“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
– Zig Ziglar
Month: June 2009
Someone Once Said…#1
“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at will change.”
— Dr Wayne Dyer
A New Found Appreciation for Trees
You can learn a lot from a tree.
As children, we excitedly spoke of what we’d like to be when we grew up. Doctors, firefighters, baseball players, teachers. I don’t recall anyone ever saying that they’d like to be a tree.
I can honestly state that I never wanted to become a tree. Even today I have no desire to radically transform myself into trunk and branch. Even if I did want to, I’m not quite sure how I would even go about it. Trees have many great characteristics that we’d all love to possess. They are tall, strong, self reliant, patient, and can weather the extreme changes of seasons. The thing that inspires me about trees, though, is their attitude.
Nothing Will Ever Make Me Happy
One of the happiest days of my life was when I realized that nothing will ever make me happy.
Nothing. As in no thing.
Things used to excite me. I would feel so much better by having things rather than when I was just wanting things. I have surrounded myself with all sorts of things, all designed to make me happy. Or at least that’s what I told myself when I bought them. Somehow I expected the things that I possessed would give me the happiness and joy that I was missing in my life. How could I be happy with a 32″ TV? A 54″ TV is 69% larger, and therefore must contain 69% more happiness! How could anyone be happy using last year’s iPhone? Driving a two year old car? You must be miserable!
“Have an Adequate Day!”
Maybe it’s me. Perhaps I send out some sort of signal, some sort of message to those I come in contact with that lets them know that I settle for mediocrity and have low expectations. Maybe people just don’t think I’m capable of having a great day. Because they always only tell me to have a good day.
These people who talk to me each day are talking to you, too. You see them at the drive-thru when you get your morning coffee. Or when you pick up your dry cleaning. The waiter at lunch. Even when you’re buying new shoes.
Who Are You?
“I was with a friend of mine in an airport and a stranger came up to me and said, You’re tall. Are you a basketball player? and I replied, No. Then another person came up to me and asked, Are you a basketball player? And I said, Nope. So my friend asked me, Bill, why do you keep telling them no? And I told him, Because basketball is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”
The quote above is from Bill Russell, perhaps the greatest basketball player in history. An 11-time NBA champion, Olympic Gold medalist. Two-time NCAA champion. The evidence strongly suggests that Bill Russell was, in fact, a basketball player. But I just love the wisdom of his view of his real self: “basketball is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”
Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com 