Staying Young

Ha ha, this is definitely not my problem -

That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

- Walt Disney

Nightingale-Conant has a great Word-of-the-Day type service that emails out a Motivational Quote of the Day. You may sign up for it here. This is probably my favorite -

"Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can."

- The Dalai Lama

Motivational Quote of the Day

"The difference between try and triumph is a little umph."

-Unknown

I like that.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

This comes from an article that my brother sent me over a year ago, and that I've just read. He sends me a lot of emails. I've mentioned this before.

Richard Carlson, who has a website called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, makes an excellent point about happiness. He uses the following metaphor -

"Here's a good way to look at it. Suppose you live in Miami and you wanted to take a road trip to New York. So you get in the car and head West. The question is, where would you end up? The answer, of course, is that you could end up in many locations depending on how far you drove, but by no means would you end up in New York! You're going the wrong way!"

So, if you are surrounded by things (and thoughts) that make you unhappy, then you probably aren't going to be happy. I guess if you started out by driving west and then hit the Pacific, you could turn around and eventually make it to New York, but it would take a lot longer than first identifying the direction in which you should head and then going there.

This post is kind of cheesy. Sorry. To make up for it, I will say that the aforementioned website reminds me of those Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey that they used to have on SNL. What ever happened to those? Here are some of my favorites -

"You know one thing that will really make a woman mad? Just run up and kick her in the butt. (P.S. This also works with men.)"

"How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak."

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

Almost forgot my all-time fave-

"Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet."

MQOTD

"The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."

-Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Has anyone else ever heard his middle name? Weird. I'll have to look that up now.
He seems to have been pretty ahead of his time on this point. I don't know if he really did anything about it, but I suppose he wasn't a physician so it wasn't really up to him.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there's a statue of Edison in downtown Brockton, MA where it looks like he's giving you the finger. It's pretty hilarious.

MQOTD

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

-Helen Keller

He's No Christopher Columbus

This is an African proverb, referenced in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, which he saw on the wall of a factory in China-

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion
or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle
or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

I assume it was written in Chinese on that wall.

Happy Birthday

To me. I have decided to put down the quote that has meant the most to me of all of the ones I have read or heard during my 28 years:

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

-Mahatma Gandhi

It's followed closely by the O'Higgins family motto:

"You can never be too rich or too thin."

-Wallis Simpson, American-born Duchess of Windsor

Make 'Em Laugh

Today's Nightingale-Conant Motivational Quote:

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

-Mark Twain

Happiness

Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-Cybernetics, and a pioneer in the self-help genre, had this to say:

"Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have no goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal."

[the quote comes from Nightingale-Conant's Motivational Quote a Day, to which there is a link on the right hand side of this blog]

Everyone gets down, now and then, so get up off the couch, go for a walk, paint something, visit your grandmother, write down some goals you have, or check a book out of the library.

In other news, money doesn't buy happiness, not even "stacks" of it. ThirdAge.com has an article about a recent Stony Brook University study.