose happy
2. Cultivate gratitude
3. Foster forgiveness
4. Counteract negative thoughts and feelings
5. Foster friendship
6. Engage in some meaningful activities
Secrets of Happy Families
1. Enjoy each other: parents come home and the kids are happy to see them and when the kids come home, the parents are happy to see them.
2. Swap stories: something to share with your kids.
3. Put the marriage first: set a real example of love
4. Break bread together: families that eat together, stay together. It’s that simple. Family dinners are essential. It’s a time to connect.
5. Play together: have one or two unifying activities that the family does together.
6. Put Family before Friends
7. Limit children’s after-school activities: if your kids grow up not knowing how to ballet, they will be OK. Create your own after-school activities as a family. Take your kids rollerblading or swimming after school as a family.
8. Build and Honor Rituals: they can be unique to your own family such as a weekly dining out or movie watching at the theater. Rituals tend to bring family members close together because they are repeated over time.
9. Keep your voices down: talk to your kids, give them strict rules, and punish them when neccessary, but don’t lose control and yell.
10. Never fight in front of the kids
11. Don’t work too much: prioritize your kids.
12. Encourage sibling harmony.
13. Have private jokes
14. Communicate
Few signs of happiness/success
Success is closing the door to your office at the end of the day with a smile of satisfied contentment crossing your face. It’s knowing that you did a good job and that those you interacted with you had a positive experience.
Success is looking forward to getting home and seeing the people you love. It’s being mentally and emotionally free to share yourself with them and to be interested in them.
Success is being loved by the people you love
Success is sitting down to pay the bills and knowing that you have enough money to cover them this month and next month. It’s knowing you have taken measures to ensure the financial security of your family in the event of your demise.
Success is knowing where to turn when it seems that there’s nowhere to turn. Having a spiritual life is akin to eating food and drinking water. It’s necessary!
Success is having interests or hobbies to call your own. It’s things that you personally anticipates doing again and again. Having interests gives you joy and peace.
Success is waking up in the morning and feeling good. It’s knowing that you eat right and exercise regularly and that you do everything you personally can to ensure continued good health
Success is turning out the lights, slipping under the covers, and thinking to yourself, “It just doesn’t get much better than this!”
What success isn’t
Success isn’t calling home from work for the fourth time this week, apologizing because you’re going to miss dinner with the family again.
Success isn’t hurrying into the house and hiding behind closed doors or the television set because “after the day I’ve had, I need my space!”
Success isn’t having all the riches in the world and still trying to figure out how to have more of all the riches in the world.
Success isn’t physically going to worship service and mentally writing a to-do list for when you get home
Success isn’t all work and no play
Success isn’t spending mental energy figuring out how to explain why your project isn’t going to come in on time, why you have to miss your child’s school play and why you just don’t find any joy in living
Great thoughts
Too many fame come too late
Genious does what it must, and talent does what it can
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next (Bacon)
Despair is the conclusion of fools
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness (Aristotle)
It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects (La Rochefoucault)
A gentleman is a man who can disagree without being disagreeable
Happiness is like a kiss; you must share it to have it (Marie Tempest)
All anybody needs to know about prizes is that Mozart never won one (Henry Mitchell)
The great essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
An average man learns from his experience; an outstanding man learns from other people’s experience (Bismarck)
Power is an iron hand in a velvet glove (Charles V)
Love is often a fruit of marriage (Moliere)
A woman must be a genius to create a god husband (Balzac)
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come (Victor Hugo)
To conquer without danger is to win without glory
There is no limit to what we can do or where we can go if we don’t mind who gets the credit (Ronald Regan)
Learn from the mistakes of others – you can never live long enough to make them all yourself (John Luther)
There will be time when you think believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. (Louis L’Amour)
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live (Vittorio Alfieri)
To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life (Pablo Neruda)
When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity (John F. Kennedy)
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy (Martin Luther King. Jr)
Consult not your fears, but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed at, but with what it is still possible for you to do (Pope John XXIII)
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards (Vernon Saunders Law)
When it gets dark enough you can see the stars (Lee Salk)
The Sportsman
A sportsman is the one who not only has fortified his muscles and increased his resistance by the practice of some great sport, but also the one who, by practising it, has learned to repress his anger, to be tolerant with his fellows and his adversaries, not to enjoy a vile advantage, to feel as a disgrace the mere suspicion of a trap and to maintain the mind serene and the face cheerful at the hour of defeit.
How to retake control after a very bad day
1. breathe deeply: several times while walking, in your car, or in the metro
2. take your time: walk slowly and look around you to notice small little details. After all, life goes on.
3. do some physical activity: sweating is the best way to eliminate stress. Run, roller blade, take your bike and spend you energy.
4. laugh: laughing allows to get rid of the toxins accumulated by stress
5. don’t tell your bad day to your family: you need their love not their compassion or pity.
6. get a good night sleep: don’t forget tomorrow is another day! Reading a book is a good way to get to sleep softly.
7. Pray
These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.
__________________________________
Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July 15th.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
______________________________________
Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
_____________________________________
Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________
Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.
______________________________________
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________
Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
_____________________________________
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
______________________________________
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
______________________________________
Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
______________________________________
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
The power of thought
In 1950s, an English Container ship transporting Portugal wine bottles enters a Scottish port. A man goes in the cold chamber to check that everything has been delivered. Another man closes the door from outside ignoring there is someone in the cold room. The prisoner shouts and knocks violently on the door but nobody hears him and the ship goes back to Portugal.
The man finds enough food inside the cold room but he knows he will not last long in this freezer. However, he finds the energy to grab a piece of metal and to write, hour after hour, day after day, the story of his suffering. With a scientific accuracy, he describes his agony. How the cold is freezing his nose, his fingers and his feet. He describes how the cold air is an unbearable burn on his chest.
When the ship comes into the port in Lisbon, the captain discovers the dead man inside the cold room. His story is written on the walls. But the most astonishing thing is that the refrigeration system has not been activated since there was no more merchandise inside the cold chamber. The man died only because he thought he was in a freezer. He has been the victim of his own imagination.
Shopping maths
- a man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs
- a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she does not need
About Joy
Be joyful always
I Thessalonians 5:16-18
Those important things in life
The experience of life in prison or a mortal disease give back the true value to each thing. Suddenly we understand that the most important thing in life is not a doctrine or a big house but health, the freedom to come and go, very simple notions.....
MARC LEVY
Travels
Travels change the look we have on ourselves and our life.
Frederic Lenoir
Hardships
Hardships of life can make us smaller or bigger.
Frederic Lenoir
Worries
The following is a study undertaken about human worries
40% are worries that will not actually happen
30% are worries about things that have already occured
12% are worries not related to oneself but to other people's business
10% are worries about the disease one might get
4% are worries that cannot not be solved no matter how much you worry about
4% are worries that can be solved if we put some effort
So, in conclusion, if 4% is the amount of worries a person should have, most of the people worry 20 times more on a daily basis.
